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GOLDSEA |
ASIAMS.NET |
ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES
Is Honolulu an Asian American Paradise?
magine a place where everyone looks like Jason Scott Lee and Kelly Hu. Where trade winds keep the air balmy year-round, day and night, and the horizon is always piled with dazzling cumulus. Where you can always find a Zippy's for saimin and teriyaki plates heaped with rice and macaroni salad. Where it's the Whites who are the minority.
AA Paradise?
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A stroll through Ala Moana Shopping Center or Kapiolani Park will satisfy anyone that in Honolulu Asians are the majority. This impression is borne out by the numbers. The city's 610,000 Asian/Pacific Islanders comprise 68% of its 900,000 total residents, making the Honolulu area the nation's third largest AA population center. Even excluding about 100,000 native Hawaiians, Samoans and other non-Filipino Pacific Islanders, Asians make up 57%, over twice the percentage for Whites (26%).
Honolulu is also unique in being the only major metro area in which Japanese Americans outnumber all other Asian nationalities. JAs (200,000) are followed by Filipinos (170,000), Chinese (54,000), Coreans (23,000), Vietnamese (8,000) and Indians (1,500). McKinley High, Honolulu's first public school and the alma mater of Daniel Inouye, Hiram Fong and Bette Midler, is known as "Tokyo High".
Racial harmony, marketed as Aloha Spirit, has become the island's trademark, but the various Asian nationalities originally arrrived not in the spirit of multiculturalism but to serve as strikebreakers to help the Big Five keep each preceding nationality of laborers in line. It is only during the past half century or so that Hawaii's Asians have come to see the advantage of joining forces to resist an exploitative white minority.
Asian immigration to Hawaii began in 1789 with the arrrival of a few Chinese artisans. Hawaii was still an independent kingdom. Asians were few until various European and American entrepreneurs began seeing the potential for big profit in sugar cane. They used cold-blooded machinations to gain power over native Hawaiians, then brought over 46,000 Chinese laborers between 1852 and 1899.
As Chinese workers grew in number, they began making demands for better wages and working conditions. The Big Five's response was to recruit 180,000 Japanese between 1886 and 1925. As the Japanese became the islands' largest ethnic group, they too began organizing to fight inhumane working conditions. The plantation owners sought to break them by bringing over 100,000 Filipinos. As citizens of a U.S. territory, they were exempt temporarily from the barrage of anti-Asian legislation directed against Chinese and Japanese immigration. About 3,500 Coreans were also recruited between 1904 and 1905.
The first instance of inter-Asian cooperation on the islands was seen in 1919 when 12,000 Filipinos and Japanese jointly staged a strike. For the most part, however, the Big Five's ruthless tactics and absolute economic dominance remained intact until World War II. Only after Hawaii became a state in 1959 did Asian numerical strength begin translating into political and economic power. Today Honolulu's commercial and professional life is dominated by Asians, though many Whites enjoy above-average affluence thanks to old-money connections and a steady influx of wealthy mainlanders seeking a retirement home.
The surf and luau lifestyle is, of course, only a pretty myth for most Honolulu residents. Like other Americans, they spend most of their days earning a living. Unfortunately, the majority are employed in tourism, an industry that had been stagnating for nearly a decade even before 9/11. The islands' strategic location between East Asia and North America -- not to mention its appealing lifestyle -- has begun attracting a small influx of tech jobs, but Honolulu's economic prospects remain uncertain for the forseeable future.
Is Honolulu an Asian American paradise? Or is it just a remote outpost irrelevant to the most ambitious Asian Americans?
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WHAT YOU SAY
[This page is closed to new input. --Ed.]
(Updated
Tuesday, Apr 1, 2008, 06:02:48 PM)
I grew up in Hawaii (now happily living near Seattle), attended public schools and don't speak a word of pidgin English. That doesn't mean I don't understand it, since most of my friends there, the intellectual and non-intellectual ones, spoke it. For a lot of people living in Hawaii, the pidgin is something you can turn on and off, depending on your mood and who you're with. It just drives me nuts when I have to READ something that is written in pidgin!
Now that I live and work on the mainland, I do notice that I appear to be a lot more assertive and confident than some of the Asian-Americans I meet. I'm convinced that at least some of it is due to growing up in an environment in which Asians were the dominant race. Having never thought of myself as a "minority," I don't get treated like one, either. A lot of the Asian people I've met who grew up in predominantly white areas (like the South or Midwest) seem either very insecure or overly accomodating, as if they have spent their whole lives trying to be liked and to "fit in."
That's the bright side of living in Hawaii. On the flip side, Hawaii still has a very small town mentality where everyone knows your business. Some locals never "get off the rock" their entire lives, except to go to Vegas. And it's hot and humid 365 days a year, which is great if you're vacationing there with air-conditioned accomodations, but not so great if you're working downtown and have to park your car and walk eight blocks in the sweltering heat. In business attire. And your kids, if they stay on the islands, will probably end up working in the tourism "hospitality" industry, catering to visitors who are expecting happy natives and grass shacks.
I do enjoy visiting, though, and getting a Zip Min at Zippy's and a plate lunch at Rainbow's drive in.
Now a Northwest Girl
Friday, May 17, 2002 at 00:39:06 (PDT)
[Yeah, the weather, the beaches, the greenery... you can't beat it.]
HELLLLLLL YEAHHHHHHHH!!!
[One little problem though... the Japanese run the islands. They like to look down on the pakes, the portugee, the hapas, the samonkeys, the mokes, the haoles.]
Yeah, they really do. Quite a pain!
[For me, it got a little dull. I prefer the mainland where it's an advantage to speak good english and to have a few goals in life.]
It really depends on what part of the mainland you're at. Think it through.
When I complete my goals here in the near future... I definitely have my eyes set on Honolulu.
All the hapa honeys a hapa lover could ever want!!!
[It's the most annoying dialect because it reinforces stereotypes about Asians not speaking proper English. I'm glad to be outa there.]
Where are you now, Pake Girl?
Honolulu doesn't really have that many Chinese hapas; more so Japanese, Filipino, and Hawaiian+Chinese hapas.
BTW- what generation Hawaii born is your Chinese parent?
Jay... the Hawaii Hapa Lover
Thursday, May 16, 2002 at 16:19:07 (PDT)
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