Received: 19 September 2019 Revised: 12 February 2020 Accepted: 20 February 2020

DOI: 10.1111/soc4.12791

ARTICLE

Theorizing race in Hawai‘i: Centering place,

indigeneity, and settler colonialism

Jennifer Darrah-Okike

Department of Sociology, University of

Hawai‘i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai‘i
Correspondence
Jennifer Darrah-Okike, Department of
Sociology, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa,
Honolulu, HI.
Email: jdarrah@hawaii.edu
Abstract
Scholars have argued that the sociology of race in the
United States should be theorized within a settler-colonial
framework, while others have advanced a turn toward
empire. Theories of settler colonialism are only recently
gaining traction within sociology, however, and insights
from Indigenous studies remain unfamiliar to many sociolo-
gists of race and ethnicity. Contemporary scholarship on
Hawai‘i addresses settler colonialism and indigeneity in
ways that could inform the sociology of race. The recent
scholarship on Hawai‘i reviewed here advances the theoriz-
ing of race in three ways. First, it shows the complexity,
endurance, and creativity of Indigenous agency, as well as
resistance to colonialism. Second, by critically describing
settler colonialism, it distinguishes colonial domination from
racial domination, while also demonstrating their entangle-
ments. Third, this body of literature examines how
racializations are triangulated, organized by selective assimi-
lation, and shaped by contestations over land, places, and
resources. By engaging with these three themes, contempo-
rary scholarship on Hawai‘i suggests pathways for future
research at the intersection of race, place, indigeneity, and
settler colonialism.

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

“Want to be less racist? Move to Hawai‘i,” opined a recent New York Times editorial (Velasquez-Manoff, 2019). The
view of Hawai‘i as offering a respite from racism is an old one, and it has ties with American sociology. In the early
20th century, the University of Hawai‘i became a kind of outpost of the Chicago School. Its first social science pro-
fessor, Romanzo Adams, trained at the University of Chicago, described Hawai‘i as a successful “melting pot” (1937).

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https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12791
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In the early 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr. described Hawai‘i as a beacon of racial justice, where social relations
seemed to defy the Jim Crow style racism of the U.S. continent (Dekneef, 2016).
Since then, contemporary scholars have criticized Hawai‘i's early sociologists for promoting a misleading image
of Hawai‘i as a racial paradise (Arvin, 2019; Fojas, Guevarra, & Sharma, 2018; Lee & Baldoz, 2008; Okamura, 1998;
Rohrer, 2008; Saranillio, 2018). The repudiation of an “old” sociology of race in Hawai‘i parallels trends within Ameri-
can sociology, which has largely moved beyond the 'Chicago School' race relations paradigm (Bonilla-Silva, 1997;
Morris, 2017; Omi & Winant, 1994/1986).
Meanwhile, over the past several decades, the Hawaiian Renaissance and social movements for cultural regener-
ation and recognition of Native Hawaiian political sovereignty—known collectively as the “Hawaiian Movement”—
have transformed society and politics in Hawai‘i. This movement has also nurtured new generations of scholars and
reoriented understandings of Hawai‘i. Contemporary scholarship of Hawai‘i, mostly from the fields of Native Hawai-
ian, Indigenous, Asian-American, ethnic, and Pacific cultural studies, has generated alternative theoretical currents.
This collective body of literature on Hawai‘i focuses on Indigenous voices, knowledge, and culture, as well as on the
dynamics of colonialism and American political occupation. Thus, while social dynamics of settler colonialism have
been “normalized” in many places, in Hawai‘i, settler colonialism is being robustly critiqued and challenged
(Rohrer, 2016).
While Native studies scholars advocate greater articulation between studies of race, indigeneity, and settler
colonialism (Barker, 2011; Byrd, 2011; Coulthard, 2014; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Smith, 2012), sociologists have
called for making more space for Indigenous sociology within the discipline (Norgaard, 2018). Evelyn Nakano
Glenn (2015) argues that the sociology of race in the United States should be theorized within a settler-colonial
framework, while other sociologists have advanced a turn toward empire (Go, 2009; Jung, 2015; Steinmetz, 2014;
Weiner, 2018). Yet theories of settler colonialism have only recently gained traction within sociology and germinal
insights from Indigenous studies remain unfamiliar to many sociologists of race and ethnicity (cf. Norgaard, 2019;
Steinman, 2016).
Integrating recent scholarship on Hawai‘i into sociology advances theory at the intersection of settler colonialism
and race in three ways. First, recent literature on Hawai‘i presents the complexity, endurance, and creativity of Indig-
enous agency, even amidst oppression. Second, by critically describing settler colonialism, this work distinguishes
colonial domination from racial domination, while also demonstrating their entanglements. And third, this body of lit-
erature shows how racializations are triangulated, organized by selective assimilation, and shaped by contestations
over land and resources. These three themes, taken together, point to the centrality of land and place within the
study of race.

2 | HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

To orient this discussion for sociologists unfamiliar with Hawai‘i, I begin with a brief historical and political background.
Native Hawaiians established a society in Hawai‘i over 2000 years ago (Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992). Western influence com-
menced with Captain James Cook's arrival in 1778, a time when the islands were becoming politically unified; they
soon became a constitutional monarchy. The Hawaiian Kingdom included a multiracial citizenry. There were no restric-
tions on citizenship and voting by race or gender until foreigners prompted the rewriting of the constitution (Kauai,
2014). The idea of “race” was just one of several consequential introductions by western foreigners (Dominguez, 1998;
Kauai, 2014). White European and American settlers (known as “haole”) began cultivating sugar on large tracts of lands
in Hawai‘i in the late 1700s. Sugar cultivation required large numbers of workers, leading to labor importation from
China, Japan, the Philippines, Portugal, Korea, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. After 1812, Native Hawaiian political
leaders and their people selectively adopted and promoted other western introductions such as literacy and Christian-
ity (Merry, 2000; Osorio, 2002). Historians such as Silva (2004) and Osorio (2002) have argued that racialized notions
of native indolence, immorality, savagery, and childishness justified Protestant missionary activities (including the
DARRAH-OKIKE 3 of 18

