Hapa

Definition and Background

Originally a pejorative term, hapa referred to the children of mixed Hawaiian Caucasian descent. Its pejorative use dates to the surge in White immigration to Hawai'i that occurred during the 1880s and resulted [Page 582]in intermarriage between the native and Caucasian populations. The Native Hawaiian population's disapproval of these mixed marriages (and, by extension, of the offspring of these unions) stemmed from the White population's role in exploiting and colonizing Hawai'i.

The term hapa was later expanded to include all children of mixed Asian heritage after a surge in Asian immigration to the island that occurred during the mid-1880s through 1910 with the recruitment of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Koreans, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos to work as laborers and the mixed racial/ethnic marriages that arose following this large-scale immigration.

Because of the long history of intermarriage in Hawai'i, the negative aspects associated with biracial or multiracial identification (and the designation of hapa) has largely disappeared. Once an adjective used by group insiders to describe an outsider, it is now a noun or subject (describing an insider); the designation is a source of pride and a link to others in the same insider category. Furthermore, use of the term is no longer limited to those who are part Hawaiian but rather has expanded to include all multiracial/multiethnic Asians as well. Other terms such as Eurasian, biracial, multiracial, Amerasian, mixed Asian, blasian, hafu, and half Asian are also used to describe those of mixed Asian descent; however, the term hapa seems to have resonated most among multiethnic Asians and has been widely adopted. Although it is used by multiethnic/multiracial Asians both in Hawai'i and on the U.S. mainland, the term has different connotations in each place.

Of all the states, Hawai'i has both the highest percentage of Asian and Pacific Islanders (41.6%) and the highest percentage of people who identify themselves in categories of two or more races (21.4% vs. 2.4% in the United States). The long history of racial/ethnic intermixing in Hawai'i has allowed its multiracial populations to inhabit multiple racial/ethnic categories simultaneously. In Hawai'i, the term hapa has been normalized to the extent that to be hapa is to be local because so many of the children are of mixed ancestry. The ambiguous hapa identity distinguishes Hawaiian locals from more recent foreign immigrants (nonlocals) to Hawai'i. This is in marked contrast to the mainland United States, where race has historically been socially constructed along a single dimension, thereby forcing those of multiracial heritage to elevate a single racial category at the expense of the other, and where considerable ink has been devoted to the problematic results and consequences of this practice for the multiracial population.

...