A few days ago, Hawaii reporter Denby Fawcett interview writer William Finnegan on Civil Beat. Their interview focused on growing up as European-American kids in Hawaii and facing problems from racist bullies.
You can read it all at http://www.civilbeat.com/2015/06/denby-fawcett-kill-haole-day-situational-racism-and-surfing/
On the comment sections of that article, other European-Americans told stories about their experience growing up in Hawaii and facing racist bullying.
Also, there was anger from some Native Hawaiian readers with the tone of "how dare you haoles complain about racism, you did this to us in 1893, you did this to Africans & Native Americans & Asians and...." and on and on!
Look, 12 year old kid has NOTHING to do with whatever happened in 1893! A 8-year old kid has NOTHING to do with Jim Crow, NOTHING to do with the extermination of Native Americans & Australian Aborigines, NOTHING to do with apartheid in South Africa!
And if you want to talk about history, let's talk about history! Europeans weren't the only one conquering other lands and enslaving and/or killing other ethnic groups! The only thing that made the Europeans stood out was being the first to build massive ships to transport many conquering warriors to take over far away lands. ANd that only took into effect after 1492!
Before that? Aztecs were conquering nearby tribes, a whole bunch of Middle Eastern civilizations kept exterminating each other, Genghis Khan ran over China,Russia, Persia and more!
I mean, the Aztecs and Zulus were notorious for conquering other tribes and they too got conquered by Europeans!
Tribal warfare, genocide, enslavement, that was going on worldwide, committed by nearly every racial group before 1492!
It's just that after 1492, Europeans used their big ships to send a whole bunch of conquering to far away lands! The other racial groups didn't have a real navy and therefore fell to the Europeans!
The Japanese were lucky enough not to be colonized and figured out fast "we better start building big ships and big artillery" which they did, giving them the advantage over the other Asian nations that were either in chaos (China) or already conquered by Europeans (ie Vietnam, Phillipines, Indonesia).
But guess what happened after WW2! European nations lost their power! The whole world knew how vulnerable the French/Dutch/Belgians/British were to the Nazis and that they need the US to bail them out! Oh shizzzz, that motivated the Asians & Africans to say "Eff it, we're taking back our lands". So the British, French, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese empire declined drastically!
The only "white powers" left were the US & Soviet Union! And even then, the Soviet Union fell apart by 1991! Yeah, Putin wants to bully Ukraine and other smaller counties, but he is nowhere near as powerful as the leaders of the Soviet era!
But yeah, going back to Hawaii ---- to the kids living in TODAY, all this stuff about "history" is just stuff to learn in social studies class! They're not living in a world where Europeans are conquering lands. They're not living in a world where everyone tries to "be white" to fit in! They're not living in the world of 1893, nor the world of the Massie case! The kids bullying white kids are not usually doing it out of historical grievances, they're just doing it because ......"(eff) you, because I can"
After reading all those comments on the message board, here is what I wrote there
http://www.civilbeat.com/2015/06/denby-fawcett-kill-haole-day-situational-racism-and-surfing/
This "haole bashing" stuff DOES NOT
victimize the actual conquerors, it victimizes INDIVIDUALS (oh no, we can't
view people as individuals <<<<< sarcasm)
who just happen to have the same skin color as those British/French/Dutch/
Pablo Wegesend ·
by
the way, even though I have a German last name, nobody called me a
"haole" since I'm a mixed race person who looks mostly Latino (and
therefore stereotyped as eating tacos & nachos, as well as not being
believed when I truthfully said I only lived in Hawaii). But I think it's stupid
that people condone bullying of individuals just because they are
white-skinned! And if a European-American tells their story about being
victimized by a hate crime, they get accussed of "not knowing
history", lectured about 1893, lectured about the Massie case, and
lectured about some other bad things that happened long before any of us were
born! I could really care less about "fitting in" as a "white
person" since I don't even look white, I mostly eat East Asian food and
listen mostly to hip-hop! But still, I think it's mega-senseless for people to
be angry at European-Americans standing up for themselves when they tell us
stories about being victimized by racist bullies!