condemnation of and eventual ban on hula), the spread of plantation agriculture, and white American and European
political intervention in Hawaiian affairs. By the mid-1800s, foreign powers such as Britain and the United States
increasingly attempted to assert political influence over the independent Kingdom (Beamer, 2014; Osorio, 2002). In
this context, Hawaiian ali‘i (monarchs/chiefs) strategically institutionalized private property in 1848–1850
(Beamer, 2014). Though the Kingdom made some attempts to protect the “rights and interests” (Silva, 2004, p. 42) of
commoner Native Hawaiians, the privatization of property instigated widespread alienation of Indigenous people from
the land as well as disruption of Indigenous natural resource management systems (Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992). Contempo-
rary scholars have shown, however, that the monarchy also legally institutionalized enduring communal land rights of
Native Hawaiian commoners (Beamer & Tong, 2016).
White businessmen orchestrated a coup d'etat in 1893, when a self-proclaimed “Committee of Safety” backed
by the U.S. Marines overthrew the independent Kingdom. In 1898, the United States annexed Hawai‘i as a territory,
in an act widely recognized as violating international law. Hawaiian citizens loyal to deposed Queen Liliu‘okalani
protested the annexation via petition, cultural expression, and even an armed uprising (Silva, 2004). The annexation
commenced what many consider an illegal political occupation (Sai, 2004; Trask, 1999). Following the annexation
came a period of political–economic domination by the haole plantation elite during the so-called oligarchy period
(Fuchs, 1961). Statehood in 1959 troubled the oligarchy and marked the political and economic rise of previously
oppressed nonwhite working class groups, especially Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i (Coffman, 2003; Cooper &
Daws, 1990). However, it also further consolidated the illegal American occupation of the islands (Saranillio, 2018;
Trask, 1994). One result was that the State of Hawai‘i took ownership of nearly 1.4 million acres of Hawaiian
national lands (Van Dyke, 2008).1
 pua, Hussey, &
Resistance to political occupation in Hawai‘i has since taken myriad forms (Goodyear-Kaʻo
Wright, 2014). As Noenoe Silva writes, “Kanaka ‘Ōiwi [Native Hawaiians] often took the tools of the colonizers and
made use of them to secure their own national sovereignty and wellbeing” (2004, p. 16). While the words “Indige-
nous” or “native” are used in various ways in sociology, here they refer to those who claim ancestral or genealogical
ties to a place. In Hawai‘i, the terms Native Hawaiian, Kanaka Maoli, and Kanaka ‘Ōiwi denote those who identify
themselves as Indigenous. These terms apply to those whose ancestry in Hawai‘i pre-dates the presence of
Europeans and Americans in the islands. Kanaka ‘Ōiwi identities root themselves in genealogical connections as
descendants and younger siblings of ‘
aina (land; land that feeds) in Hawai‘i (Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992; Tengan, 2008).
Native Hawaiian people have resisted the social and ecological dislocations of capitalism by advancing land-based
cultural practices and belief systems, including aloha ‘aina (Goodyear-Kaʻo
 pua, 2013; McGregor, 2007; Vaughan,
2018).2

3 | SETTLER COLONIALISM AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

In this section, I first review contemporary scholarship on Hawai‘i that illuminates the complexity, endurance, and crea-
tivity of Indigenous agency and resistance to colonialism. Second, I provide an overview of settler-colonialism theory,
including its emphasis on land appropriation and attempted elimination of Indigenous people. The work reviewed
emphasizes the distinction between colonial domination and racial domination (Steinman, 2012, 2016).3 The
section concludes with a discussion of how the racialization of Native Hawaiians has buttressed settler colonialism.

3.1 | Indigenous agency and resistance

A flourishing scholarship increasingly centers on Native Hawaiian voices and knowledge. This work emphasizes the
persistence and complexity of native agency (Beamer, 2014). Silva's (2004) Aloha Betrayed set a standard for political
scholarship by using native language sources and forefronting Native Hawaiian resistance to American occupation.
4 of 18 DARRAH-OKIKE

Scholars have drawn upon mo‘olelo (traditions, stories, history, legends), genealogies, the teachings of noted cultural
practitioners (including kumu hula or teachers of hula), the Kumulipo (cosmogonic genealogy of the Hawaiian peo-
 lelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language) during the 1800s and 1900s
ple), dozens of newspapers written in ‘o
(Nogelmeier, 2010), Kanaka historians and intellectuals, and other sources of ancestral and cultural knowledge.
 lelo Hawai‘i
The resurgence of Native Hawaiian culture stands as a rejection of settler colonialism. The use of ‘o
was once outlawed in public schools, but new generations have been raised attending Hawaiian language immersion
 pua, 2013),
schools. Native Hawaiian epistemologies have been reinstitutionalized in charter schools (Goodyear-Kaʻo
academic scholarship, and a school of Indigenous knowledge within Hawai‘i's flagship research university. Education
scholars have worked to revalue Native Hawaiian knowledge in school settings (Benham, 2017; Kana‘iaupuni,
Ledward, & Malone, 2017; Lipe & Ryan, 2019). Against racial schema often applied to native peoples—such as those
rendering them “vanishing” inhabitants from an “authentic historical past” (Byrd, 2011; Deloria, 1998;
Simpson, 2014)—work from Hawai‘i portrays the contemporary complexities of Indigenous identities
(e.g., Aikau, 2012).
Hawaiians identify as neither just a race nor just an ethnic minority, but rather as an Indigenous people, as well
as members of an occupied nation (Sai, 2004; Trask, 1994).4 Research about Hawai‘i and by Native Hawaiians
extends theoretical frames of settler colonialism and race by showing the vitality and complexity of Indigenous life
worlds.

