Are you complaining about how it is easier for white Americans to teach English in Taiwan again? I thought you were over that....

I will never get 'over' it!

Without defending the practice, I should point out that this is a customer-driven requirement, not something the schools came up with on their own.

Yup, I totally agree. I never blamed Western-looking Americans themselves, either. But that doesn't mean the practice can be justified (as you probably understand).

I saw a similar thing while I was a student in Kyoto, but it wasn't as overt as what you seem to be seeing in Taiwan. The difference between white westerners and ethnically asian westerners depended on what type of English job they were trying to get. If they were trying to get a job for a large 英会話 company, then there wasn't a salary discrepancy, since the salary is pretty well set at a place such as that, and salary depends more on seniority, working schedule, etc. But the difference was in how easy or difficult it was to get employment there in the first place. Since people are forking over the exorbitant fees to study at a place like Nova or Aeon, they want to be taught English by a person that looks like they are from America (or other English speaking country). So the Asian-Americans I knew in Japan had a harder time getting jobs at places like that.

Since I was only a 1-year exchange student, I just taught either one-on-one lessons to people I had found and was paid directly in cash, or worked at small one-man operations where I taught two or three people and and was paid under the table in cash each time. Even the little one-man operations generally had a set rate of 2000円/hr to 2500円/hr, but again it was easier for me to get a position there than the Asian-Americans. For one-on-one stuff that people just drum up themselves, then it was market driven and whites could generally get a better rate than asians, similar to what you're observing in Taiwan.

Very interesting. I never had a chance to talk with Asian Americans in Japan. I didn't realize this problem in Taiwan until my ABC friend told me, either...