pacificEyeWitness.org

Race is, at the best of times, an uneasy and awkward topic to discuss.  Like the  mainstream media stories around New Zealand’s Maori Party parliamentarian Hone Harawira, it stirs up the worst in people. Belatedly,  it does rekindle the best in us particularly in those who can look beyond race and beyond the colour of a person’s skin.  As a revelation about  what we get touchy about in Aotearoa, the Harawira expletive-riddled email, made it into the record books  of complaints received by the Human Rights Commission.

So, to understand the  different movements, or factions, involved in issues of race particularly when it comes to politics, let’s turn to the sunny islands of Hawaii.

It’s a different country to Aotearoa New Zealand though there are strong comparisons to be made. The issues, and the fight between one group of people, seeking native Hawaiian sovereignty, and another group, who oppose a separation of native Hawaiians from the rest of the population, rings familiar to those watching indigenous politics here in New Zealand.

National Public Radio reports as part of its series Beyond Black and White

Hawaii is known for its “Aloha Spirit” — a diverse mix of friendly people living on an island paradise. The rainbow of cultures its residents brag about is no exaggeration, but some say that beneath the veneer of geniality are deep-seated ethnic and racial tensions between the island’s white community and native Hawaiians.

Hawaii has the highest racial minority population of any state in the union — 75 percent, according to U.S. census figures. John Osorio, professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, tells host Liane Hansen that the state’s history is a story of accommodation as waves of foreigners flowed through the islands — and never left.

“First Europeans and then Americans and then Asians” arrived, Osorio says, many of them as contract labor during the 19th century. “The way I see it — and an increasing number of Hawaiians see it — in exchange, the United States took Hawaii as a possession in 1900 and has held on to us ever since.”

Native Hawaiians, he says, have been pushed to the margins. “And it’s not a nice place to be,” he says. Those margins include high incarceration levels, very little land ownership and poor education. “This is such a different situation than it was in the 19th century, when we were a kingdom. When we had our own government, and when we had one of the highest literacy rates in the entire world.”

But he thinks it’s more of a socio-economic problem than a race issue….
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