3.2 | Settler colonialism and its dynamics

Native and Indigenous studies scholars have theorized settler-colonial forms and critiqued them to disrupt their taken-
for-granted character (Kauanui, 2016; Simpson, 2014; Wiebe, n.d.). Associated with anthropology and history, settler
colonialism studies have also emerged within the last several decades as a distinct subfield (see foundational statements
by Denoon (1979), Veracini (2011) and Wolfe (1999, 2006).
Settler colonialism can be conceptualized as a set of social structures that endeavors to eliminate and replace
Indigenous people in order to secure territory (Wolfe, 2006, p. 388). The settler colonial view of land as territory (or
real estate) often clashes with Indigenous views of land. In Native Hawaiian frameworks, the ‘aina, translated as
“land” or “land that feeds”, is akin to a familial elder that nurtures humans and binds them in relationships of caretak-
ing (Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992).5 Such a perspective contrasts with a view of land as commodity or natural resource to be
exploited for profit. Settler-colonial studies lay bare systematic efforts to sever the communal relationships of Indige-
nous peoples with land, which in turn disrupt food systems and land-based cultural practices (Corntassel, 2008;
pua, 2013; Norgaard, Reed, & Bacon, 2018).
Goodyear-Kaʻo
Attention to Indigenous perspectives need not deny other perspectives on injustice, however (Sailiata, 2015;
Sharma & Wright, 2008). As a lens with many angles, settler colonialism theory critiques specific political projects
(LeFevre, 2015). This lens distinguishes the colonialism of, say, Canada, the United States, Australia,
New Zealand, and Hawai‘i from colonialism oriented to the extraction of labor, which does not involve large-scale
settlement (Veracini, 2010; Wolfe, 2006). Patrick Wolfe (2006) and others have argued that settler colonialism is
a specific mode of domination distinguished by the centrality of a “logic of elimination” as well as a “singular
focus” on land. This view recasts colonialism not as a historic moment of conquest, but rather as a structure ori-
ented to advancing territorial claims, via attempts to eliminate native people and “indigenize” settlers
(Veracini, 2010; Wolfe, 1999).6
The logic of elimination adopts varying forms of “extermination, displacement, or assimilation” (Lawrence &
Dua, 2005, p. 123). The widespread death among native populations triggered by European diseases is a painful
example. Some view the spatial and political relegation of native people to reservations as a form of displacement. 7
Assimilation can attempt to replace Indigenous culture or consciousness with that of the colonizers. Kaomea cata-
logues the range of techniques of “native elimination”:
DARRAH-OKIKE 5 of 18

removal, confinement, officially encouraged miscegenation, child abduction, religious conversion,

resocialization in missions or boarding schools, assimilation, exclusionary blood quantum classifica-
tions, and a range of settler-colonial discourses that eliminate large numbers of indigenous people
from official reckonings of who counts as “authentic” natives. (2014, p. 127)

Institutions such as schools, churches, or governments can thus all advance settler colonialism. Even social scien-
tists have played a role in the “elimination” of Indigenous people by misidentifying native identities (Byrd, 2011;
Kauanui, 2008; Simpson, 2014).
Another strategy of settler colonialism involves “replacing” natives by “indigenizing the non-native”
(Veracini, 2010; Wolfe, 2006). This dynamic is seen in the Hawai‘i context (Rohrer, 2016). When people assert their
interests over land via claims of belonging as long term residents, Rohrer argues, they insidiously clear “native places
of their indigenous histories and relations” (2016, p. 4; see also Trask, 2008). If anyone can claim to be native to the
land, then generations of aboriginal place-based relationships stand to be trivialized (Deloria, 1998; Veracini, 2010;
Wolfe, 1999). Scholarship on local identities in Hawai‘i take up this line of inquiry, as further discussed below
(Fujikane & Okamura, 2008; Trask, 2008).
Despite all these strategies, settler colonialism often “fails at what it is supposed to do: eliminate Indigenous
people; take all their land; absorb them into a white, property-owning body politic” (Simpson, 2014, p. 7). Indigenous
pua,-
people enact self-determination through “everyday acts of resurgence” (Corntassel et al., 2018; Goodyear-Kaʻo
2013; Meyer, 2003; Simpson, 2014; Vizenor, 2008). Native Hawaiian scholarship invites the telling of counter
stories and the hailing of Indigenous survival and resistance, which Vizenor (1998) terms “survivance” (p. 2008).
Describing survivance, Kaomea says that, “while in some circumstances the colonized may survive to resist, under
other circumstances they may resist by surviving” (2014, pp. 139–140; see also Aikau, 2012; Byrd, 2011). For exam-
 pua (2013) describes how educators in Hawai‘i have guided their students to rebuild native food
ple, Goodyear-Kaʻo
systems and revalue land-based knowledge. Kaomea (2014) tells a “counter story of Sovereign survivance” and sug-
gests that royal lineages live on despite their presumed demise (p. 139). Skirting the risk of scholarly overemphasis
on Indigenous erasure and the agency of settlers, such work narrates Native Hawaiian agency in negotiation with
institutions such as the U.S. military, the Federal Department of Interior, Hawai‘i state school systems, and environ-
mental law (Aikau, 2012; Arvin, 2019; Beamer, 2014; Tengan, 2008; Vaughan, 2018).
While Indigenous scholars have foregrounded native sovereignties, identities, and political forms that defy racial
schema, race continues to be a front for settler colonialism. The next subsection reviews the literature concerning
the racialization of Hawaiian people and how such racialization has supported non-Native Hawaiian control over land
and resources. This work demonstrates how attention to indigeneity can be integrated into a sociology of race.

3.3 | The racialization of Native Hawaiians

Racialization refers to the political, economic, and historically specific processes through which individuals get mar-
ked as members of a racial group, in categories that connote hierarchical valuations of worth (often by emphasizing
phenotypical differences) (Omi & Winant, 1994/1986). The specific categories change and their content and implica-
tions vary by time and place (Omi & Winant, 1994/1986). Some examples of the “races” or “racialized groups” from
the Hawai‘i context include haole (a specific form of whiteness), local, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Micronesian. These
terms are complicated because they can also denote shared ethnicity (Okamura, 2018)– shared cultural orientations,
languages, and traditions (Nagel, 1994)– as well as shared or crosscutting national or Indigenous identities.8
In the United States, whiteness typically affords access to power, property, and countless privileges
(Harris, 1993). Sociological literature often focuses on groups that have been racialized as nonwhite or black, and
thus excluded from the symbolic and material benefits of whiteness (Du Bois, 1935; Roediger, 1999). However, the
literature on Hawai‘i demonstrates the insidious consequences for Native Hawaiians of being deemed almost white.
6 of 18 DARRAH-OKIKE

