COMMENTARY
Cultural mix keeps campus harmony high

By Reis Harney

After the OK was given to write about being white and attending a school where blond hair is as rare as a Harvard acceptance, my first thought was, "Here it is, my chance to vent for all the wrong I've suffered."

Then I started to think about my past five years of schooling and all the injustice served due to skin color — and realized no injustice has really ever been served.

My mom, who teaches at my school, never has a hard time finding me in an assembly. In my school, a towhead sticks out like a sore thumb.

Caucasians make up less than 20 percent of the student body, and anyone under 130 pounds — like me — is just an anomaly.

So here is the question: What is an 11-year-old white boy from Sunset Beach Elementary School to do when entering Kahuku High and Intermediate School, where most freshmen are bigger than his dad?

Cry? Nah. I remember my first day at Kahuku, looking up at Samoans who were big enough to move mountains and wondering what their moms packed them for lunch.

I also remember never really having any fear.

Intermediate school had its fair share of clique disputes and school-based scuffles. The leaders of these, I'm ashamed to admit, were some of my best friends from elementary school. Not a single one of them made it past the eighth grade before being expelled or relocated by their parents.

After they were gone, I realized no one had fought due to color or neighborhood residency.

They had all been a product of a simple equation: identity crisis plus antagonist (ignorance) equals fights.

By the ninth grade, everyone has a pretty good grasp on who people really are, rather than just what schools they came from.

From that point on, I never have had a conflict with another student.

In Hawai'i, there is racial harmony because there is no clear-cut line dividing white and black. Nearly everyone is some type of mix.

My best friend is so Hawaiian he qualifies for Kamehameha Schools, yet he's still labeled a haole. And there are those who are 0 percent Samoan, but still earn the title "sole."

It's a melting pot of cultures, and because of that, the racial animosity, at least at Kahuku, is minimal.

My physics teacher, Mr. Oden Hill, has lived in Hawai'i for only a few years after teaching at predominantly black high schools in California.

I asked him how race conflict here compared to that at his former schools.

"I have never seen so many white kids in a class," he said. "Compared to where I was, race is such a minor factor in fights. But this is the the first place in my life I have ever experienced reverse discrimination. It was never bad to be a haole."

Race is a minor factor in the school-yard squabbles of Kahuku.

A friend of mine — a senior football player whose arms are about double the size of mine and whose skin is about seven shades darker — told me, "Big guys don't pick on little guys, and white guys don't get beat up.

"It isn't like that. It is about your attitude, If you're a punk, you're going to have problems. If not, then you won't."

I have on occasion been bummed because of race issues, and I have never felt the security of being the majority.

But I think it is something everyone should experience in small doses. It keeps you humble and gives you a sense of respect.

Who knows, if Hitler had experienced a little more of various cultures and integration, maybe his ideas about a supreme race would have been crushed.

So, what is an 11-year-old white boy to do when entering Kahuku High and Intermediate school?

Just be a nice person.

Know that you will never be the majority, and that reverse discrimination is something that will occur, but count it all as lessons learned in this racial melting pot we call home.

Reis Harney is a senior at Kahuku High. If you're a teen and would like to speak out about issues, trends, pressures and perceptions teens deal with, submit an article or suggest a topic to Island Life assistant editor Dave Dondoneau, ddondoneau@honoluluadvertiser.com.