Posted on: Sunday, August 11, 2002
COMMENTARY
Hawai'i, Singapore show world benefits of diversity
By Tom Plate
Where does all the hatred come from? Why must it go on? Look at the Middle East, where different peoples seem only to want to kill each other, or South Asia, where Indians and Pakistanis seemed so rooted in a festering, horrid past.
It doesn't have to be this way. Contrast these hellish visions with the real-world achievement of a multicultural society such as Hawai'i's. These tropical islands constitute not just a thrown-together polyglot archipelago that somehow manages to exist warily in the manner of an Indonesia but instead as a deeply integrated culture of many kinds of ethnicities and nationalities working side by side.
"Hawai'i is not just multicultural," explains University of Hawai'i professor Arthur Richardson. "It's intercultural." By this he means that people here don't simply co-exist grudgingly; they have tried to obviate the dreaded downside of the American melting-pot dream (violent ethnic tension and racial clashes) in order to make diversity work as a powerful economic and humanitarian force. Hawai'i is not a model of the future; in a sense, it is the future or at least, a sane model for the world.
For all its achievements, though, Hawai'i is undergoing an identity crisis. A recent conference organized by the Pacific Asian Management Institute, an important branch of the University of Hawai'i's College of Business, focused on how to better secure Hawai'i's place in the brave new world of globalization. Tourism, conferees agreed, will always be an economic constant for Hawai'i people, but they understand that tourism isn't going to be enough to fuel the Islands' full potential. They want to enlarge their own "knowledge economy" — and fully promote it internationally — so as to diminish their economic dependence on tourism and enhance their attractiveness as a place to establish a new business — or as a cosmopolitan place with which to do business.
In their desire to diversify, they are a kind of reverse mirror image of Singapore. For longer than almost any country one can think of, Singapore has emphasized the need to build up a top-notch knowledge economy. Having done that, Singaporeans are now starting to play up their green, clean and safe image in order to leverage their country into a first-class tourist destination and a place for talented foreigners to settle.
In effect, Singapore, with its own ultra-clean beaches and cultural attractions, is trying to look to the outside world a bit more like Hawai'i.
Both will have to work hard to overcome the leaden images handed them by the world media. Just as Hawai'i is a lot more than surf, sand and hulas, Singapore is much more than its Western media image of laws against selling chewing gum and punishment by caning. It has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world, one of the lowest crime rates, one of the greenest environments, one of the highest rates of home ownership and one of the best-educated populations.
Even so, its leaders are increasingly convinced that in this age of global competition, Singaporeans by themselves may not be able to assure their country's continued success. And so this heretofore tight little island is trying to open wide its doors and attract foreigners, not only to come and work in its multi-ethnic but largely Chinese culture but to stay, plant roots and thrive. Singapore, in a sense, wants to become a little less Singaporean.
Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew puts the challenge this way: "A way for talent nurturing, which is a rather complex process, is through interaction with foreign peers, be it locally or overseas. That is why we have to welcome foreign talent and persuade them to stay, for our own good." No country, the elder statesman suggests, can be successful if it remains inward-looking. Singapore's leaders are right to want their city-state to open up to the outside world and evolve, demographically at least, into more of a Southeast-Asian Hawai'i than a comparatively closed culture.
Too bad this humane and cosmopolitan vision is so lacking in other parts of the world. Too bad others cannot find the wisdom to realize that including "the other" or the feared "them" in their future is a formula for success in a globalized age. Whether in the Middle East, South Asia or anywhere, a touch of Hawaiianization is good for everybody — and not just economically but spiritually. The ability of different peoples to get along better, respect each other, and build a better life together is the foremost issue of our time — and the bottom-line challenge of globalization. There's no more important issue facing us all.
Tom Plate, a columnist with The Honolulu Advertiser and the South China Morning Post, is a professor at UCLA. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu. He also has a spot on the Web.