This scholarship has described the contested “selective assimilation” of Indigenous people into “whiteness”
(Arvin, 2019; Kauanui, 2008), as well as into nonwhite multiracial “local” identities.
Aikau (2012) analyzes how the Mormon Church rendered Polynesians sufficiently white in a “racial project” that
“fused” Polynesian identity (including Hawaiians) with the Mormon religion (2012, p. 1, p. 10). Native Hawaiians
were deemed a “chosen people” and thus brought more fully into the fold of the Mormon Church as a “lost tribe of
Israel.” Given the 19th century Mormon Church (and American national) doctrine of white racial superiority, honor-
ary whiteness deemed Hawaiians special targets for salvation by white Mormons (2012, p. 35). In turn, through
Church expansion, Latter Day Saints' leaders gained dominion over Hawaiian lands and communities (as in the rural
area of La‘ie, O‘ahu). However, communities within the Native Hawaiian diaspora take pride in their Mormon faith
(Aikau, 2012).
Similarly, Arvin (2019) argues that ideas about Polynesian proximity to whiteness facilitated American and
European “possession” of the Pacific. In the early 1800s, European cartography “mapped” race onto Oceania by
demarcating Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia (Aikau, 2012; Howe, 2003). Early social scientists racialized Mela-
nesians, with their darker complexions, as “black,” in contrast to Polynesians (including Hawaiians), who were reg-
arded as racially superior given their likeness to (and presumptive shared lineage with) “Caucasians” (Arvin, 2019;
Howe, 2003). Westerners' belief in Polynesian proximity to whiteness spurred their civilizing missions and eventual
assertion of political empire throughout the Pacific (Arvin, 2019). Arvin argues that the “logic of possession through
whiteness” renders Polynesian people and places as “exotic feminized possessions.” She further explains that confer-
ring “near whiteness” on Polynesians “allows white settlers to claim, in various ways, rightful and natural ownership”
of lands (2019, p. 3). Such racial ideas may have also helped sanction intermarriage between Hawaiians and white
Europeans and Americans (Fuchs, 1961).
Scholars have also argued that Hawaiians were not seen as white enough, which justified colonial domination.
For example, racialized and sexualized stereotypes permeated portrayals of Queen Liliʻuokalani in the American
media (Silva, 2004). Cartoon images likened the Queen to African-origin people by exaggerating her blackness, and
she was infantilized and belittled (p. 173). The Queen's self-presentation and regal bearing as a “proper head of state”
refuted such portrayals. The media also conflated Hawaiians with other subjects of American empire such as Filipino
people (Saranillio, 2018; Silva, 2004). Native American scholars note how racial schema of savagery, or primitiveness
from a “vanishing” past, form part of the distinctive ways that Native peoples have been racialized (Barker, 2011;
Garroutte, 2003). Note that contemporary racism against Native Hawaiians, which has parallels to the experiences
of other Indigenous peoples, not only denies their culture, but also appropriates it (Teves, 2015; Trask, 1999).
Describing these dynamics after the post-statehood tourism boom, Haunani Kay Trask (1999) critiqued the tourism
industry, which she argued has appropriated Native Hawaiian culture, and sexualized women's bodies to “sell”
Hawai‘i as an exotic destination.
In another analysis of the racialization of Hawaiians, Kauanui (2008) traces the political negotiations through
which Native Hawaiian identity first became associated with race as blood quantum, as legislated in the Hawaiian
Homes Commission Act (of 1921). Around this time, Native Hawaiian leaders were advocating for Native Hawaiians
to lease land for farming and homesteading. In response, haole elites argued that the needs of “full blooded” Hawai-
ians should be distinguished from those of “part Hawaiians” (Kauanui, 2008, p. 33). These elites deemed “full
blooded” Hawaiians as needing “welfare” and rehabilitation (Kauanui, 2008). Accordingly, the federal Act set aside a
relatively small amount of land (to lease) for “full” Hawaiians, or those with 50% or more “blood quantum”–granted
via a logic of charity rather than as a right to national lands. The law also expanded the rights of haole businessmen
to long-term leases on vast tracts of productive sugar plantations.
Blood quantum criteria have been applied to other native people to adjudicate their political rights, including to
land (Kauanui, 2008; Wolfe, 2006). Such criteria reveal the distinctiveness of racial ideas applied to Indigenous peo-
ple (Garroutte, 2003; Smith, 2012; Wolfe, 2001, 2006). Restricting rights to land according to blood quantum, espe-
cially when applied along with assimilationist strategies, becomes a means of extinguishing native land tenure. These
racial ideas contrast with logics of hypodescent historically applied to black people in service of social exclusion
DARRAH-OKIKE 7 of 18

(Smith, 2012; Wolfe, 2006; see also Sharma (2018) for the discussion of these racial “illogics” within the Hawai‘i con-
text). The blood quantum criteria embedded in the Homestead Act has had long lasting effects on Native Hawaiian
access to land. Also, as Ledward (2007) argues, racial ideas continue to fracture Native Hawaiian communities, with
damaging psychological effects.
The shiftiness of racism—including newer iterations of colorblind racism—continues to implicate Hawaiians.
Legal cases have chipped away at Native Hawaiian rights and privileges, including the right to vote in Office of
Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) elections or attend Kamehameha Schools, which give preference to students of Native
Hawaiian ancestry (decreed by a charitable trust established by the late Hawaiian ali‘i Princess Bernice Pauahi
Bishop) (Rohrer, 2010; Trask, 2002). Such lawsuits reflect the dominant colorblind ideology (e.g. Bonilla-Silva, 2006)
as well as frameworks which consider Native Hawaiian identity solely in racial terms (Rohrer, 2016; Trask, 2002).
The scholarly work discussed so far has illustrated some of the repercussions of entangled racial and colonial
domination in Hawai‘i. The next section continues to address such entanglements with a focus on post-statehood
Hawai‘i.

4 | S O C I A L D Y N A M I C S O F A “ L I B E R A L M U L T I C U L T U R A L S E T T LE R
STATE”

The research literature reviewed in this section further reveals the distinctions and entanglements of racial and colo-
nial forms of domination as Hawai‘i shifted from the plantation era to being a “liberal multicultural settler state”
(Saranillio, 2018). During this shift, the socioeconomic mobility of previously racially oppressed groups ended up
entrenching settler colonialism. This section also presents a relational perspective on race by showing how Native
Hawaiian as an Indigenous group identity has been triangulated9 with two other major groups—haole and local—even
as all three traverse categories of race, culture, ethnicity, class, and nation (Kauanui, 2008; Labrador, 2015;
Okamura, 2008; Saranillio, 2018; Trask, 2008). These groupings continually remake themselves in relation to each
other, often through dynamics of selective and contested assimilation into whiteness and nonwhite racial formations
(such as multiracial local identity). The literature reviewed here also brings attention to the discourses that celebrate
multiculturalism while occluding racial and colonial domination.

