Big Isle tops the
nation in diversity

The numbers come to light
under a new look at
the 2000 census

In its cultural mixture, Hawaii County
beats out New York and LA

---

By Jean Christensen
Associated Press

AT CAFE 100 in downtown Hilo, a combination plate might include an American-style hamburger, Korean kim chee and Hawaiian lau lau.

Manager Gail Tsunehiro is used to diversity. The ancestries of the restaurant's three dozen employees include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Filipino and Micronesian. Her customers are just as varied.

Hawaii County is the most multicultural county in the nation, according to an analysis of 2000 census data by The Associated Press based on a USA Today diversity index.

"I don't think we ever really give it a second thought," Tsunehiro said. "It is kind of amazing that we would be the most ethnically diverse, but I'm not surprised."

The index, derived in 1991, measures the probability of two randomly chosen people in the same census area being from different racial or ethnic groups.

Hawaii's Big Island narrowly beat out the Bronx, N.Y., according to the analysis. The rest of the top 10 were Hawaii's Kauai and Maui counties; Queens, N.Y.; Los Angeles County; Honolulu; Aleutians East Borough, Alaska; Hudson County, N.J.; and Cibola County, N.M.

Slope County, N.D., was the least diverse.

Previous census counts allowed Americans to pick from one of five major racial categories to describe themselves: white, black, Asian-Pacific Islander, American Indian and other.

For 2000, the Census Bureau made six categories, splitting Asian from Pacific Islander, and it allowed Americans to declare multiple races, creating 63 possible combinations in all.

Hawaii's ethnic hodgepodge -- largely a product of a sugar plantation past that brought immigrants from Asia and Europe -- is reflected not only in its overall population but in the ancestries of residents themselves.

In the 2000 census, 21.4 percent of Hawaii residents said they belong to two or more races. The national average was about 2.4 percent.

"With intermarriage and the mixing of the races, we really are a stew," said Andy Levin, Hawaii County's executive director. "I think it is a matter of pride that we have so many different ethnic groups and we get along so well with each other."

Unlike many mainland cities, in Hawaii "you don't have enclaves of one race or another," Levin said.

Tsunehiro's restaurant is named for the mostly Japanese-American 100th Infantry Battalion in which her father, Richard Miyashiro, served in World War II. Her grandparents came here from Okinawa, Japan, to work on plantations.

"They were having to work side by side, together, way back then, so that carries on throughout the generations," she said.