Kaulapi World

Shared an article with a friend on the recent disclosed discovery of a huge oil field 70 miles off shore of American territory, smirking at the irony that we won’t be getting any of it anytime soon, mostly due to our foreign policy blunders. In typical wing-nut fashion, instead of getting a logical and thoughtful response I ended up getting a totally off-point article (but interesting) about the Hawaiian melting pot boiling over. After reading it and noting that it was referring to pretty current events back home I shot back a quick response that in retrospect had a lot more depth than I had initially intended - I thought it would be worth posting.

It’s not surprising that the most vocal observers cited in this article of anti-haole sentiment in Hawaii comes from the military. I think this is probably true in most overseas stations where you have mostly young, single men in a foreign unfamiliar surroundings immersed in a culture to which they are largely ignorant of. However I see this incident as more of an example of road rage crime, I’m pretty sure I read that the assailant has prior convictions for assault and battery. Interesting twist on that story was that there was talk about classifying the attack as a hate crime because the assailants used the word Haole.

Racial tensions back home have definitely been on a rise in the past few years, I think it has most to do with the shift of demographics, a lot of Hawaiians are moving to the mainland for jobs, a lot of rich haoles are buying land and moving to hawaii. In addition to the recent supreme court challenges on admissions of non-Hawaiians into Hawaiian education trusts, also there have been a lot of heated debate on the presence of the military on native Hawaiian land, as well as weapons research at the University of Hawaii.

Still things are still not as bad as they were during the 1932 Massie trial - again another clash between local Hawaiians and military personnel - a time in Hawaii’s history when the racial melting pot got very close to boiling over. I still think Carlisle’s quote at the end sums it up quite well: “The race thing isn’t perfect here,” he adds. “But there is a lot that people can learn about race relationships from Hawaii.”

As with any other conversation about Hawaii I’m a little lost for words when talking to people who lack the context or understanding of history and the nuances of an island culture, I’m constantly reminded that the mainland mentality is more of a barrier of colonial ignorance than anything else. I think this small mindedness is what is driving a lot of problems in the way Americans in general are perceived internationally.

Linkes 3/6/07
Pushim: Anything for you
Antiwar film from an American producer, actor, and former Mayor
Perverted Justice - literally….
Guardian’s take on direction the economy is heading….
Peddlers as foundation for American Economy
article on zipcar from 3 years ago

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 2:35 am and is filed under hawaii, life in hawaii, random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.