Posted on: Sunday, July 14, 2002
State's racial mix leads nation in ethnic diversity
| • | Hawai'i boasts ethnic tapestry |
| • | Special report: Hawai'i Census 2000 |
By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer
The 2000 Census listed five ethnic categories: white, black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.
In Hawai'i, some residents could be all of the above.
"Most births in Hawai'i today are mixed," state registrar Alvin Onaka said. "We call them hapa or cosmopolitan. Hapa is a word they're starting to use in California to describe someone of mixed parentage.
"The whole issue of how to classify race is political," Onaka said. "It's all self-identifying and not determined biologically. In the future, the issue of race itself will become more irrelevant."
The state Health Department has collected ethnicity data on birth, marriage and death certificates for 106 years.
A change in the 2000 Census reporting format has allowed the vital statistics section of the Office of Health Status Monitoring to compile the data.
"We didn't emphasize diversity because the material we had did conform to the federal program," Onaka said.
But a new format for the 2000 Census that allowed people to check more than one ethnic category creates a compatible system for the state to compute data on mixed races.
"Birth certificates capture race," Onaka said. "It's the real thing. In the mainland United States as a whole, there's 2.4 percent diversity.
"Hawai'i was at 22 percent. Hawai'i is the forerunner of what the world could look like. We're light years ahead of the Mainland in diversity."
