Posted on: Sunday, August 4, 2002

COMMENTARY
Hawai'i hapa power example of how diversity can work

By John Griffin

At a recent community forum titled "Diversity — Our Islands Greatest Asset?" a friend came up to me and said: "Isn't this wonderful? Only in Hawai'i could we have anything like this."

Well, yes and no, I thought.

Yes, diversity and how we handle it may well be Hawai'i's treasure. We lead the nation in mixing. More on "Hapa Power" later.

But we do need to be aware how other parts of the United States, not to mention countries like Brazil and Britain, are in the process of racial and ethnic diversification. That's especially advanced in California.

For example, the San Francisco Chronicle did a six-part series this year. It noted how the 2000 Census outlined broad patterns — "the growth of Asian and Latino populations, the movement of African Americans to the suburbs, the widening of a racial gap among home buyers."

The focus, however, was on how this multicultural change is, or in some cases is not, reflected in population pockets around the East Bay region. The range is dizzying diversity to what some call California's "whitest" neighborhood.

One installment told how an elementary school in the San Antonio area of Oakland had this mix of children speaking these primary languages:

"Of 910 students, 368 are Spanish speakers, 84 speak Mien, 81 speak Cantonese, 73 speak Khmer, 59 speak Vietnamese, 15 speak Lao, 13 speak Tagalog, six speak Arabic, four speak Tongan, one speaks Farsi, and one speaks Bosnian. The rest — African Americans, for the most part, and one white student — are native English speakers."

The overall point is made that Latinos include not just Mexicans but Puerto Ricans, and Central and South Americans, just as the Asian classification includes numbers of Chinese, Indians, Cambodians, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Laotians and Vietnamese.

Elsewhere in Oakland is a 20-block fast-developing "Koreatown," a cultural and business center for Koreans in Alameda County where their numbers surged 46 percent to 14,217 in the 1990s. But, while Koreatown business attracts people of all races, most Koreans live scattered around the Bay Area, in contrast to more segregated Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. This is said to reduce racial friction.

The growing city of Fremont is yet another story with its concentration of South Asians — including Afghans — their shops and restaurants.

Then the Chronicle series featured the Elmwood and Claremont neighborhoods of Berkeley where the population is 86 percent white, the highest ratio in all Alameda County. Notes this story on that figure:

"In diversity-crazy Berkeley, this state of affairs might be expected to elicit a certain sheepishness or some frustration from the small number of blacks, Asians and other nonwhites who live here. But to the contrary, residents don't seem particularly perturbed. Living in Berkeley means that diversity is easy to find — it's a matter of walking a few blocks or stepping into a public school, they say."

A black woman living there is quoted as feeling comfortable in the neighborhood, saying, "Would I be happy in Walnut Creek? That's a different white. People move there because they want to be around white people."

Her husband joined in, laughing: "There's white, and there's white bread."

These are just a few of the stories of diversity and tensions up and down the West Coast and beyond as our nation changes.

California writer Richard Rodriguez, in his complex and sometimes controversial latest book — "Brown: The Last Discovery of America" — sees the "browning" of the nation as more immigrants, especially from Latin America, come in. This, he says, will mean much confusion but also great opportunity and more freedom for the individual as the primary focus of American life.

I see Hawai'i both as part of this (with, for example, a growing number of Latinos) and apart from it in our special way.

Recent stories by Advertiser writer Rod Ohira noted how Hawai'i is far ahead of the Mainland overall in diversity. The 2000 Census ranks our largest racial groups in this order: Caucasians (294,102), Japanese (201,764), Filipinos (170,635), Native Hawaiians (80,137), Chinese (56,600), Koreans (23,537) and African Americans (22,003).

Hawai'i was the first state where no group had a majority, a status just attained by California recently. Others will follow, depending on immigration patterns.

But as the stories noted, that only tells part of it. Interracial marriages are increasing racial diversity. Most births here are now of mixed-race children.

Some feel Hawai'i is so far ahead of the Mainland in diversity that we are too different and distant to provide a useful example. I don't know, but I think we also lead in another way.

Comedian Al Harrington, of Samoan ancestry, used to say of Hawai'i's racial makeup: "We beige." Which sounds something akin to Rodriguez's "browning."

Actually, I see three related factors at work and in balance in Hawai'i and the nation's racial mix. One is continuing immigration, which will bring in new blood and people to be Americanized.

The second is cultural pride and preservation, the desire by individual groups to retain their identity and hopefully add to and enrich our society.

The third is our brand of interracial integration. We in Hawai'i may not all be beige, but the term "local" has a meaning that goes beyond any one racial group. Indeed, for many mixed-race young people, except possibly part-Hawaiians, being local is more important than their racial background.

So what is local?

I like sports announcer and commentator Jim Leahy's definition: "Local is Us Guys." And, by my extension, if you don't know what Us Guys is, then you aren't local.

(After a half-century here, I never claim to be local. "Coast haole emeritus" is more accurate. But my hapa children, born and schooled here, are local in varying degrees.)

Yes, I know localness can be abused, especially this election year. It can be too narrow and provincial when Hawai'i must think global. It needs to coexist with Hawaiian sovereignty aspirations, as well as our many cultural groups.

But it is also a wave of our future.

Former Gov. John Waihee once suggested that mixed-race people, or hapas, might become an important political force.

I don't know about that, but in many fields like fashion, food and entertainment, Hapa Power is increasingly apparent.

John Griffin, a frequent contributor, is former editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages.