Camryn Fujita (SCR ‘21)
In June of 2020, a week-long series of protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement across the state of Hawaii culminated in a march to the Hawaii State Capitol that drew an estimated crowd of about 10,000 to 20,000 people. These protests sparked a long overdue conversation over how people in Hawaii think about race, anti-Black racism, and criminal justice. In the beginning of the 2021 Legislative session this past January, a series of police reform bills were introduced to the Legislature. These bills included SB 532 which compels officers to report misconduct of other officers and bans chokeholds, SB 529 which protects and enforces citizens’ rights to record the police, and SB 783 which enumerates a legal path for citizens to bring suit against officers for violation of constitutional rights, removing officers’ qualified immunity in those cases.
To the disappointment of reform supporters, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Karl Rhoads, said that most of the bills would have to wait until next year to be heard because there was not enough time in the current session. As these bills were introduced in the State Senate, Hawaii’s police officer union, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers (SHOPO), was fighting hard through the courts to challenge the constitutionality of another act passed in September of 2020. Act 47 is a substantial transparency bill that requires the police to disclose officer names of those suspended or terminated for misconduct to the legislature in annual reports, even in cases where appeals are still pending. SHOPO argued that the disclosure of names violated officers’ privacy rights and the union’s collective bargaining agreement with officers. However, in a hearing on March 3rd of this year, Circuit Court Judge Dean Ochiai struck down SHOPO’s argument and upheld the Act.
The Black Lives Matter movement intensified public demands to increase transparency and accountability within Hawaii law enforcement. The attractive assumption amongst outsiders and many people within the community is that implicit bias and racism are not problems in a so-called racial “melting pot” like Hawaii. For many, it seems improbable or even impossible that Hawaii can harbor the same type of racism that seems so pervasive and, to Hawaii residents, distantly isolated to the mainland U.S. In a Honolulu Police Commission meeting last summer, HPD Chief Susan Ballard expressed her doubts as to whether implicit bias affects police conduct in Hawaii, saying, “we are different.” She explained, “Here in Hawaii, one thing is, we’ve got no shame about talking about race. We talk about race all the time and when you meet people, it’s like, ‘oh, so what is your background, what is your nationality?’”
The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 State and County population characteristics states that Hawaii has never had a white majority and has the highest share of multi-racial citizens in the country. The two largest racial demographics are Asian alone (37.6%), followed by white alone (25.5%). 27% of Hawaii’s population identified as part or entirely Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander compared to 0.5% of the U.S. population. According to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis, Hawaii is “the only state to have a tri-racial group, white, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, as its largest multiracial group (22%).” However, Hawaii’s Latino and Black/African American populations are proportionally much smaller compared to the Mainland. 3.6% of Hawaii’s population indicated they were at least part Black/African American and 10.7% identified as at least part Latino compared to the United States average of 14.7% and 18.5%, respectively. So when people discuss Hawaii’s “diversity,” it is important to understand that Black and Latino people are significantly underrepresented.
The personal experience of Black Hawaii residents shows that the patterns of anti-Black discrimination and stereotyping is very much present in Hawaii. Dr. Akiemi Glenn, the Executive Director of the Pōpolo Project, explained to the Hawaii Civil Beat that the death of George Floyd last May came right on the heels of the local Black community in Hawaii dealing with racist comments spread on social media over photos of a Memorial Day beach party that violated COVID-19 health guidelines. Glenn said that many Black locals often feel misunderstood and “othered” from the local culture in Hawaii. She added, “There’s a whole community of us who live here and are part of Hawaii and part of the local people.” Furthermore, the research (2007, 2010, and 2015) conducted by Professor Justin Levinson from the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law are just a few examples of the academic scholarship that supports the fact that Hawaii is not exempt from possessing anti-black stereotypes and biases against people of a darker skin color. Levinson argues that his studies show that anti-Black sentiment in Hawaii is similar to the mainland. He also documented and explored the prevalence of anti-Micronesian racism in Hawaii.
Although limited, Hawaii’s available police statistics and prison data is a reminder that the United States has a violent and unjust imperialist history in Hawaii. This is a legacy that is still perpetuated today. In the month following the Hawaii BLM protests, the Hawaii chapter of the ACLU sent a letter to Chief Ballard and the Honolulu Police Commission outlining concerns about the disproportionate representation of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders and Black people in Hawaii’s arrest data. In their research, the ACLU reported that “HPD was 30 times more likely to arrest a Micronesian person and 5 times more likely to arrest a Black or Samoan person for violations of the COVID-19 orders than to arrest a white person” and “between 2008 and 2010, officers were 3.5 times more likely to use force against Black people and 26 percent more likely to use force against Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders than against white people.” In terms of incarceration rates, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, Native Hawaiian and Black people are both populations that are overrepresented in Hawaii’s prisons.
Believing that Hawaii is somehow exempt from racism is an assumption that makes public policy work much easier. In other words, there exists a much more complex and deeply rooted problem to address once the systems of justice concede that a racially “diverse” community can still very much breed racism. The fact that Black people remain a disproportionately small percentage of Hawaii compared to the United States means that it is crucial to uplift Black voices in Hawaii. Also, the lack of a white majority makes it all the more important to encourage other Hawaii locals of color to reflect on their own biases, educate themselves on the legacy of American colonialism in Hawaii, and destroy the myth of Hawaii as a racial utopia.
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