From White Supremacy to a Multiracial Mainstream in Hawai‘i

Abstract Contemporary racial theorization about American society assumes the universality of White dominance as its point of departure. We argue here that Hawai‘i is an exception, where White supremacy has given way to a multiracial mainstream, shared by the Chinese, Japanese, and Whites. This was a surprising development in a state founded in settler colonialism and racial capitalism, which was moreover a racially hierarchical plantation society until the middle of the twentieth century. The pivot, in Hawai‘i as on the mainland, occurred during the post-World War II period, when the economy underwent a transformation requiring a more educated workforce. On the mainland, this socioeconomic shift opened up the mainstream to the so-called White ethnics. But these were few in number in Hawai‘i, and so the Chinese and Japanese ascended socioeconomically and socially instead. The ethnoracial hierarchy created in this period is still in evidence, as shown by pronounced inequalities among Hawaiian groups. However, the end of White supremacy has been associated with very widespread ethnoracial mixing in families. We discuss some ways in which Hawai‘i may offer a preview of twenty-first-century changes in the U.S. as a whole.