{"id":42751,"date":"2015-09-16T18:13:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T18:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42751"},"modified":"2017-04-06T02:14:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T02:14:31","slug":"is-hawaii-a-racial-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42751","title":{"rendered":"Is Hawaii a Racial Paradise?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Hawaii a Racial Paradise?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Z\u00f3calo Public Square<\/a>
\n2015-09-15<\/p>\n

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr.<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
\nArizona State University<\/em><\/p>\n

Nitasha Sharma<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of African-American Studies and Asian-American Studies
\nNorthwestern University, Evanston, Illinois<\/em><\/p>\n

David A. Swanson<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Sociology
\nUniversity of California, Riverside<\/em><\/p>\n

Lee A. Tonouchi<\/strong> (“Da Pidgin Guerilla”)<\/a>
\nHawaii<\/em><\/p>\n

Roderick Labrador<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
\nUniversity of Hawaii, M\u0101noa<\/em> (also Director of the UCLA Hawaii Travel Study Program)<\/p>\n

Maile Arvin<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies
\nUniversity of California, Riverside<\/em><\/p>\n

Races, Ethnicities, and Cultures Mix More Freely Than Elsewhere in the U.S., But There Are Limits to the Aloha Spirit<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Early in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall<\/em><\/a>, Jason Segal<\/a>, playing a guy who travels to Hawaii to get over a breakup, drunkenly pours out his feelings to two people in his hotel, a newlywed man and a bartender. The new husband encourages Segal to think there\u2019s still hope for the relationship, but the bartender, Dwayne, has no sympathy for Segal\u2019s sadness.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve gotta move on,\u201d Dwayne says. \u201cIt\u2019s that easy, I promise you it is. I lived in South Central<\/a>. South Central<\/em>. And I hated it. So I moved to Oahu<\/a>. Now I can name you over 200 different kinds of fish!\u201d He starts naming them.<\/p>\n

The scene is hilarious, but it also hints at one of America\u2019s fundamental Gordian knots<\/a>\u2014race\u2014and the various ways we\u2019ve tried to untie it. The story uses Los Angeles\u2019<\/a> \u201cSouth Central\u201d neighborhood as a code word for a place where gangs are divided along color lines, racial tensions can erupt in violence, and residents feel stuck in the cycle. The implication is that Dwayne, who\u2019s black, escaped all that by coming to Hawaii. He puts forth Hawaii as a paradise\u2014a place where the only thing he has to worry about is learning how to pronounce<\/a> Humuhumunukunukuapua`a<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hawaii is one of America\u2019s most diverse and happiest<\/a> states. Some would contend people get along better here than almost anywhere else. But tossing different groups together also means there are frictions\u2014ones that perhaps are too often are obscured by the sunshine and ukuleles<\/a> in tourist guides.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the actual nature of racial relations in Hawaii? And what can the rest of us learn from it? In advance of the \u201cWhat It Means to Be American\u201d event \u201cWhat Can Hawaii Teach America About Race?<\/a>,\u201d we asked a variety of experts on and off the islands that same question…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Races, Ethnicities, and Cultures Mix More Freely Than Elsewhere in the U.S., But There Are Limits to the Aloha Spirit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,33,459,8,4405,394,20],"tags":[21082,20961,911,17018,13628,21078,21079,17008,17020,17017,21080,21081,3623,855,3621,7518],"class_list":{"0":"post-42751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-anthropology","7":"category-articles","8":"category-census","9":"category-history","10":"category-media-archive","11":"category-oceania","12":"category-socialscience","13":"category-usa","14":"tag-david-a-swanson","15":"tag-david-swanson","16":"tag-hawaii","18":"tag-jr","19":"tag-lee-a-tonouchi","20":"tag-lee-tonouchi","21":"tag-maile-arvin","22":"tag-maile-r-arvin","23":"tag-maile-renee-arvin","24":"tag-roderick-labrador","25":"tag-roderick-n-labrador","26":"tag-rudy-guevarra","27":"tag-rudy-p-guevarra","28":"tag-rudy-p-guevarra-jr","29":"tag-zocalo-public-square"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42751"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53276,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42751\/revisions\/53276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}