Hawai'i is not the multicultural paradise some say it is

The islands still struggle with the legacy of colonialism and the divisions intentionally sown between ethnic groups.

Carolann Carl, a Pohnpeian storyteller, poses in the halls of Washington Middle School in Honolulu. When she was invited as a sixth grader to be in the school’s advanced learner’s program, a school administrator expressed disbelief that Carl was full Pohnpeian (Pohnpei is an island in Micronesia). “I can’t forget what my mother said,” says Carl: “‘I worked so hard for you to be accepted. When you do succeed, they can't accept that you’re Micronesian.’" Carl's family once discouraged her from wearing her urohs, the traditional Pohnpeian skirt, outside for fear of being targeted. “Urohs are depictions of wealth [and] status symbols,” says Carl. “Here, racism has demeaned and denigrated such beauty to a point where people think we wear them because we’re poor, we’re dirty, all of the negative things racism has come to equate with being Micronesian."

To outsiders, Hawai‘i might seem like the epitome of a post-racial society. For decades, scholars, writers, and tourism boosters have portrayed the islands that way—as a “racial utopia” where Native Hawaiians and Asians live harmoniously alongside white people, with the largely non-white population serving as the antidote to racism.

After all, no racial group holds a majority on the islands, and nearly a quarter of the population reports having a multiracial background. Compare that to the United States as a whole, where only 3 percent of the population is multiracial and three-quarters is white. 

But Hawai‘i’s racial make-up does not stem from a desire to unify races. Instead, it comes from concerted Western efforts to eradicate Native Hawaiian

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