“Parents Just Want Foreign Teachers”: Chinese Women Quietly Resisting the White Profitability of the English Language Industry

English language teaching (ELT) is a racially stratified industry that privileges whiteness as a norm. Research on race in China’s ELT industry has centered on the experiences of White, particularly male, teachers, which risks normalising whiteness in the field. This Women of Colour feminist research explores Chinese women teachers’ experiences, and reveals how the industry constructs whiteness as a profitable investment for Chinese people—and, in so doing, constructs Chinese women as subordinate, exploitable, and ineffective teachers. It then highlights the strategy of quiet resistance these teachers deployed to resist racism in the workplace. While this study focuses on the Chinese context, the study introduces the concept of “White profitability”, which is useful in understanding how the commodification of whiteness underpins intersectional racism experienced by teachers of colour in the global ELT industry. The study contributes methodologically, empirically and theoretically to understanding and interrupting intersectional racism in English-language education.