I am a Hawaiian living in Hawaii, and I am deeply offended by Aaron Akamu's characterization of our families as representing "poverty, unemployment, poor health, depression, poor education and welfare." Many of the members of my family, too, are trained in hula, and are deeply spiritual and dedicated to the concept of "Ohana" -- family and "Aloha" -- deep spiritual love.
Obviously the Akamu boy has not been home lately, or he is influenced by the small handful of sovereignty activists who want to make every Hawaiian feel victimized. Yes, we have had some economic problems in the past few years. Yes, we were at the effect of the Manifest Destiny craziness. And many who take a world view are relieved that it was the US and not one of the other imperialist countries that decided to overthrow our kingdom. We might be in a very different and poorer place right now!
And, we also have had wonderful successes in our local population (Examples: Steve Case: CEO of AOL.com, Guy Kawasaki: CEO of garage.com and former leader at Apple. Our Governor last term was Hawaiian, our current Governor is Filipino. Two of our Congressional leaders are Hawaiian and Chinese.)
In fact, we are a thriving, multicultural society. We are NOT a third world country, and even our poor are well provided for with incredible safety nets (if they take advantage of the bounty that is offered.) And we hold lu'au all the time. "Lu'au," by the way, is NOT the name the ancients used for the traditional religious feast. That word was "'aha'aina" or "pu'ina." Lu'au didn't come into usage until 1856, and was invented by the local newspaper. And, the greatest proponent of the lu'au feasts (which included lots of alcohol, by the way), was our very own King Kalakaua. He was quite the party king. The term lu'au only refers to the fact that the tops of the taro plant are used in the feast.
We are also not amused nor impressed by all the Political Correctness blathering that goes on in so called "intellectual" groups on the mainland. PC is obviously a concept that has not been deeply examined. A case Anatole France would have characterized as "If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still foolish." PC is silly, superficial and patronizing.
PC misses the point. It is the band-aid on the measles; the easy way out. Ethnic groups are very proud of our ancestries. The PC message is that it is NOT OK for us to be anything but pasteurized and homogenized for your protection. You combine us randomly, thinking that all Chinese want to be slapped together with Koreans and Japanese. You take away the uniqueness and identity of the Hawaiians, the Samoans and Guamanians by lumping them together under "Pacific-Islander-American". Go ask a Chamorro from Guam if they want to disrespect their ancestors by ignoring them. And one thing I continually note is that the only group NOT hyphenated are the whites.
We know we have interesting and wonderful cultural traditions. We also know that some of them are weird to others. And we don't care! We laugh at ourselves, too! Apparently some groups who DON'T have traditions because THEY are so homogenized and pasteurized, don't know how to handle our traditions, so they either make fun of them or make it illegal to talk about them.
Come visit Hawaii. We have every race under the sun. Our family has almost all the races and cultures on the planet, either by marriage or calabash family. Most of our residents are of mixed race. That's why we get along pretty well. Yes, we do make fun of everyone, and we do it in a lighthearted way (for the most part anyway as in all families, we have a few incorrigibles who can't get it right or who miss the point.)
The problem here is the well known axiom that: "The mind sees what we tell it to see." One proof of that is recent research that shows the statistics about "Hawaiian" problems have been skewed by the mixed race situation we have here. Evidently, those who want people like Aaron to feel like victims have taken every person with a tablespoon of Hawaiian blood and included them in their study. So if a predominantly Chinese person with 1/64 Hawaiian blood is in prison or on the welfare rolls, they are counted as Hawaiian. Now, if he is counted as Hawaiian, they don't get to count him again as Chinese. So we suddenly have a very high "Hawaiian" population in jail. This has been used for a variety of studies in order to prove a pre-determined construct.
And, if you are determined to be offended or to feel disrespected, you will by God be offended and disrespected by anything, whether or not it was meant that way. Even in criminal law, one of the first tests of a crime is "intention." When you planned that lu'au, did you sit around and decide, "Let's go out and offend some Hawaiian people today?" No. You thought it would be a fun celebration. And Aaron, did you think about how your characterization of our people would offend us? How exactly was your protest protecting us? And who made you our "protector?"
When the article appeared in the Honolulu Star Bulletin, it was the talk of the town. People here were offended, yes. They were offended that you would cancel a lu'au because someone grumbled. If he grumbled because you weren't doing it "right," then contact the Hawaii Visitors' and Convention Bureau at info@hvcb.org, or try the web site: http://www.gohawaii.com -- they can tell you how to order orchids and ti leaves and taro plants to make it authentic. And leave the dancing out! We love the delicate hand motions and movements presented by our professional and spiritual hula halau -- and quite frankly, when people wave their hands around like a drunken bird, it just looks silly.
The Akamu boy needs to come home. He sounds like he needs a family hug. He's losing his grip on the aloha spirit.
