A Short Examination of Haunani-Kay Trask’s Settlers of Color and ‘immigrant’ Hegemony: ‘locals’ in Hawai'i

Literature Review from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: A-, San Francisco State University (Ethnic Studies), course: ETHS 220: Asians in America, language: English, abstract: Settlers of Color and ‘Immigrant’ Hegemony: ‘Locals’ in Hawai'i was published in Amerasia Journal 26:2 (summer 2000). This was a special issue dedicated to the question Whose Vision?: Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawai'i. The article constitutes an advocacy of Native Hawaiian sovereignty and talks about the growing tensions between Asians and Native Hawaiians in Hawai'i. Trask believes that settler organizations, such as the JACL, intentionally obscure the issue of justice for Hawaiians by stirring up hatred against native leaders. She bases her analysis of the question of Asian/Japanese alleged support of the sovereignty movement on the JACL’s reaction to her sister Mililani Trask’s claim that Senator Daniel Inouye controlled the sovereignty process by giving available funds only to his favorites, who are against Native Hawaiian sovereignty. The JACL, the Democratic Party, and the Honolulu dailies, so Trask, teamed up to attack her sister back, thereby obscuring her whole analysis of the real issue. Opponents of Hawaiian sovereignty accuse Native Hawaiians of going down the race road, but Trask believes that this is just a means of hiding the real race issue, namely the Japanese’s desire to keep their power.