That sounds reasonable and believable to me. In my experiences teaching here (2 years and four months, three schools), I have observed fairly substantial evidence of prejudice against blacks. It’s not usually out in the open, but it’s there, and I believe it’s sufficient to create a real obstacle to a black person seeking a teaching job here.
I’m not privy to everything that goes on in the process of hiring a teacher here, but I feel pretty comfortable with the following observations as to my experiences as an employee and a job-seeker here:
(1) Two of the three schools I’ve worked for definitely preferred people from North America. I’m not sure they could truly distinguish between North American accents and others; I think they mainly wanted to be able to say to parents that they had a person from North America.
On the upside, one of those schools hired a South African. On the downside of the upside, they harassed her about her accent until she left. And when I say harassed, I mean, they made her miserable.
(2) Two of the three schools I’ve worked for definitely did not want to hire an Asian as a native-speaker-type teacher.
On the upside, one of those schools hired a Taiwanese who had lived mostly in the US since the age of three and didn’t have a trace of an Asian accent. On the downside of that, they harassed him for being of Asian heritage, in various ways, until it looked for a while as if he might be coming unglued. On the upside of that downside, the school went out of business, and he found work with a school that seemed to want and appreciate him.
(3) Two of the three schools I’ve worked for definitely did not want to hire blacks as teachers. One boss told me plainly that she didn’t like blacks, and the other mainly, or ostensibly, didn’t want to hire them because she thought it would hurt her business. On the upside, the school that gave commercial reasons for not wanting blacks did hire a black teacher. On the downside of that upside, they hired him part-time, a couple of nights a week, and I know for a fact they wanted a full-time teacher. There was also other, subtle evidence of prejudice on the part of the management, and before the black teacher got there, I noticed very obvious prejudice against blacks on the part of some of the kids, but as far as I know, none of this has been expressed to the guy’s face.
(4) The third school? I didn’t stick around there long enough to find out whether they were prejudiced against blacks. In my view, the management of that place seemed prejudiced against teachers in general, so in the words of the old country singer, I “set that water bucket down.”
And that’s been my experience.
In my opinion, though, the above doesn’t constitute a reason not to look for work as a teacher.
This is only a suggestion, but if you haven’t found a job in, say, a couple of months of fairly serious looking, maybe you can consider “slowing the pace of the game,” i.e., making it more of a long-range project.
Hope this helps.
xp+10K