{"id":9045,"date":"2010-09-20T20:30:42","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T20:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9045"},"modified":"2011-03-16T04:30:43","modified_gmt":"2011-03-16T04:30:43","slug":"%e2%80%9ca-fascinating-interracial-experiment-station%e2%80%9d-remapping-the-orient-occident-divide-in-hawai%e2%80%99i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9045","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA Fascinating Interracial Experiment Station\u201d: Remapping the Orient-Occident Divide in Hawai\u2019i"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cA Fascinating Interracial Experiment Station\u201d: Remapping the Orient-Occident Divide in Hawai\u2019i<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

American Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 49, Number 3\/4<\/a>, Fall\/Winter 2008
\npages 87-109
\nE-ISSN: 2153-6856
\nPrint ISSN: 0026-3079<\/p>\n

Shelley Sang-Hee Lee<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Comparative American Studies and History
\nOberlin College<\/em><\/p>\n

Rick Baldoz<\/a><\/strong>, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology
\nOberlin College<\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the 1920s and 1930s, American intellectuals on the U.S. continent often described Hawai\u2019i<\/a> as a \u201cracial frontier,\u201d a meeting ground between East and West where \u201cunorthodox\u201d social relations between Native Hawaiians, Asians, and Caucasians had taken root. The frontier metaphor evoked two very different images, the \u201cracial paradise\u201d and the \u201cracial nightmare,\u201d and in both characterizations, Asians figured prominently. In 1930, of the islands\u2019 civilian population of nearly 350,000, about 236,000 or 68 percent were classified as Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, or Korean.\u00a0 Political, religious, and educational leaders in Hawai\u2019i were the main propagators of the racial paradise image, which expressed optimism in the ability of Caucasians and Asians to live together, while also celebrating the presence of Portuguese, Spanish, Puerto Ricans, Native Hawaiians, and an array of mixed-race groups.<\/strong>\u00a0 They touted the assimilative powers of American institutions and promoted Hawai\u2019i as a model of colonial progress to audiences on the U.S. mainland. David Crawford, the president of the University of Hawai\u2019i,\u00a0 summarized this view during a 1929 visit to Los Angeles<\/a> where he spoke before a group called the Advertising Club. Hawai\u2019i society, explained Crawford, was \u201cdemonstrating the possibility of the meeting of Orient<\/a> and Occident<\/a> on terms of friendship that practically eliminate race prejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n

This celebration of interracial harmony and cultural assimilation contrasted with views advanced by West Coast nativists<\/a> who portrayed Hawai\u2019i and its preponderance of Asians in the population as a cautionary example of the pitfalls of American expansionism<\/a>. During debates in the early 1920s over renewing the Alien Land Law<\/a><\/em> in California<\/a>, anti-Japanese agitators cited Hawai\u2019i as a failed experiment where the color line had been irretrievably breached by a vanguard force of…<\/p>\n

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

\u201cA Fascinating Interracial Experiment Station\u201d: Remapping the Orient-Occident Divide in Hawai\u2019i American Studies Volume 49, Number 3\/4, Fall\/Winter 2008 pages 87-109 E-ISSN: 2153-6856 Print ISSN: 0026-3079 Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, Assistant Professor of Comparative American Studies and History Oberlin College Rick Baldoz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology Oberlin College Introduction During the 1920s and 1930s, American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,394,20],"tags":[3871,911,3872,3870,3869,3868,3867],"class_list":{"0":"post-9045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-articles","7":"category-asia","8":"category-media-archive","9":"category-socialscience","10":"category-usa","11":"tag-american-studies","12":"tag-hawaii","14":"tag-richard-baldoz","15":"tag-rick-baldoz","16":"tag-shelley-lee","17":"tag-shelley-sang-hee-lee"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045","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=9045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}