Hawai'i, Race in

The Introduction of Race

Once European explorers, European and U.S. traders and opportunists, and Protestant, Catholic, and Mormon missionaries “discovered” Hawai'i, they quickly staked their territory. The results were devastating to the Native population on several levels. First, these foreigners, along with their Christianity and capitalism, brought with them a host of diseases—including syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, and leprosy—that killed multitudes of Hawaiians. Censuses conducted by foreign missionaries document the dramatic decline in the local population from 142,050 in 1823 to 39,504 in 1896.

Second, although alien to Hawaiians, racial categorization introduced by Westerners soon became a part of the foreign lexicon in Hawai'i. Indeed, Hawaiians themselves were becoming familiar with Western notions of race and its connection to slavery as early as the 1850s, as documented in missionary-controlled Hawaiian language newspapers. In fact, by the late 1800s, the last reigning king of Hawai'i, King Kalakaua, had requested a racial taxonomy of Hawaiians from E. Arning, a Swedish physician who had been brought in by the Hawaiian government to improve public health. However, although Hawai'i remained under what Andrew Lind referred to as the “trappings of native control,” racial categorizations of the Hawaiian population remained outside of the cultural norms and were unpracticed. Instead, Hawaiians classified the foreign population according to the cultural groups to which they belonged—U.S., British, French, Chinese, Japanese, and so on—but not along racial or color lines.

[Page 595]Even the term haole, which has become nearly synonymous with Whites or Caucasians, was not a reference to skin color in its early use. This term stems from the Hawaiian words ha (meaning “breath”) and ole (meaning “without”) in reference to people who could not speak the Hawaiian language. Haole was applied equally to the foreign population—White and Black alike. The term translates to “stranger” and references all non-Hawaiians in Hawai'i regardless of skin color. Moreover, because most of the early visitors to Hawai'i were light-skinned persons with power, haole increasingly came to denote exclusively influential and wealthy persons of Northern European and U.S. ancestry.

During the early part of the 20th century, U.S. military personnel further introduced to Hawai'i an element of racial tension once relegated to the U.S. mainland. U.S. servicemen during the World War II period brought their racist attitudes with them to Hawai'i. Derogatory terms applied to racial groups that were minorities on the mainland initiated the new territory into the mainland's brand of racism.

Hawaiian contact with Westerners had lasting impacts on the Native population. For example, tension between the Native Hawaiian population and the military personnel remains today. There continues to be tension between Hawaiians, who face high costs of living, and military personnel, who enjoy many perks (e.g., beach access) not extended to the local population. Another legacy of Western contact with Hawaiians is the near loss of the Native Hawaiian language, which was banned from use in public schools in 1896 by the government of the newly formed Republic of Hawai'i.

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