Driving in the car today, my son said, “Mom. You grew up here. How are you so haole? I mean I think you’d blend more.”
Blend? With this hair and skin, in a place where brown is better? I don’t even try.
“I know enough not to try to be something I’m not,” I said. “But the people who need to, know I’m from here.”
Being “from here” is really important in a place filled with transplants from all over the world with a transient population. Lots of people move to Hawaii to ‘live the dream’ and end up leaving, spanked by tough job markets, high prices, constriction of island living, and distance from family.
“I never know how much pidgin to use,” he went on. “I saw this moke (Hawaiian) I was at a party with last night and he said hey bruddah and gave me the shoulder-whack hug, and I did the howzit fist bump. I never know how much pidgin to use before I’m going to get it wrong.”
Is this how white people in the Mainland deal with Ebonics? I’m guessing yes but I’ve only seen it in movies. Black people (popolos, for the uninitiated) are one of the smallest population groups in the Islands.
“Sounds okay,” I said. “It’s all in the intonation for us haoles. No full-on pidgin, that’s presumptuous. But drop a word here and there, use some inflection, that shows you’ve been around awhile and know your place.”
Chances are at some point a ‘local’ is going to grill you on who you know, where you grew up, who your people are. One of the vestigial behaviors of a tribal, oral history culture is an ongoing interest in social and familial connections, a sort of mini-biography when meeting a new person that then places them in a social hierarchy.
As haoles, in general we’re somewhere about three up from the bottom (followed by only the most recent transplants like Micronesians and Guatemalans) but as “local” haoles who grew up here, we crawl up a few rungs of the credibility ladder.
Who’s on top? The flag-waving Hawaiian sovereignty activists? They certainly think they are. But scratch the surface and look at who’s really running things in Hawaii—it’s the Japanese.
Seriously. They rule. Government, real estate ownership, small businesses, corporate, hotels, education, law, you name it–overcoming importation as sugar cane labor a few generations ago in the most impressive way imaginable.
It's an interesting place we live in, ruled by a thousand tiny social rules. I've learned over a lifetime how to get along with a rainbow of races. It's all in having a respectful inflection and attitude.
I don’t know if you saw my post on Facebook about the moving company guys being super friendly to me after figuring out I was local, but once we developed that rapport I found myself affecting my version of a pidgin accent, though fluent pidgin has always been beyond me. My mother made sure we learned to speak proper English growing up, and it was only in my late teens that I actually started noticing the few pidgin phrases that I use unconsciously. (Finishing sentences with “that’s why” as an explanation is the most obvious one I use) I’ve even had new military friends ask me why I “don’t speak local” even though I’m born and raised, haha. I always feel like I’m doing it wrong when I really try, but it’s easier when speaking to someone else who is fluent, kind of like how I start having an accent when speaking to Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis 😀
I’d love to see more of the Hawaii stuff. It’s so exotic and with our first Hawaiian president timely. I heard that after getting something like 35% of republicans saying that Obama was born outside the US, the smart poller asked those 35% if Hawaii was part of the US and most of them said no. Most Americans from anywhere else will probably never visit Hawaii and may never even meet a Hawaiian. Hawaii is your niche. You could be the female Carl Hiaissen of Hawaii.
Now I have to google Carl Hiaissen. *blushes*
Valuable info. Lucky me I found your site by accident, I bookmarked it.
Wow this is a great resource.. I’m enjoying it.. good article
You nailed it sistah!
Ian laughs at me whenever I make a phone call to a county office or school office, or, well, almost any office and slip into “the accent” clip those vowels! Cut out the adjectives! Drop those prepositions! Blend!
And pity the Haole who thinks they can get just as much done without it!
Toby, great post. I only lived in Hawaii 8 1/2 years, graduating from UH, working at museums and teaching in Hilo. It was funny how quickly I slipped back into “That’s why” and howzit? etc when I came back years later. It’s like I never left. I appreciate all the local culture and love the rainbow in Hawaii. That’s includes the wonderful food. :> Every time I come back, I feel like I am at home.
thanks so much for sharing, Janet!
This is sort of what I have been trying to drive at, how complex race and class and other identifiers actually are. You mentioned being afraid to post this, but I think that we’re all bound to stumble on our journey to understanding, and we can’t let that inevitability keep us from trying. In many ways we’re still trying to craft a language to use for these issues. We’re infants, trying to comprehend privilege and oppression and so on, and we’re still trying to make basic sounds just like an infant. That’s ok. Every post like this gets us a little further.
I consider myself a ‘trained haole.’ Trained by growing up here, to know my place, not to make too much eye contact though that’s how we haoles are, how to stand, how to inflect my speech, how to tone things down. I guess it’s in becoming more conscious and engaging in dialogue that we can begin to understand the complexities.
Oh, man, this hits the spot – I just discovered your post after returning to the mainland from a trip “home.” I was born in Hilo and lived in Hawaii till I was 28. It’s SO GOOD to read about others’ experiences with being local haoles in Hawaii. So often, as a haole, I felt unwelcome, like I had to bend over backwards to “prove” myself before I would be accepted. Even haoles are prejudiced against “mainland” haoles (I was, too). It’s so nice to live in a place now where people don’t judge me first by my race. I am still drawn to people of different races, and, happily, there is a lot more diversity on the mainland than there used to be. But I do not miss being on one of the bottom rungs of society and feeling guilty for what white people did in the past all the time.