Anti-haole sentiment

Phil, Las Vegas: I grew up in Hawaii and look like many of your photos. If you’re haole there, it can be pretty rough. The Native Hawaiians have never forgiven what haole businesses did to their government in 1893, when Liliuokalani tried to draft a new constitution restoring the voting rights of the disenfranchised.

Racism is truly horrible but put me down as that rare someone who experienced it by seeing it practiced on my white friends, for nothing they did. Some of them bent under that hatred, until they broke. Given my history, I can’t agree with the author that moving to Hawaii will make one less racist.

Jill, Hong Kong: My parents moved to Hawaii 60 years ago from the mainland, as white as can be. They reached out and made friends — Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, all types. My mother learned how to make Hawaiian quilts and went to Japanese flower-arranging classes. She learned so much Hawaiian history that she is now barred from playing Hawaii Public Radio’s Hawaiian history quizzes. She still speaks with a Texan twang but has never been the target of anti-haole remarks or bullying. It takes effort to “live aloha,” but my parents instilled in us the desire and responsibility to do so. It’s my obligation to learn about the struggles of the people in Hong Kong, where I now live, and to support them in their quest for political freedoms. Hawaii taught me that.

Velasquez-Manoff: Jonathan Okamura has interesting writings on prejudice against whites. He points out that white people can be perceived as either local (from Hawaii) or nonlocal and that may change how they’re treated, with more hostility directed toward those seen as nonlocal. I spoke with a white friend who grew up in Hawaii who said much the same. He added that nonlocal whites could adapt to local ways, learn a little pidgin, and then they’d be fine.

I don’t want to discount anyone’s experience of hostility, of course, or blame the victim. No one should be made to feel belittled or scared just because of their skin color, including white people. All that said, Kristin Pauker has some data, still unpublished, suggesting that whites in Hawaii don’t actually experience more prejudice than do whites on the mainland.

Something to take pride in

Max Sugarman, New York: I am of Japanese, Chinese and Jewish descent and, luckily, my mom is from Hawaii. I grew up in a majority-white suburb of Seattle and never understood why I could not fit in. I now recognize that many of my interactions involved assumptions about my race and stereotypes about who I was. I was consistently boxed in by classmates, teachers, members of my synagogue, and even random people I met.

Only when my family would visit Hawaii would I feel like all of those labels would wash off me. Race was not something to be ashamed of but to take pride in; not something to hide from but to live and consider. I was told the stories of how people in Hawaii banded together to overcome common challenges.