‘The admittance of Hawaii to the Union represents … the outstanding example in the world today of peoples of many races and national origins living and working together in peace and harmony.” — President John F. Kennedy
Our views on race and race relations are shaped by where we grow up. I had the good fortune of being born and raised in Hawaii.
I went away to college on the U.S. mainland in the 1970s. One of the classes I took was “The Asian American Experience.”
The professor of the class took particular exception to the metaphor of America as a “melting pot,” where people of different cultures have melded together so as to lose their identities and become a unique culture of uniform consistency and flavor.
He believed that America is a “salad bowl,” where people of different cultures retain their cultural identities — retain their “integrity and flavor” — while contributing to a tasty and nutritious salad.
That did not ring quite true to me. With my Okinawan, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, German and English relatives, I thought that America was more like a “cultural stew” — where people of different races and cultures retain much of their cultural identities, but flavor each other and create a unique dish in which the beef, carrots, celery, onions and potatoes are all still beef, carrots, celery, onions and potatoes, but each now with a flavor enhanced by the other ingredients.
And so I described my “cultural stew” metaphor to my professor. He raised an eyebrow, considered it for a second, and said: “No. ‘Salad bowl.’”
It took me a while — years of getting to know people from across the country and around the world — but I came to realize that my professor was speaking from his life experience, including where he grew up. We were both right. America is a “salad bowl” in some places, and a “cultural stew” in others.
I worry, however, about what America might become if we allow current “culture wars” and dangerous political rhetoric to continue to poison hearts and minds.
The 2016 election of Donald Trump as U.S. president gave a megaphone to people such as white nationalist Richard Spencer, who seek not a “melting pot,” “salad bowl” or “cultural stew,” but a homogenous “white ethno-state.” Immediately after Trump’s election, Spencer said that “a white ethno-state … is something that I think we should think about in the sense of what could come after America.” Trump himself recently said that immigrants “are poisoning the blood of our country.” That is certainly not the America in which I grew up, nor is it an idea worthy of the American experiment.
Over the decades since Hawaii’s admission to the Union, Hawaii’s people of “many races and national origins” have lived, worked, intermingled, loved, married each other, and raised wonderful mixed-race children. Hawaii’s population features much more racial diversity than the U.S. as a whole. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019, 24.2% of Hawaii’s population was multiracial, identifying as two or more races, while only 2.8% of the United States population was multiracial. Since well before Statehood, there has been no majority race in Hawaii.
Hawaii’s “peace and harmony” is relative, and our state certainly has its own problems related to race and race relations. That being said, I like stew, particularly Hawaii’s unique racial and cultural stew. The rest of the country might learn to like it, too. For the good of America, I hope so.
Waipio resident Gordon Arakaki is a practicing attorney in Honolulu.
