Google the word "hapa" and more than 1.5 million hits come up. Hapa is borrowed from Hawaiian and widely used to describe mixed-race Asian Americans. But some Native Hawaiians are offended by this appropriation.
The Hyphen Hybrid Issue, which hits newsstands and mailboxes beginning next week, takes a look at the contention surrounding the term hapa.
Hapa essentially means "part" or "half" in Native Hawaiian, so someone part white is "hapa haole." The argument is that you can't be hapa unless you are part Hawaiian.
Some view the borrowing of hapa as part of a larger piracy of Hawaiian culture, which includes the use of "aloha," Alec Yoshio MacDonald reports in his story for the Hybrid Issue.
We also take a look back at the Hapa Issues Forum, once the biggest hapa organization in the country, which shutdown this fall.
While you're waiting for the Hybrid Issue to hit stores or your mailbox, check out Asian American studies Professor Wei Ming Dariotis' essay on why she's going to stop using the term hapa.
Posted by harry at December 19, 2007 1:01 PM
7 Comments
Leave a comment
I think it is sad that people of mixed Native Hawaiian heritage want to distance themselves from the larger group of mixed Asians and Pacific Islanders. Fragmentation is one of the biggest problems of Asian-American culture. I've read realhapas.com and Wei Ming Dariotis' essay, but I still don't understand why people of mixed Native Hawaiian heritage aren't proud that a Hawaiian word is used by the bigger community, that by using the word in the slightly different way other mixed asians are actually paying respect to Hawaiian language not "raping" it. It seems like they just totally misunderstand and think that we use it because "being a Hawaiian is so cool" when in reality, we're just trying to find a catchy word that rolls off the tongue better than "Asian Americans of mixed heritage". We don't want to be Hawaiian, we just want to be part of something bigger than just our part-Japanese or part-Chinese or part-Hawaiian or part-Filipino subgroups. But unfortunately this ruckus won't stop, so we need to move on and find a different word.
Talk about good timing. At the Asian American Action Fund Blog, I just referred to one of Harry's recent blog postings with the headline "The Gores Go Hapa (But Does Anyone Care?" (http://www.aaa-fund.com/?p=82).
Jason, just from having read Alec's article, I believe some have an issue with hapa being borrowed because of the history of how Hawaii was colonized and the subsequent destruction of Native Hawaiian culture over the years. So, even something that might seem minor, using a word in a different way, is just another piece of their culture being taken and diluted.
Also, I've posted a thumbnail of the Hybrid Issue cover.
Harry, yes, I understand the gist of the argument, but I still don't think it makes sense. "Hapa" in this sense is not a word of Hawaiian culture -- it's a word that sprang forth once Hawaiians started intermarrying with settlers from other cultures. It's purely the result of a multicultural environment. Even though "hapa" meaning "part" is a Hawaiian word, "Hapa" meaning "part Hawaiian" is not a word of pure Hawaiian culture pre-colonialism. I would understand they would be upset if we took the ancient Hawaiian word for "palace" and started using it to mean "whorehouse" but that is a totally different thing than borrowing the word "Hapa" -- it's not using the word in a derogatory way. It really comes down to the fact that Hawaiian hapas don't want to be associated with other mixed asians in other locations, especially mixed Japanese on the USA mainland. Read realhapas.com again -- it's pretty obvious they just want to stay by themselves away from anyone else. That's their right and their choice, but I think it's just sad...
As someone who is not from the native Hawaiian community, I don't think I should judge what they actually want when they suggest that mixed race Asians with no Hawaiian ties stop using the word "hapa." I have personally never experienced the oppression that indigenous people have faced, so I am not surprised that they feel suspicious or a little vindictive or isolationist given that their sovereignty was brutally stolen away.
On the other hand, I can understand why people of mixed race might feel attached to the word. It helps them to define their identity perhaps.
Ultimately, I think having awareness of this issue is a good start. Sometimes, there are no good solutions to these kinds of problems, but I believe that knowing about these issues is a way to bring us closer together. Empathy works wonders.
I am the same mix as Kip-- caucasian/asian. I wish he would stop spreading 'hapa' around. It is a Hawaiian thing. We already have our own word: Eurasian. Let's embrace that instead.
Anon: the problem with eurasian is that it is too specific and excludes asian/african, asian/southamerican etc... the word hapa as used on USA mainland is more inclusive