The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Hawaii has a racism problem – against whites. The problem goes severely under-reported since anti-white racism is bad for tourism.
Here’s an explanation offered by a Hawaiian academic for resentment:
The resentment some Native Hawaiians feels toward whites today can be chalked up in part to “ancestral memory,” says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii. “That trauma is qualitatively different than other ethnic groups in America. It’s more akin to American Indians” because Hawaiians had their homeland invaded, were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity, and had an alien culture forced upon them, he says. Stories about the theft of their lands and culture have been passed down from one generation to the next, Matsuoka adds.
I’m struck by the question: Is there anybody who was colonized for whom this isn’t mostly accurate?
I agree with the SPLC that the real issue in addressing violence is that the problem is unrecorded and unacknowledged, and therefore, nearly unapproachable from a policy and intervention standpoint.
