Hawaii’s World

By A.A. Smyser

Tuesday, October 20, 1998

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Playing the race card
in Hawaii politics

ONE way to play the race card in Hawaii politics is to accuse the opposition of using this frowned-on behavior. My sense is that we seldom accept raw racism but often are subject to forces more subtle and mostly democratically acceptable. I offer three examples:

In the late 1940s Honolulu had a mayor, John H. Wilson, who was Scottish-Irish-Tahitian-Hawaiian. He was as old then as I am now. His wife had grown up in the royal court. He taught me that people tend to vote for people they feel comfortable with, just as they may fraternize mostly with people of shared culture and tastes. They break out of these votes when they recognize an able candidate of another ethnic group but tend to fall back when all else seems equal. Is that racism? He didn't think so, and I don't either.

At the time of the 1978 state constitutional convention there was quite a flap over a 23-page booklet entitled "Palaka Power," named after the palaka shirts common among plantation laborers. It saw a threat to local custom and tradition from the influx of outside capital pouring in after statehood. There was a "circle the wagons" mentality about it that urged voting to preserve local power against "outsiders." There was quite a distrust of the media as being outsider-influenced.

The pamphlet, composed hurriedly over a weekend by a young lawyer who had fought in the Democratic Party trenches, had anti-haole racial overtones but was not against all haoles. After all, Gov. John Burns, for one, and union leader Jack Hall, for another, had been strong proponents of strengthening the political and economic voices of Hawaii's non-haoles.

The booklet got a lot of criticism. It was disowned even by some who bought into the general premise of preserving local control and local values against outside incursions. Was it racist or was it a permissible democratic expression of deeply felt concern? Sophisticates saw a lot of insular protectionism in it, but isn't that something worth getting into the forum of public debate? It certainly is something we have to deal with in a world becoming increasingly global.

This example comes from a breakfast forum on pidgin held at the University of Hawaii president's home perhaps 10 years ago. Scholars said most communities at Hawaii's advanced stage of schooling and development have left pidgin behind. It is, after all, a transition language between old and a new -- Hawaii's "new" being a convergence on English. The group debated why pidgin still persists in Hawaii. The answer that seemed most probable to me is that it remains a "language of power." If a politician or businessman can slip into it, he or she identifies himself or herself to the group at hand as an "insider," probably the more to be trusted.

PIDGIN is something Gov. Ben Cayetano grew up with. But it turns out his Nov. 3 opponent, Linda Lingle, is pretty good at pidgin, too, after winning five elections as Molokai's member of the Maui County Council.

When Cayetano reminds Japanese voters of their obligation to the Democratic Party because of the egalitarian changes it wrought on their behalf, is he talking racially?

My feeling is that it's fair comment in a mixed ethnic community like ours where the Democrats REALLY DID help Americans of Japanese ancestry -- and vice versa -- over more than 40 years. After all, AJAs were living under a "glass ceiling" until Democrats and the ILWU helped them break through.

But it's also fair for Lingle to suggest that the time has come to respect the past but focus on what's best for the future. That's not undemocratic either.

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A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.