Song’s racial commentary offers sweet-sharp views

If all public leaders are to be censured, booted or otherwise punished for their racial prejudices, the halls of government would be sparsely populated.

Not to dismiss Faye Hanohano’s rant against the ancestral origins of the artists whose works were being put up in her state Capitol office last week. She meant what she said and said what she meant, her subsequent apology aside.

Few could truthfully deny they have unfavorable views of racial or ethnic groups not their own, and sometimes of their own, but few would express them in a situation where those they would insult are present. This was Rep. Hanohano’s failing, and if impropriety is a crime, she is guilty.

The negative outcome was the verbal beating she took from the politically correct and genuinely offended. The positive is acknowledgement that no one is invulnerable to bias and narrow-mindedness.

The incident prompted playing a YouTube recording of an old Keola and Kapono Beamer song, “Mr. Sun Cho Lee,” in the newsroom.

People too young or who arrived in the islands in more recent years were unfamiliar with the song that called out the stereotypes of racial groups common in Hawaii.

The title refers to a Chinese fellow who had “plenty lychee” but didn’t share his fruit with other people, pointing to an image of stinginess that prevailed at the time, and maybe still does.

The song continues “and he’s just a mean old pake man,” using the slur Hanohano repeated along with “haoles, Japs” and “paranges,” the last a likely mishearing of “palagi,” a Samoan word for a white or European person that’s pronounced “palangi.”

Among other races the song categorizes are Filipinos with a “Mr. Maximo Concepcion” who “get plenty fighting chickens,” “Mr. Kazu Tanaka,” who won’t share his electronic equipment and “camera supply,” and “Mr. Conrad Jones” with swimming pools that “he no gives to me.”

The refrain goes “and he’s just a mean old (fill in the blank) man,’ with Pilipino, Japanee, haole as racial descriptives.

The song released in 1975 mocks island stereotypes gently and with good nature, but has a sharpness, too, particularly in reference to Hawaiian people.

“Miss Momi Lomi Lomi” is said to have “plenty experience,” meaning a history of sexual promiscuity.

Combined with her description as a “cocktail waitress,” it suggests the limited lines of opportunity available to certain women.

The song saves most of its despair, however, for “Mr. Kamakawiwoole,” who “got plenty not too much of nothing” and who in his misery “takes it out on me.”

For Rep. Hanohano, this “nothing” seems to have been what swept her when she asked why Hawaiian artists weren’t better represented in the state’s art collection. Though many Hawaiians have made strong gains economically and socially, there are just as many who still “got too much of nothing.”

The Beamer brothers’ song concludes with a sweet awareness that though “us guys we tease da other race, it’s amazing we can live in da same place.”

It is a feeling we should hold on to in the face of cynicism and hyper-sensitive offense.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.