Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Four years ago a flame war on multiracial Asian websites erupted over the use of the term “hapa.” The debate centered on the appropriation of the Hawaiian word, which has been claimed by multiracial mainlander Asian Americans. The most prominent example would be the multi-chapter Hapa Issues Forum. Some were arguing that this is the last in a long line of colonialist appropriations of Native Culture, with others arguing the legitimacy of the term due to a legacy of Asian mixing and local identity in Hawaii that ended up expanding the term to include all mixed race Asians. However, both sides were more similar than different in their move to create a national identity linked to the imagined space of a Hawaiian homeland, a space outside of current nation-state boundaries.

For many multiracial Asians racially barred from both an Asian American national identity and an unmarked American national identity, Hawaii represents a type of multiracial and multicultural paradise. The racial category of hapa seemed to offer an alternative language and identification to other terms such as mestizo or mixed race. Those terms carried the connotations and history of other racial groups. The Hawaiian term hapa, which originated in the only state with a majority Asian population, seemed to belong to Asian Americans. Furthermore, Hawaii’s tenuous place in the American national imagination helped mainland multiracial Americans forge a link to an idealized and even exoticized history of multiracial unity and acceptance. However, in crossing over the boundary of the Hawaiian nation, the term transformed in new and unexpected ways.

While multiracial mainland Asians idealized the racially mixed Hawaii, the growing sovereignty movement in Hawaii underlined the exploitative and repressive political circumstances that made such racial and ethnic mixing possible. As the movement gained visibility and support in the 1980’s, it also began to fragment over the questions of how to define a Hawaiian nation. The movement is itself became plagued by questions of blood quantum and the racial boundaries of the nation. Thus, the struggle over the term hapa acts as a nodal point to explore race, racial mixing, and the reconfiguration of both imaginative and geographic nations.