4.1 | Haole racial formations

The racial order of the plantation system overtly valued whiteness. “Haole” as a specific white identity developed in
tandem with the “race making” institution of the sugar plantation system (Lind, 1955). The haole category was
applied to the white business and plantation elite of the Territorial period (Fuchs, 1961). In parallel to the “old fash-
ioned” racism of the pre-civil rights era in the United States, whiteness in Hawai‘i afforded status and secured access
to citizenship, exclusive schools, and justice. Ideas about the relative assimilability of other racialized groups into
whiteness and their worthiness for American citizenship undergirded the plantation racial order (Glenn, 2009). Plan-
tation bosses drew upon racial ideas to determine the relative worth of migrant labor, which translated into hierar-
chical occupations and wages and differential political enfranchisement (Fuchs, 1961; Glenn, 2015; Jung, 2006).
Sociologist of race, Moon-Kie Jung, describes the varied racial schema of the plantation era as follows: Japanese peo-
ple were deemed allegiant to a foreign empire and intrinsically anti-American; Chinese were seen as too alien to be
assimilated; and Filipinos, also subjects of U.S. empire, were perceived as infantile and potentially violent
(Jung, 2006; see also Glenn, 2015). The planter class thus strategically segmented laborers by race and ethnicity to
quell worker solidarity (Jung, 2006; Takaki, 1984).
The relative assimilability of Hawaiians compared to Asian ancestry groups was reflected in racially restrictive
immigration and citizenship laws (both before and following Hawai‘i's annexation by the United States, after which
8 of 18 DARRAH-OKIKE

American laws applied) (Glenn, 2009; Kauanui, 2008). One result was that Native Hawaiian citizens formed a large
 Kalaniana‘ole, the territorial represen-
 hio
voting bloc and held important political positions (such as Prince Jonah Ku
tative to the U.S. Congress) (Fuchs, 1961). However, even Hawaiian voting power was insufficient to trouble the
white business oligarchy up through the 1940s (Fuchs, 1961).
“White” or haole identity shifted to some degree with the in-migration of white people from the U.S. mainland
preceding and during World War II. Pierce (2014) reports that local students at the University of Hawai‘i noted that
white people who came to Hawai‘i to work as teachers or serve the U.S. military were more class diverse than the
old plantation elite and singled them out as “Coast Haole.” Even after white residents from economically diverse
backgrounds migrated to Hawai‘i, which increased considerably following statehood, “haole” has continued to carry
some of its historical valence as a racial and class elite held in suspicion by the multiracial working class
(Rohrer, 2010). “Acting haole” also means acting rudely or without appropriate deference to local cultural norms
(Okamura, 2008; Rohrer, 2010).
Finally, since “haole” describes people with phenotypically light skin tones, it has been retained as a racial cate-
gory often positioned against “local.” Unlike in other U.S. states, people identifying as “white” (only or alone) remain
a numerical minority in Hawai‘i. As of 2015, 25.4% of Hawai‘i residents identified as white “alone” (DBEDT 2018,
from ACS 2011–2015).10 One-fourth of the population of Hawai‘i identified as more than one race category and
more than half (57%) as nonwhite or not only white. This contrasts with the U.S. population as a whole, where only
2–3% of people identified with more than one race. Whiteness thus remains neither invisible nor normative in
Hawai‘i (Okamura, 2008; Rohrer, 2010; Spickard, 2018).

4.2 | Local identities

A distinctive “local” identity emerged in Hawaii—forged out of interracial social life as well as in response to haole
racism. “Local” first emerged as a salient part of the vernacular when it was used by haole accusers and the media to
describe a group of young working class men of Japanese, Chinese, and Native Hawaiian heritage who had been
wrongly accused of raping a white Navy officer's wife in 1931 (Rosa, 2014).11 In this context, haole elites asserted
their superiority to and difference from a collective working class that included Native Hawaiian people along with
other nonwhite groups.
A collective mixed race and working class identity was also developing around the same time as labor orga-
nizers forged an interracial labor movement, which, in turn, shaped local identity (Jung, 2006).12 Local identity
thus demarcated haole elites from nonwhite, working class people of Asian, Hawaiian, and other backgrounds.
Local identity has continued to connote a multiracial working class consciousness as well as hybrid cultural prac-
tices (e.g., Hawaiian Creole English or “Pidgin”) shaped by shared immigrant traditions in the plantation setting
and beyond (Okamura, 2008 Rosa, 2014; Takaki, 1984). Local identity has proven flexible in absorbing certain
new generations of nonwhite migrants, while also becoming associated with privilege and the demographically
nonwhite majority.
After Hawai‘i became a U.S. state in 1959, nonwhite working class people in Hawai‘i gained political and eco-
nomic standing (Coffman, 2003; Cooper & Daws, 1990). A new political establishment led by the Democratic Party
transformed Hawai‘i from a plantation economy to a tourism and real-estate economy by opening up land to urban
development and building hotels, airports, highways, and housing tracts (Cooper & Daws, 1990). This generated
spoils for landowners and developers while also facilitating socioeconomic mobility for formerly oppressed groups,
especially those of Japanese and Chinese ancestry (Cooper & Daws, 1990).
While some Native Hawaiians were included in the power exchanges of the Democratic Party and organized
labor (Coffman, 2003; Cooper & Daws, 1990; Jung, 2006), prevailing power relations did not affirm their unique sta-
tus as the Indigenous people of Hawai‘i (Trask, 2008). Instead, a new diversity ideology celebrating Hawaii's multicul-
turalism gained strength. In a noted example of this discourse, John F. Kennedy described Hawai‘i as “everything we
DARRAH-OKIKE 9 of 18

