Column: If America isn’t a racist country, what about Hawaii and its institutions?

In his Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress on April 28, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is African American, proclaimed “America is not a racist country,” although Biden did not say it was. The next day, Vice President Kamala Harris, when asked about Scott’s assertion, agreed with him but also noted the “history of racism” in the U.S. and its contemporary prevalence. Biden also responded to Scott by remarking, “I don’t think the American people are racist. … I don’t think America is racist.”

As experienced politicians, one can understand why Scott, Harris and Biden were not going to assert that the U.S. is a racist nation because they fully knew their critics would immediately pounce on them. While Biden and Harris denied America is racist, and the president further maintained that Americans are not racist, Harris acknowledged that racism persists. If that is the case, then why aren’t the U.S. and the American people racist? Does this issue have any relevance for Hawaii?

As a scholar of race and ethnicity, I and many other such scholars can state that America is a racist country and that racism continues as a formidable subjugating and excluding force. How else can the persisting racial inequality among African Americans, Latinos, and Native Peoples for centuries be explained?

But rather than argue that the American people are racist, I would emphasize that our major societal institutions, such as education, economy, government and law, are racist insofar as their established practices and policies result in discriminatory actions in terms of race. Such racial discrimination — or unequal or unfair treatment — may not necessarily be intentional, but result from the implementation of the practices and policies by which those institutions operate, such as in budgeting, hiring or decision-making.

From this perspective, removing racist individuals, such as police officers, politicians and other government officials, from their positions of authority may not reduce racism because it can still continue through the institutionalized practices by which racism endures. As emphasized by race theorist Joe Feagin in his concept of systemic racism, which has become a media buzzword, racism is a large-scale societal problem and, as such, cannot be easily eliminated by dismissing specific racist individuals.

Most people in Hawaii very likely would disagree that it is a racist society and that its people are racist — although some, including haoles, might contend that racism exists. Since the 1970s, a widespread belief has developed that Hawaii, especially in contrast to the racially divided continental U.S., is a veritable multicultural paradise permeated with the aloha spirit.

Following the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, this view has gained even more supporters. A 2019 New York Times essay, “Want to Be Less Racist? Move to Hawaii,” further contributed to the misrepresentation of island society as a racial utopia. Such false depictions of the significance of race and racism in Hawaii obscure our persisting problems, including the colonial subjugation and dispossession of Native Hawaiians in their homeland, the extremely dehumanizing racism against Micronesians, and the continued discrimination in employment and education of Filipino Americans, Samoans and other ethnic minorities.

Rather than declare that Hawaii is a racist society and its people are also racist, which is probably counterproductive, I maintain that our major public institutions, including the University of Hawaii where I worked for more than 30 years, are primary sources of systemic racism against Native Hawaiians and ethnic minorities. Their established practices and policies, such as nonenforcement of their equal opportunity and affirmative action policies, result in the ongoing racism and discrimination the aforementioned groups regularly encounter, and not just in violent incidents that capture the attention of the media and public.

Our collective task, if not responsibility, is to reduce systemic racism by transforming our public institutions to be more equitable, inclusive and just so that they serve all of Hawaii’s people.

Jonathan Y. Okamura is a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii-Manoa who retired last year after 20-plus years with the Department of Ethnic Studies; he continues to serve on the UH-Manoa Commission on Racism.