How real is the rascism ?

[csgray]

When talking about imperialism and colonialism it is important to remember that responsibility for the actions of the ruling class of any geographic region cannot be fairly dumped on everyone from that region. In fact, most of the population were also being subjugated by the ruling class at home. My mother's family were religious and political refugees for big chunks of several centuries before they managed to get to the United States through Ellis Island, all their relatives who did not get out perished in the carnage of WWII. They were not imperialists, in fact they were escapees from European Imperialism. So when people talk about "white imperialism" or colonialism across the world, it is important to remember that we are really talking about the actions of a small ruling class with a lot of power.

That was certainly the case for Hawaii, the sons and grandsons of the original New England missionaries came home from college and decided they should own Hawaii, that it was wasted on the 10-20% of the Hawaiian population that had survived all the epidemics of unfamiliar diseases, that the Hawaiian monarchy was unable to effectively rule Hawaii and that they were totally justified in taking over Hawaii. The Hawaiian League, Annexation Club, and the Committee of Safety were determined to overthrow the Monarchy and were purely motivated by desire to rule Hawaii and profit handsomely. The United States' involvement was mostly motivated by the desire to secure permanent control over Pearl Harbor and Hawaii as a military base in the middle of the Pacific, but the plantation owners wanted to rule Hawaii without the Hawaiians or the immigrant plantations workers having any political power or land ownership.

So 125+ years later the white population living in Hawaii is sometimes resented by some people, but "locals" descended from plantation workers, who may not have any Hawaiian ancestry, are not. Do many of the people who can be on the receiving end of that resentment have family ties to the plantation owners who overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom? Probably not. Did people with similar skin color overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom? Yes. I just wish people would have a little more global perspective when talking about Imperialism and colonial domination, and remember that the ruling classes of the colonial empires were a very small part of the population of those countries, and they didn't treat the lower classes much better than they treated the people in the countries they conquered.

Carol