are and hope to be” (cited in UH News, 2016 Hawai‘i Civil Rights Week Committee, 1964). This discourse was also
leveraged to support statehood (Saranillio, 2018).
Scholars of race and ethnicity in Hawai‘i, such as Jonathan Okamura (1998) and Dean Saranillio (2018), have
argued that state and elite-sponsored celebrations of multiculturalism continue to advance colonial occupation while
hiding its ill effects for Native Hawaiians. State and corporate narratives often co-opt Native Hawaiian language and
culture to frame Hawai‘i as a successful racial melting pot with a welcoming “aloha spirit” (Casumbal-Salazar, 2017;
Saranillio, 2018; Teves, 2015, 2018). Arguing that Asian Americans in Hawai‘i benefit from and participate in the
colonial domination of Kanaka Maoli, Fujikane and Okamura (2008) identified “Asian settler colonialism” as a specific
process (see also Trask, 2008). While “Asian American” as a collective identity has had relatively limited currency
within Hawai‘i, local discourses have created an alternative group identity that often includes those of mixed Asian
and Pacific Islander heritage as “local” (Okamura, 1994; Yamamoto, 1979). Rohrer (2016) considers “local” an “indige-
nizing” discourse that justifies the cultural displacement of Native Hawaiians. In short, critics argue that socioeco-
nomic advancement and political inclusion of some nonwhite working class groups in Hawai‘i has come at the
expense of Native Hawaiians (Trask, 1999, 2008).
Local and Hawaiian identities continued to be remade throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,
often in negotiation with each other. In the late 1960s and 1970s, many rural communities resisted the urbanization
schemes of developers. Land struggles re-articulated nonwhite working class local solidarity (Cooper & Daws, 1990;
Okamura, 2008). Yet, as the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement developed—in some ways an offshoot of earlier strug-
gles against land development—its leaders began to distinguish Kanaka Maoli from other “locals” as a way of focusing
 pua, 2014; Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992:
attention on Native Hawaiian indigeneity and national identity (Goodyear-Kaʻo
p. 325; Trask, 1999, 2008). Resisting racial and colonial domination has thus involved challenging the “assimilation”
of Native Hawaiians into white and local group identities.
Local identities continue to be remade in response to immigration, globalization, foreign investment, and contro-
versial land projects (Okamura, 1994, 2008). In an attempt to shed stigmatized identities, various nonwhite immi-
grant groups have striven to assimilate into Hawai‘i's multiracial mainstream by working to pass as local
(Danico, 2004; Labrador, 2015; Saranillio, 2008). Their success has largely depended on whether or not they success-
fully perform “local” (through language or cultural behavior), attain middle class status, or avoid getting marked as an
immigrant or racial “other”. For example, though successive waves of Filipino migrants have been subordinated to
lower status occupations ever since the plantation era (Eisen, 2019; Okamura, 2008), many Filipinos in Hawai‘i have
entered the middle class and even attained political power. Many are seen or see themselves as part of Hawai‘i's
multicultural society (Cayetano, 2009; Labrador, 2015). By contrast, in certain settings, Mexican, Micronesian and Fil-
ipino migrants remain excluded from the “local” fold (Rita, Darrah-Okike, Engel, & Garboden, forthcoming; Gupta &
Haglund, 2015; Labrador, 2015; Lawrence III, 2015). African-Americans too have negotiated anti-Black racism in
Hawai‘i, while Black Hawaiians13 have sometimes faced tenuous acceptance in both Native Hawaiian and local com-
munities (Sharma, 2011, 2018). These exclusions (and provisional inclusions) reflect the shifting racial formations of
contemporary Hawai‘i.
Some scholars raise concern that immigrants in Hawai‘i who adopt a multiculturalist ideology, in their aspiration
to belong, risk “delegitimizing” “indigenous claims to place and belonging” (Labrador & Wright, 2011, p. 9).
Racialization projects that involve the selective assimilation of some people into white or multiracial local identities,
while excluding others, reproduce racial inequities and the settler colonial system (Saranillio, 2008).

5 | FUTURE RESEARCH

The relational views on race and critical attention to settler colonialism summarized in the previous sections of this
article should inform research on race and colonialism in the Hawaiian context and in sociology more broadly. This
section outlines three main research concerns: (a) how race and indigeneity are remade in land struggles and legal
10 of 18 DARRAH-OKIKE

institutions; (b) how immigrants are incorporated into society; and (c) varieties of multiracialism and their
consequences.

5.1 | Remaking race and indigeneity: Land and law

Future research could explore how racial and Indigenous identities are formed during contested struggles over land.
The developing of land for profit has been resisted in high profile land struggles in contemporary Hawai‘i (see,
 pua et al., 2014). Analysis of struggles like these could shed light on race and
e.g., those discussed in Goodyear-Kaʻo
place making.14 For example, recently collected oral histories reveal tensions between leaders of the Kalama Valley
protest (in the late 1970s), who identified as “local,” and haole supporters (Kubota, 2018). In a more recent example,
the proposed building of the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea has sparked a movement that prom-
ises to reconfigure politics in Hawai‘i, while affirming and reshaping Native Hawaiian collective identity (Casumbal-
 pua, 2017; Maile, 2018). Moreover, public support for the construction of the tele-
Salazar, 2017; Goodyear-Ka‘o
scope has ebbed, perhaps in response to the mobilization (Dayton, 2019). Though existing research often stresses
the continuity of settler colonialism, scholars could do well to investigate the conditions under which non-Indigenous
people or state actors would return land and power to native communities.
Sociological analyses of law, which has been a locus of racialization of native people and others
(e.g., Garroutte, 2003), stands to generate theoretical insight. Laws such as the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act
institutionalized a racial view of Hawaiians. Pivotal legal cases, including Rice v. Cayetano (2000), Doe v. Kamehameha
Schools (2003; 2005), and Day v. Apoliona (2007) then applied the racial lens to Native Hawaiian identity
(Arvin, 2019; Rohrer, 2016; Trask, 2002; Watson, 2006). Yet, Hawai‘i state law also inherited legal codes of the inde-
pendent Hawaiian Kingdom that protect customary rights of Native Hawaiians as Indigenous people defined not by
blood quantum but rather by ancestral lineage (MacKenzie, 1991; MacKenzie, Serrano, & Kapuaʻala Sproat, 2015).15
pua, 2014). Moreover, federal programs
These laws have been defended by political activists (e.g., Goodyear-Kaʻo
engage Native Hawaiians along with Alaska Natives and American Indians.
Such legal frameworks adjudicate control over land and resources, though their applications are not straight for-
ward. For example, Native Hawaiian people asserting traditional and customary rights have faced backlash, such as
legal efforts to roll back certain rights, or political challenges to cultural authenticity (Darrah-Okike, 2019). The
Department of Hawaiian Homelands and Office of Hawaiian Affairs have been subject to lawsuits, with implications
for legal recognition of Indigenous identity (Andrade, 2016). Native Hawaiians have worked to reject the racial
schema of color and blood quantum, yet these concepts shape social relations (Kauai, 2014; Ledward, 2007). Osten-
sibly 'colorblind' applications of law have raised legal questions about Native Hawaiian programs and entitlements
(Rohrer, 2010; Trask, 2002). While there is a well-developed literature in sociology on colorblind racism (e.g., Bonilla-
Silva, 2006; Gotanda, 1991; Hughey, Embrick, & Doane, 2015) this work could be extended to examine the negotia-
tions of race, indigeneity and colorblindness within legal institutions (e.g., Lawrence III, 2015; Watson, 2006).

