Letters to the editor

May 28, 2008

May 14, 2008

Hi--I read in your last newsletter a story from Hawaii with a link called "white kids not the norm." As a person of Japanese and Irish heritage who grew up in Hawaii, I'm always interested in these stories, so I read it with interest.

I'm concerned that you have linked to a story that, lacking the proper context, can spread damaging ideas about kids of color in Hawaii. The story is written by an 8th grader at the University Lab School as her experiences as a member of a racial minority group--whites. Now I'm not writing to condemn her expression of those experiences--I know that it is very often disconcerting and alarming for white kids in Hawaii to suddenly feel like a minority. What I am writing about is the lack of context for this article.

Speaking purely from personal experience, I know that kids in Hawaii can racially target white kids. Haoles do get teased, picked on, and occasionally bullied.

However, haoles are also accepted as friends and family members, idealized for their looks, and statistically have no trouble succeeding in education, government (haole governor, many haole state and city officials) business, media (look at Hawaii news anchors--many or most are white, and, by the way, beloved) or really any arena of social and professional life. If you look at who does the worst in school and who makes the least money in Hawaii, it is certainly not the haole population.

What's missing from this blog posting on an unapologetically conservative/libertarian website run by white people is any discussion of what's going on in Hawaii racially. No discussion of Hawaii's history as a conquered nation and colony, in which Hawaiians and people of color from varying Asian, Pacific island, and Latino groups were used as cheap and disposable labor, pitted against each other by haole plantation owners and denied access to or representation in government until the end of the 1950's. No mention of how American and foreign developers keep moving in, buying land, raising property values until working local people are forced farther and farther away from the beaches and more and more into ghettos. Housing is simply not affordable in Hawaii for the average local family. No mention of how the struggling public schools are roundly criticized by the people who refuse to put their children in them because they prefer the "safety" of private education for their own kids--never mind what happens to everyone else's.

I think racial tension and hostility is a problem that should be addressed in Hawaii, as it should be elsewhere. But it is hard to hear the cry of "reverse racism" supported and broadcast without a look at the larger historical social and political issues that are making it difficult for this white child to be accepted by her classmates. I think this story merits another look before being passed along on your website.

Thanks,

Eileen Yoshina