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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 19, 2008 - 04:31 pm: | 
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In multiracial Hawaii, Obama faced discrimination
By SUDHIN THANAWALA – 12 hours ago
HONOLULU (AP) — Growing up as a young man of mixed race, Barack Obama benefited from the spirit of tolerance that defined Hawaii's racial climate.
His childhood in the country's idealized melting pot was far from painless, though.
As part of the islands' small group of black Americans in the 1970s, he encountered racism and struggled to form a black identity.
Obama's experience in Hawaii is echoed by other blacks, including some of his schoolmates, and challenges the state's vaunted image of racial harmony.
"A big joke amongst the brothers was you could be anything else but a brother and have free rein of the world in Hawaii," said Rik Smith, a black former schoolmate of Obama's at Punahou, an elite private school in Honolulu. "When it comes to people of color, black people, there's a huge amount of racism."
In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Obama, who is half black and half white, recalled a seventh grader calling him a "coon" and a tennis pro who joked that his color might rub off. One person wanted to touch his hair, and he was asked whether his father, a native of Kenya, ate people. An assistant basketball coach used a racial epithet in referring to black players.
Obama, who attended Punahou on scholarship, was among a handful of black students at the K-12 school.
In a 1999 essay for the Punahou alumni magazine, Obama wrote: "Hawaii's spirit of tolerance might not have been perfect or complete. But it was — and is — real."
Smith estimated that about six black students were enrolled in high school at Punahou around the time that he and Obama attended.
Smith, a geriatrician in California, said his experience at Punahou and in the islands was similar to Obama's. Smith recalled classmates at Punahou agreeing that he should put his individual identity ahead of his race and remembered girls he wanted to date telling him they'd meet him somewhere else when he came to pick them up.
"Even in Hawaii, I'd walk down the street with a white guy, white girl, Asian person, and they would get uncomfortable if there were a whole bunch of black GIs coming down the street," he recalled. "It wasn't that different from the South or the mainland."
Lewis Anthony Jr., another black student at the school in the 1970s, said there were clear boundaries between black students and students of other races when it came to dating.
He remembered when the parents of a white girl objected to her going to the prom with him, fearing someone would have a problem seeing a black man and a white woman together and shoot at them.
"I bought into the whole melting-pot theory of Hawaii," Anthony said. "I thought it was true. And in many ways it was until it became more personal."
Hawaii's almost iconic status as the nation's most diverse state stems from its mix of mostly Asian cultures. Asians — mainly Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos — number around 700,000 and constitute more than 50 percent of the state's population, the highest percentage by far of any state. They are followed by whites and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders as the largest racial groups in Hawaii, according to the most recent U.S. Census estimates.
Nearly 20 percent of Hawaii's population is multiracial compared with about 2 percent for the United States as a whole.
The islands' 49,000 blacks make up less than 4 percent of the population, with a sizable portion of that number consisting of transient military families. That compares with a national average of 13 percent and ranks Hawaii 38th among all states in the percentage of its population that is black.
When Obama went to school in Hawaii between 1971 and 1979, there were even fewer blacks.
Although Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents, he chose to identify himself as black and tried to understand his black identity.
He read black writers such as Richard Wright and met periodically with Smith and Tony Peterson, another black schoolmate at Punahou.
Peterson, who unlike Smith and Obama is not biracial, said Obama seemed curious about what it meant to be part of a black community.
Smith and Peterson remembered the group discussing race. The topics ranged from people who appeared to dislike being seen with blacks to whether non-black girls would date them. According to Peterson, they also discussed whether the country would ever see a black president.
Kathryn Takara, a professor at the University of Hawaii and a poet who has written about the early black experience in the islands, said she understands Obama's feelings of isolation.
"There are many issues that affect the black world, such as the dearth of African-Americans in higher education and problems of poverty and justice, and there are few in the islands whom I can engage with about them," said Takara, who is black.
She said many people in the islands don't see issues affecting the black community as relevant to Hawaii.
Miles Jackson, a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii, said blacks in Hawaii have never faced the type of "outward hostility" and widespread discrimination many have encountered on the mainland.
Jackson said the number of blacks in Hawaii shot up after World War II. The emigration from the mainland was spurred by articles in black magazines depicting the state as a comfortable place for blacks, he said.
Although some Asian and white landlords in Hawaii in the past have refused to rent to blacks, Jackson said blacks were never restricted wholesale from living in certain neighborhoods and usually had opportunities to work and prosper.
"Historically, Hawaii has been a refuge for African-Americans," said Jackson, who has written about the history of blacks in the islands. "It took them away from the harshness of discrimination and segregation on the mainland."
But that doesn't mean Hawaii blacks don't sometimes encounter ignorance about their culture that can border on racism, said Elisa White, an assistant professor in the ethnic studies department at the University of Hawaii.
"To be African-American sometimes means you have to explain your experience in a way that you wouldn't have to in the continental United States," she said.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jji3d_uDdoZW9iV-o05cxxYDerewD90OJF4G0 |
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