5.2 | Immigration in a settler colonial context

Addressing the complexities of migration into Hawai‘i (or other settler-colonial contexts), as well as the role of multi-
cultural liberal discourses in perpetuating racial and colonial domination, are other productive lines of research. Will
newer groups of immigrants, such as those from Southeast Asia or other Pacific island nations be able to gain status
by identifying with a multiethnic local identity? Examining the dynamics of selective assimilation into localness,
whiteness, or indigeneity will continue to reveal the making and remaking of Hawai‘i's racial order.
The racialization of the newest immigrant groups to Hawai‘i, including non-Hawaiian Pacific Islanders such as
Micronesians, calls out for greater attention by social scientists. Three nations within the Pacific region of Micronesia
DARRAH-OKIKE 11 of 18

have established treaties that permit their citizens to freely migrate to the United States in exchange for United
States' military control over strategic lands and waters (Genz et al., 2018). Micronesians in Hawaiʻi have nevertheless
encountered barriers to social services, housing, and healthcare; they have also faced implicit racism, racial stereo-
types, and official exclusion from the social safety net (Lawrence III, 2015; Peter, Tanaka, & Yamashiro, 2018). The
racialization of Micronesians in Hawai‘i can be seen as a manifestation of U.S. settler colonialism and imperialism
(Rita et al., forthcoming; Arvin, 2018). However, community organizations are working to fortify bridges between
Native Hawaiians and other Indigenous people of Oceania (Kahape‘a-Tanner, 2014; Peter et al., 2018). More work
could be done to identify the conditions under which solidarity across Western-imposed racial schema is forged or
broken between Pacific Islanders. For example, Irwin and Umemoto (2016) have analyzed how Pacific Islander teens
(i.e., Native Hawaiian, Samoan, and Tongan youth) in Hawai‘i perceive themselves in solidarity with each other
against the gender and race hierarchies associated with U.S. imperialism.
Research on Micronesians in Hawai‘i would also advance the rich theoretical debate about how to think about
migration to settler colonial settings. While Pacific Islanders who do not have Hawaiian ancestry may not hold Indig-
enous positions within Hawai‘i, they have contended with imperialism and racism (Rita et al., forthcoming;
Rohrer, 2016). Conceptualizing Indigenous Identity as well as other group identities appropriately requires recogniz-
ing their complexities and their sometimes fluid boundaries (Aikau, 2012; Kauanui, 2016; Rohrer, 2016;
Somerville, 2012). Moreover, justice efforts need not collapse the inequities among non-Indigenous peoples nor
foreclose potential solidarities (Sailiata, 2015; Sharma & Wright, 2008).

5.3 | Role of multiracialism in racial and colonial domination

Empirically oriented social scientists should continue to investigate the different forms of multiracialism and their
intersections with racial and colonial domination. For example, scholarship might analyze “diversity ideologies” oper-
ating in Hawai‘i—or other contexts deemed highly “multicultural”—and their specific material or symbolic conse-
quences. Here I refer to discourses that celebrate racial or ethnic diversity, often employing the lens of culture,
sometimes diverting focus from systemic or institutional racism (Embrick, 2011; Mayorga-Gallo, 2014).
Multiracial identities, families, friendship networks, and neighborhoods are common in Hawai‘i. People talk about
each other's cultural differences and often employ an ethnic lens to understand society (Okamura, 1980,
Okamura, 2008). While these features of social life may distract attention away from racialized inequality and colo-
nial occupation (Fojas et al., 2018), such contradictions invite research into how the varieties of multiracialism and
diversity ideologies prop up racialized inequality.16 Sociologists of race could examine, for example, how diversity
ideologies influence the distribution of resources.

5.4 | Critical analysis of racial inequality

Because sociology has given so much attention to racial mixing as a marker of assimilation, the discipline has been
blamed for obscuring the realities of racial inequality in Hawai‘i (Lee & Baldoz, 2008; Okamura, 1998). However,
quantitative analyses of inequality typical in sociology can complement the cultural analyses of other fields. For
example, Jonathan Okamura has drawn on U.S. census income, education and occupation data to identify a persis-
tent “ethnic hierarchy” (2008; 2018). This line of work deserves to be updated and extended to create nuanced sta-
tistical portraits of inequality.
However, comparing Native Hawaiians to other “ethnic” or “racial” groups means comparing different group
identities. Similar issues would apply when considering Indigenous identities in other locales. Moreover, constraints
on who is allowed to consider themselves Indigenous has been part of the project of colonial domination. Also,
native people may embrace multiple racial and cultural backgrounds (e.g., Kana‘iaupuni & Liebler, 2005;
12 of 18 DARRAH-OKIKE

Ledward, 2007).17 Accordingly, one concern is that statistical analyses (of, e.g., poverty, homelessness, or incarcera-
tion) may inadvertently overemphasize native disadvantage.18 To mitigate this problem in Hawai‘i, Native Hawaiian
organizations have curated data sources that will enable researchers to examine Native Hawaiian well-being within
Indigenous frameworks.19
Finally, the scholarship discussed above critiques the assessment of so-called “minority” gains through the van-
tage of socio-economic mobility (in a “multicultural settler state”) (Byrd, 2011). When indicators of inclusion are a
metric we can ask: Inclusion in what? Sociology can document relative group advantage even while political efforts
are made to seek systemic change.

