A report in The University of Chicago Magazine details the problems that interracial children have in relation to monoracial children, specifically, violence, drug abuse and disciplinary problems. Ah, but note this:
Choi has yet to decipher all the factors that exacerbate multiracial youths' "bad outcomes," but racial discrimination is part of the equation. Kids act out in response to ridicule or ostracism. In junior high and high school, "some [racial] groups are very exclusive. Other children will push you out if you're a racial combination." In similar surveys in Hawaii, she notes, multiracial youths did not show more problems than their monoracial classmates. "It's not even an issue there--so many people come from multiple backgrounds." In the U.S. at large, interracial marriages account for 4 percent of the total; in Hawaii they account for nearly half.
Cultural context matters.
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What is truly remarkable is how all 'Hispanics' become 'monoracial' the moment they cross the border.
Eh, it's not hard to imagine blacks and (whites and Asians) having far different reactions, on average judging by say, the greater propensity of blacks to associate along racial lines. And, little boys can be real devils, for whom PC is not a barrier to a good verbal whippin'.
You know, the mixed Chinese/Japanese/Korean and Caucasian kids I have seen here in northern CA don't seem to have higher propensities for self-destructive behavior ...
A special study of Hawaii would be well worth the effort. For one thing, in some cases (Japanese at least, Chinese to a degree, and maybe more) emigrants from Asia were renounced by their homelands as renegades, so they had to form new identities. At the same time, racial feeling in E Asia is virulent, with Japanese and Chinese feeling mutual contempt (with Chinese cultural power confusing the issue), and both despising the Koreans.
I've been told that mainlanders are haoles regardless of race, with a distinction (I think) between old Hawiian haoles and newsomers.
According to my sources (inlaw anecdotal type), Hawaiian Portuguese rank toward the bottom of the pecking order, despite their whiteness.
A novel by a friend of mine tells of a mixed Hawaiian-Chinese extended family that decides to do a Chinese-style family genealogy. But many of these Hawaiian Chinese are Chinese through the female line, and they refuse to support the project because their families won't be listed, so the project fizzles.(Kathleen Tyau)
A lot of Hawaiian customs are specific to Hawaii or to the islands, and strange either to Asians or to mainlanders.
Hawaii away from the tourist areas can be a pretty rough, funky place. Not a tropical paradise.
Razib:
Context certainly does matter. I really wasn't even aware of the concept of "race" till I was around 11. It was damn near impossible to suss it out in my family which is mixed race going back three generations, and still outmarries to a huge extent (to the point where I have half-Jewish cousins and half-Arab cousins). I've always been fascinated with Japanese culture despite having no Japanese ancestry in my background, but there was no disconnect in my parents sending me to karate and Japanese language lessons as a child. In Hawaii the determiner is more an "insider" versus "outsider" mentality expressed by how long your family has been here and whether or not you speak pidgen English fluently. I've never spoken it naturally (my great-grandfather was of the lower tier plantation management and forbid his its use in his household) and was picked on for that, but due to the fact that I've got long roots here, it was never intolerable as it was for kids who moved to Hawaii from the mainland.
John:
A special study done on more modern scientific principles than what research has already been is definately necessary. Most of what exists has been done within the framework of the outdated "no hbd" mentality. I'm not sure where you're getting that info on Asians (up until WWII there was definate kinship at least between local Japanese and the homeland and since the 1970s interethnic East Asian rivalries have been pretty much confined to the older generations.)
You are right about Hawaiian Portugese being lower on the pecking order than other caucasians, but as it is, the Portugese intermarraige rate was tremendous and there are next to no "pure" Portugese left in Hawaii under the age of 50. They either married up or down relatively speaking. In the case of my family there was some tension as my step-grandmother did not fully approve of my father marrying someone of part-Asian blood.
As for Hawaii being a rough place outside the touristy areas, I dare you walk around Waikiki away from the main drags anytime after dark. There's a reason I stay away from the place. Otherwise, it's mostly just an issue of keeping your valuables outside your car and not going to beaches in a couple key spots on the island. It's not so much tension with tourists, as with mainlanders who settle here permanently who are seen (with some justification) as driving up already absurd housing prices.
One of my best friends, an ex-girlfriend, whom I've known for almost 25 years, is chop suey from Hawaii. Actually, she's legally a native Hawaiian. So I've spent a lot of time in the islands, met family, etc. Her daughter is 1/2 Irish, 1/4 Hawaiian, 1/8 Chinese, and 1/8 Japanese. [If you know someone of a similar amount of diversity, there's a photo book that makes a great gift, Rainbow Kids, Hawaii's Gift to America. A very striking group of children -- beautiful in fact. It also serves as a visual antidote to the report cited.]
In the late 80s and early 90s when I visited a lot, I was struck by the amount of racial harmony there. I was also struck by how much humor is used as a relief-valve for ethnic tensions. Stand up comics make ample use of this topic. There's an entire glossary of ethnic terminology, a street taxonomy, that I never was able to completely grasp.
The group that had it the roughest, overall, were native Hawaiians. That might have changed some due to the recent rise of Hawaiian pride activism and the sovereignty movement. The bottom line, I'd argue, is that Hawaii shows, just like the black-white issue in Brazil, the more racially mixed a population gets, the harder it is sustain racial issues.
I was at a junior-high-age basketball game once in Kauai [different connection, a local haole family] when the referees stopped the game and huddled up with the opposing team's coach. He had, very unintentionally, in shouting instructions to his team said something about "those haoles." [The other team was all white, the only whites on the court.] The refs reminded him of his responsibilities.
I'll note something else that might have contributed to this racial tolerance from the very beginning. Almost all the ethnic groups had a big influx into Hawaii within a generation or so, at once basically, when the Anglo-owned plantation system scoured the world for workers willing to relocate. My understanding is the new workers were from economically depressed populations and countries.
This simultaneous, multi-threaded immigration set up the environment for the creation of a new language, Hawaiian Creole. The second generation acquired language in old-country-language-speaking homes, but mixed outside the home in a social melange with no dominant language. English pidgin being the means of communication, English-based Hawaiian Creole is what they invented. Had the immigration been more staged and drawn out, would the creole exist today?
And I understand from my own experience that Hawaiian Creole is a language. It was tough for me at first, with all the grammatical "mistakes" I kept hearing from my friend, until I got that they weren't mistakes. Each time she goes to Hawaii, she comes back using much more creole. More interestingly, her daughter, who's lived all her nine years in San Francisco her entire life, is the same way.
just like the black-white issue in Brazil
brazil has serious racial issues. don't buy the hype.
razib
I only know the hype as it makes logical sense to me when you mention it. I didn't mean to suggest there were no race problems in Brazil, nor in Hawaii, just that blurring easy race ID makes it more difficult to be categorical. Also, I've been told that in Brazil the white-black issue mirrors the rich-poor issue, which makes it even more ambiguous.
For several years my roommate was a black, Brazilian woman in her twenties. She was politically savvy, and we talked about race, especially comparatively in our two cultures. A line she spontaneously uttered that's stuck with me is "When I was in Brazil I was poor, but when I get to America I'm black." She's not poor here as she's working at a leading software company in a job that fits her perfectly. [One no regular U.S. citizen could do because of her specific language background, so no U.S. job was harmed, folks.]
just that blurring easy race ID makes it more difficult to be categorical.
agreed. but it makes it hard to mobilize too...and address the issues candidly. yes, i do think brazil has much to teach, but i tire of the race-blind rhetoric coupled with hyper-phenotype consciousness.