Curriculum Research and Development Group HonoredMorris Lai, Hugh Dunn and Susan York win first place in Outstanding Publications Competition. Read moreManoa Presents Student Employee AwardsMarc Marquez, Daniel Carbone, Ruby Ng and Monica Tan honored. Read more
KudosMaui’s Molli Fleming, Hilo’s Christopher Frueh, William Mautz, Cam Muir and Jennifer Richardson and Manoa’s Beverly Ann Deepe Keever. Read more
Dean Finalists for School of Hawaiian KnowledgeCampus meetings slated for three finalists. Read moreChallenging a Multicultural ModelManoa’s Jonathan Okamura publishes Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawai'i. Read more
UH EventsManoa and Hilo’s Ngugi wa Thiong‘o presentations, Windward’s Cooney lecture and other events. Read more
Challenging a Multicultural Model
Manoa Associate Professor Jonathan Y. Okamura published Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawai'i.
Challenging the dominant view of Hawai'i as a "multicultural model"—a place of ethnic tolerance and equality—Okamura examines how ethnic inequality is structured and maintained in island society.
Okamura finds that ethnicity, not race or class, signifies difference for Hawai'i’s people and therefore structures their social relations. In Hawai‘i, residents attribute greater social significance to the presumed cultural differences among ethnic groups than to more obvious physical differences, such as skin color.
According to Okamura, ethnicity regulates disparities in access to resources, rewards and privileges among ethnic groups, as he demonstrates in his analysis of socioeconomic and educational inequalities in the state. He shows that socially and economically dominant ethnic groups—Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans and whites—have stigmatized and subjugated the islands’ other ethnic groups—especially Native Hawaiians, Filipino Americans and Samoans.
He demonstrates how ethnic stereotypes have been deployed against ethnic minorities and how these groups have contested their subordinate political and economic status by articulating new identities for themselves.
Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawai'i is available from the publisher’s website.