6 | C O N CL U S I O N

Indigenous studies have theorized the consequences of colonialism for Indigenous people and shown how
racialization implicates native communities (Glenn, 2015; Norgaard 2018, 2019; Smith, 2012). Racialization is under-
stood to function as a tool for securing the property rights and political power of “white settlers” (Harris, 1993;
Moreton-Robinson, 2015). The scholarship discussed above deems Indigenous people more than “racial minorities”
in settler colonial contexts. It also calls attention to Indigenous land-based cultures and practices (Brown, 2016;
Casumbal-Salazar, 2017; Corntassel, 2008).
Communities in Hawai‘i have organized against racism and settler colonialism. Hawai‘i people have also formed
multiracial families, identities, and movements. Some communities have followed Native Hawaiian praxis to care for
specific places. Native Hawaiian identities expand beyond race, ethnicity, and conventional understandings of nation
(Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992; Kauanui, 2008; Ledward, 2007). Rather than solely pursuing redress from the federal or state
government (see, e.g., Coulthard, 2014), Native Hawaiians have resisted settler colonialism by pursuing what Corn-
tassel (2008) terms “sustainable cultural self-determination,” that is, affirming identities rooted in genealogy and
longstanding relationships of responsibility to lands and waters. As Bonilla-Silva argues, getting “beyond race”
requires going “through race,” not denying it via colorblindness (2015, p. 78). Hawaiian ethics such as aloha ‘aina and
associated narratives of genealogy, abundance, and righteous civil disobedience suggest alternatives to ongoing capi-
 pua, 2013, 2017; Osorio, 2014). They
talist exploitation of land and labor (Casumbal-Salazar, 2017; Goodyear-Ka‘o
may even hold the potential to dismantle racial systems (Lipe et al., forthcoming). The final lesson from this review is
that Indigenous voices can reorient scholarly and common sense understandings of race. We should create space for
such voices in our discipline.

ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS
The author is grateful to Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Lipe, Sonya Zabala, Ashley Rubin, Katherine Irwin, Sarah Wiebe,
Nathalie Rita, and Sabrina Nasir for their helpful comments on this article.

ORCID
Jennifer Darrah-Okike https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5843-3648

ENDNOTES
1
Lands held by the Hawaiian government and monarchy at the time of the overthrow of the independent Hawaiian King-
dom are known as “Government” and “Crown” lands, respectively. Together they are also known as “ceded lands,”
“Hawaiian national lands,” or the “public lands trust.”
2
Aloha ‘aina is defined variously as love for land that feeds, caretaking of land as familial elder, or Native Hawaiian patriot-
ism and cultural and political sovereignty (Goodyear-Kao  pua, 2013; Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992; Silva, 2004). Some of this work
addresses how non-Native Hawaiians can perpetuate aloha ‘aina (e.g., Goodyear-Kaʻo  pua, 2013).
3
Racial domination is conceptualized as a system that institutionalizes advantage for groups deemed racially superior (usu-
ally white people) (Desmond & Emirbayer, 2009).
DARRAH-OKIKE 13 of 18

4
Sai (2004) and others argue that Native Hawaiians should be considered members of an occupied nation, not a colonized
Indigenous people (see also Kauanui, 2018).
5
Relationships of responsibility to ‘aina in Native Hawaiian praxis have often been highly place-specific (Vaughan, 2018).
6
Veracini (2010) considers migrants to be fundamentally different from dominant “settler” groups and deems them “exog-
enous” others in their new contexts.
7
Native Hawaiians are not federally recognized as a tribal or native people–in the sense of U.S. federal recognition of an
independent Native Hawaiian governing entity– in the United States, though there have been controversial recent
attempts to advance such recognition (see Kauanui, 2018 for an overview; also Goodyear-Kaʻo  pua, 2018). Scholarship in
multiple contexts has critiqued Indigenous people's pursuits of formal state recognition of their native sovereignty
(Coulthard, 2014; Goodyear-Kaʻo pua, 2018; Povinelli, 2002)
8
For example, Okamura (2008, 2018) describes these groupings in contemporary Hawai‘i as “ethnicities,” in recognition of
their lived meanings and association with cultural practices and ancestry. He also argues that the meaning of Japanese
identity has shifted, especially since the late 1940s and into the statehood period, from being a category of race to one
of ethnicity (Okamura, 2014). Okamura argues that ethnicity rather than race is the dominant organizing principle of soci-
ety in Hawai‘i (2008; 2018).
9
See Kim (1999) on the idea of racial triangulation.
10
The other percentages of people identifying themselves with only one racial or ethnic category in Hawai‘i were: Filipino
(14.4%), Japanese (13%), Native Hawaiian (6.2%), and Chinese (4.1%) (DBEDT 2018, from The American Community Sur-
vey (ACS) 2011–2015). The largest race/ethnic groups identified alone or in combination were: White (43.0%); Filipino
(25.0%), Japanese (22.1%), Native Hawaiian (21.3%), and Chinese (14.1%).
11
This event is known as the “Massie” case. Even after the young men were found to be innocent, one of the accused,
Joseph Kahahawai, was murdered by the accuser's mother-in-law, who faced no meaningful consequences for the mur-
der (Rosa, 2014; Stannard, 2006). For more examples of the racialized justice system in Hawai‘i, see Okamura (2019) and
Rohrer (2010).
12
A high water mark of labor power was reached in 1946 with a major strike by the ILWU (Okamura, 2008, 2014).
13
People identifying as both Native Hawaiian and Black (Sharma, 2018)
14
See archives at the Center for Oral History at University of Hawai‘i Manoa.
15
See, for example, the PASH/Kohanaiki ruling (1995) as well as Ka Pa‘akai (2000) (MacKenzie et al., 2015). Darrah-
Okike (2019) discusses these laws from the point of view of urban growth machine theory.
16
See, for example, research which shows that increased exposure by white students living in Hawai‘i to multiracial people
diminishes individuals' race essentialism, one cognitive precursor to racial stereotyping (Pauker et al., 2018).
17
For example, survey and administrative data imported from other contexts, such as federal programs that track only
“Asian/Pacific Islander” identity, have limited utility in Hawai‘i. See also (Kana‘iaupuni, 2011).
18
It is typical to aggregate such statistics so that anyone who identifies as Hawaiian gets counted as Native Hawaiian,
regardless of racial or ethnic identity. Examining disadvantage in this way, while for some questions can be appropriate,
could also risk perpetuating the trope of Indigenous people being “at risk” (see also Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 22).
19
Examples include the Native Hawaiian Data Portal (www.nativehawaiiandataportal.com/about) and the Hawaiian Cul-
tural Influences in Education project (HCIE) (Kana‘iaupuni, Ledward, & Jensen, 2010).

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How to cite this article: Darrah-Okike J. Theorizing race in Hawai‘i: Centering place, indigeneity, and settler
colonialism. Sociology Compass. 2020;14:e12791. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12791
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