COMMENTARY
Are we losing 'social capital' in Hawai'i?
By Mike Markrich
After a recent trip to Maui, Cathy "Hoku" Eyre told this story. At the Honolulu airport, she stood at the counter of a local airline having her bags weighed. The middle-aged ticket agent, who apparently spoke with the accent of Ilocos Norte, looked at her gravely as it became apparent that her luggage was over the weight limit.
Cathy stood near the scale and braced herself for what she was certain would be bad news. There was a brief uncomfortable moment of silence. Suddenly the tension broke and she saw what appeared to be sympathy in the agent's eyes. Then, in a low nearly inaudible voice, he whispered:
"Are you ... Filipina?"
"No," she said. "Chinese Hawaiian."
"I am sorry," he replied briskly. "That will be $80." He said this with what appeared to be a sense of regret. There was nothing he could do.
Eyre could laugh about the incident later. She was able to balance the certainty of the number on the scale with the possible chance that she might not have had to pay.
The issue was not discrimination but likely the man's sense of a possible family tie. In Hawai'i, as one Chinese- Hawaiian attorney explained: "We owe our first obligation to our family and our second to our high school classmates. After that, we make choices."
In other parts of the United States, these invisible linkages between people are known as social capital. "It's the word that describes the bonds that exist at different levels of our lives and link us on different levels," said Hawaiian Electric Co. government liaison Robert Alm. "Hawai'i should rank very high on the scale in social capital, but it's not something we talk about."
Although this is the kind of funny little anecdote that sends corporate managers to the medicine cabinet for something to soothe a chronic ulcer, the underlying message is something different. In a society where social bonds are strong, the big picture is that not every perceived injustice needs to be settled with confrontation.
For many years, social capital played an acknowledged role in the way that Hawai'i society developed. It was often confused with the term "aloha spirit," the tolerant generosity toward interpersonal relationships for which Hawai'i is best known. But it did not develop in a vacuum.
After the harsh years of life on the sugar plantations before World War II, when human labor was cheap and profits high, the Democratic party demanded that Hawai'i government provide its people with an alternative to the harshness of the free market. They wanted affordable housing, good schools, quality public services, protection for workers, access to healthcare, social security and protection of the environment.
In the 1940s and '50s, people shared a belief that the whole society would benefit if people transcended their differences and worked for a sense of common good. The fact that people from the most elite private schools and the poorest public schools could coexist without the racial and social-class antagonism so prevalent in most parts of the United States is what made Hawai'i unique. Social capital in Hawai'i was not just a theory. It was an ideal that many people worked hard to create.
Unfortunately, today it's becoming an anachronism.
A new generation knows little about the sacrifices of the past, and in Hawai'i's current economic uptick, most people are so busy making a living they have little time to care about the social welfare of others.
"Part of my job at the University of Hawai'i, as undergraduate chair of the political science department is to interview young people upon graduation," says professor Ira
Rohter. "I always ask them them 'What are your plans?' I hardly hear anyone say 'I have a definite job.' Whatever information they have is superficially gathered."
What's worrisome, says Rohter, is these students' notion "that the system is going to fail, that it's going to go broke.... They feel ... they are survivors out there trying to figure out what to do."
The problem with a society of survivors is that they have little interest in social capital or in a better society, principally because they don't believe one is possible.
"I remember," said one 79-year-old Japanese-American Democrat, "when (the late UH professor) Allan Saunders was my teacher at the UH, in the 1940s.
"He asked us, 'What is democracy?' The answer was ethics. He said that you had to have a sense of ethics to have a just society. How do you get young people to believe that's still important? I don't know."
After decades of political dominance by the Democrats, a sense of drift took place in Hawai'i. Many felt that public standards fell. The system became increasingly bureaucratic. There was a growing sense that special interests dominated hiring and decision-making. People felt that, for those with connections, a sense of entitlement replaced a commitment to public service.
By the 1990s, to get elected, most Democrats learned to play it safe. In the last governor's race, there seemed to be only one angry young man in the Democratic Party willing to speak his mind, Ed Case, and he was 50 years old.
It was Republican acknowledgment of social capital during the rebellion against Democrats — even if it may only have been lip service — that led to the election of Gov. Linda Lingle.
"I see no serious interest in social justice among the Republicans," said Rohter. "I think that every idea that has come out of the Lingle campaign came out of focus groups. But the Democrats were not much better."
Ironically, though, Lingle's election has been the impetus for the first real change to take place in Democratic Party thinking since the 1960s. Lingle's message of change, says Rohter, "has actually forced the Democrats in the legislature to go forward and tackle things like the ice problem" and reforming the state's education bureaucracy.
"I mean, this year, who would have thought it was possible for some of these Democrats to go against the ... special interests that elected them? I honor (House Education Committee chairman) Roy Takumi for taking on the DOE bureaucracy."
But that's only a bare beginning.
Hawai'i at times seems unable to deal with the problems it should be addressing — a shortage of affordable housing, a drug problem, an aging population that demands more healthcare, and an economy that has forced parents to work multiple jobs to support their children.
As families have to double- and triple-up in small apartments to survive, the population densities increase, and so do the social problems of people living in uncomfortably close quarters. Because there is little or no affordable housing, there is no place to go, and the pressures can be overwhelming.
The disintegration of family life has resulted in increasing numbers of single mothers, irresponsible fathers, and grandparents who must care for infants. The pressures are so great many can't cope.
"I know why people do drugs," one 50-year-old local-born artist told me. "It's the only way they can deal with the stress of their lives."
As Hawai'i increasingly becomes a society of winners and losers, the value of social capital declines. Unfortunately, this is a message that no longer resonates in local campaigns, even with Democrats whom one would assume would make this their issue.
Virtually no individuals running for office address these problems in their campaigns.
No one examines the costs that occur when society breaks down. Drug abuse is presented as an epidemic that comes from nowhere. The need for more prison space is accepted without question. Homeless people are considered strangers from somewhere else, even though a recent state report specified that most were of Native Hawaiian ancestry.
The social and financial costs incurred by these issues are largely absent from local political discourse. With the election approaching, the messages calling for a common good have largely disappeared.
But ultimately, for social capital to remain an important part of life in Hawai'i, it must be nurtured. There have to be those in public life who step forward with the message that for the greatest common good there must be a commitment to help the weakest and poorest among us. Perhaps a commitment to social capital has to come from individuals.
"I know that a lot of things have declined since our parents' generation," said Cathy Eyre. "All of us probably have to work harder to make things happen."
Kailua writer and researcher Mike Markrich owns Markrich Research, which specializes in economic surveys and analysis.
