Addendum: My brother and I spoke again today, a day after I wrote this post. A potential employer basically told him he would not be hired because he is not white. The explanation was that his English is "not native English enough" because his skin is not white.

The irony is that no white person would do this in Hong Kong. It's Chinese discriminating against fellow Chinese.

Any intelligent person knows that language ability and skin color have nothing to do with each other. (Upbringing, yes. Skin color, no.) My brother and I speak almost identically. Here's a color-blind test:  When I call people in Hong Kong using English, they presume I'm a "gweipo" until they have to take down my name, Joyce Lau. Then they presume I'm a "gweipo" who married a Chinese man named Lau. Only when I switch to Cantonese do they believe that I am Chinese. (Why everyone insists on knowing whether I am "Chinese or not" is a whole other gripe.) My brother and I speak exactly as you would expect, given that we were born in Canada, and raised and educated in America.

Now, I'm not particularly politically correct, but this is outright racism, and that is wrong. While America may have issues with race, it would be considered an outrage -- actually illegal -- for an employer to tell a black man to his face that he will not be hired because a company has a policy to hire only white people. In Hong Kong, it's so accepted that it's just part of regular conservation. "Oh, we're just hiring whites."

I told an American colleague this, expecting outrage. But he just shrugged. His argument was Chinese parents don't know better. Schools, being profit-seeking companies, just want to please parents, so they play into their prejudices. It's not the parents' or educators' fault, it's the government's fault for not legislating.

That, of course, presumes that people should only be decent because they are forced to by law, not because they are decent people who live by what they feel is right. It's a more cynical view than I am willing to take. And while it would be nice to have better racial discrimination laws (which -- excuse an earlier version of this post -- were just passed a few months ago), it wouldn't take too much for educators simply to explain to ignorant parents that there are Chinese-looking people capable of speaking English. Given the state of English instruction here, you'd figure that they would be happy to have more willing, engaged native English teachers.

But, typical for Hong Kong, they will put appearances ("face" for Chinese parents to brag about their token white teacher) before actually teaching our children.

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The original post:

My brother is currently working freelance as an English tutor.
He started about a month ago and seems to be doing well. His students are largely adults who have decent English, but want to brush up on conversation and vocabulary.

On Saturday, he got a call from a Hong Kong school asking if he would start Monday. They said they got his name via an agent.
That was unexpected, because it was so last minute and because this was a "school school," meaning a government-funded place where children go every day for their basic education.
So he showed up in the far northwest of the city and was handed a folder of material. He was to teach "phonics" to 10 and 11 year olds. The lesson was "words that begin with the letter 'm'."
My brother and I discussed whether this was a good way of teaching language. (It's not.) I remember, years ago, tutoring a cousin of such words (grouped alphabetically) that he was learning to pronounce, never mind what they might mean or how he might use them.
My brother said he never got far enough to explain meaning, anyway -- the kids were so rowdy. By the time he got them to sit down, shut up and pay attention, he could only get through a quarter of the lesson.
He had the typical substitute teacher's problem -- he had no power or authority to discipline them, and they were hardly going to be frightened of someone they might never see again.
He said their English level was almost nil, which was why having monolingual "native English teachers" (NET) at that stage was almost useless. Thank god, he said, that he spoke Cantonese.
Their level was hardly surprising. My brother had no idea where the last "phonics" teacher had left off. He had no way of telling the next phonics teacher where he had left off, or that 3/4 of that lesson was undone. These kids lurched from sub to sub, half-finished lesson to half-finished lesson, and never learned the basics. The longer they were in school, the more behind they fell in where the pre-set curriculum said they should be.
My brother felt they were beyond being frustrated with being in a class where they understood nothing; apathy had long set in. "They just didn't care," he said.
On his way out of this surreal experience, one of the other teachers said "see you next month" without much explanation. So that's how regular the teachers are who are teaching Hong Kong kids how to pronounce English....

Most alarming is the lack of vetting. Except for a cv submitted to an agency, they knew nothing of my brother and had not done even a cursory job interview. Now I know that my brother has native-level English, is great with kids, and is an engaging, creative teacher. (For his adult students, he keeps things fun and real by Xeroxing Time Out articles  to boost vocabulary and understanding of idioms). But -- since he's new to this field and has neither an education degree or TEFL certificate --  they don't know him from a hole in the wall.
I'm pretty sure that in Canada and America, you need at least a teaching certificate, preferably an undergraduate education degree, to be a regular teacher, even for kindergarten.
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In a vaguely related tangent, my mother was taking the mini-bus in the New Territories when a young gweilo asked her for directions. She said he barely had the English skills to read a map and form full sentences. When she inquired, he said he was a backpacker who had been hired to work as an English teacher. He was from Brazil and spoke Portuguese. Well, he had white skin! At least that's what the other passengers said on the bus. "Oh good! A gweilo to teach English around here."
I know nothing of the NET program. And this post is both anecdotal and second-hand. Can anyone shed any light? Is this why I can't even ask for a danish at my local Tai Kok Tsui bakery?
P.S. If anyone needs an English tutor, let me know and I'll onpass to my brother.
P.P.S. I've written about this before, in The English Education Blues.