Hawai'i, which has seen the rise of Barack Obama and the fall of Duane "Dog" Chapman, celebrates the birth of civil rights hero Martin Luther King tomorrow amid a mixed view of race relations in America and the Islands.

"We are by definition a melting pot," said Alphonso Braggs, president of the Hawai'i chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "But we are by no means where we need to be and where Dr. King hoped we would be at this stage.

"We have not achieved the proper respect for our fellow man in Hawai'i. It's been 45 years since the great March on Washington and we have barely moved from where we were then."

Following a year that saw highly publicized racist comments by Chapman, which led to the suspension of his bounty hunter TV show, the simultaneous strong showing by Hawai'i-born Obama illustrates the "complicated, schizophrenic" view that America has toward race relations, particularly toward African Americans, said Ibrahim Aoude, chairman of the University of Hawai'i's department of ethnic studies.

"The Chapman episode was not surprising at all," Aoude said. "Chapman showed us that race is subterranean. It's always there to use if you want. ... Hawai'i is supposed to be a rainbow where we are all equal. But it is a myth because all of the colors of our society are not represented and there remain vast social and economic differences."

U.S. Sens. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton lead the Democrats' presidential hopes, but a significant number of Americans continue to oppose them because of race and gender, Aoude said.

"It is good to have an African American, for a change, or a woman, for a change," he said. "But people still care about gender and race and that to me is frightening. It comes from a scared environment. We are not an assimilated country."

Even the Obama and Clinton camps have traded comments about King and who deserves credit for the Civil Rights Act.

"They have been baiting each other over issues of race," Aoude said. "Because race has currency, people use it to move the debate from one thing to another, rather than have meaningful debate on matters of political, economic issues that people want to talk about."

Both campaigns have since used more conciliatory language but the rift hints at the vast differences that remain, Braggs said.

The use of the n-word by Chapman about his son's girlfriend and derogatory racial comments toward the Rutgers University women's basketball team by radio personality Don Imus were among "incidents of racially inappropriate behavior that we continue to see in the 21st century," Braggs said.

"It is quite a sad state of affairs that we still have to deal with these issues," he said. "We are by no means where Dr. King hoped we would be at this stage."

Marsha Joyner, president emeritus of the Dr. Martin Luther King Coalition of Hawai'i, instead sees hope.

"In the deep south, Louisiana elected an Indian as governor, and at the Obama rally here, I saw new, young, fresh faces of all races," Joyner said.

"There was a time you never would have thought a woman and an African American could be president," Joyner said.

"We've got a long way to go, of course, but it is exciting. It's a new day."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.