Racial Galapagos

Being isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, life in Hawaii evolved unlike anywhere else. Just as Darwin studied how the isolation of the Galapagos Islands transformed species in unique ways, we should be able to observe how the isolation of Hawaii transformed its peoples in unique ways as well.

My thinking is that over the last 175 years race relations in Hawaii evolved more quickly and uniquely than they have in the past 450 in the continental United States. If the United States was the great American melting pot, then Hawaii was a pressure cooker.

Studying history is supposed to help prevent us from repeating it, primarily from repeating our mistakes. Maybe studying the dynamics of racial struggle, conflict, and tolerance in Hawaii can help alleviate racial tensions on the mainland or in other parts of the world.

Racism was and still is widespread in Hawaii, but it was unlike the racism of the American inner-cities, Jim Crow South, or other areas of the Pacific Rim.

After James Cooke put the "Sandwich Islands" (Hawaii) on the map in 1778, seafaring peoples from all over the world began to travel there. During the early 1800's, the English, Irish, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russians, and other mariners used Hawaii as a way station and trade port. Later, Portuguese, Japanese, Puerto Ricans and Filipinos and other peoples were brought in to exploit and expand the agricultural potential of the rich soil.

Africans found their way to Hawaii as well, but not from their native lands. The first African-American man settled in Honolulu in 1810. Anthony Allen was a freed slave from New York who found work for King Kamehameha the Great and married a Hawaiian woman. Allen acquired six acres of land in what is now known as Waikiki. He died in 1835 owning a dozen houses and leaving a small fortune to his three children. Link

At the end of the 19th century the population of foreigners grew quickly. However, the number of Africans making Hawaii their home was small.

Soon after Hawaii became the 50th state in 1959, Barack Obama's mother and grandparents settled in Hawaii in 1960 where his mother attended the University of Hawaii. There she met Barack Obama, Sr. from Kenya. They had a son, Barack, Jr. who was born in Honolulu in 1961.

When Barack was two his mother remarried and moved to Indonesia. After four years in Indonesia, he moved back to Honolulu where attended Punahou school for eight years. After he graduated from Punahou high school he moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College. Two years later he move to New York and completed college at Columbia University.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Obama was contracted to write his first book on racial relations in America. Having lived in both Hawaii and the mainland, he would have been able to write first hand about his experiences of racial injustice and tolerance in both. Unfortunately he was unable to complete the manuscript and the $100,000-plus contract was canceled.

Instead, he signed a second book contract for $40,000 and chose to write on his own personal experiences of racism and search for his racial identity. "Dreams From My Father" is primarily an exploration into Barack's personal struggle about how he became "a black man in America".

How would "Dreams" have been received had he provided similar as well as contrasting non-African views of racial identity growing up a Black Man in Hawaii?