hunterbishop.com

Chunkster makes a good observation deserving a response. Why when I wrote the story about the Hawaii Tribune-Herald employee did I include the fact that Isaac Nahakuelua is a Native Hawaiian?

Right or wrong, like it or not, race is nearly an unavoidable topic in Hawaii. Without venturing into the question of what constitutes a race of people, you can’t deny that many important issues in Hawaii are framed by the experience of those who first settled these islands.

Even though readers may have guessed at Isaac Nahakuelua's’s ancestry from his name, there was no photograph and even that might be inconclusive. I don’t like to leave readers guessing when I write and I’ve learned over the years of both reading and writing that attention to detail is valuable to a reader. So I included it in the story.

Now, Chunkster is right that no one is claiming discrimination in what the newspaper did to Nahakuelua because he’s Native Hawaiian. But no one is claiming he’s being discriminated because of his age, either, yet I also included that in the story. It’s simply the kind of detail that gives the reader a better sense of the person and his station in life.

But now you may be asking, if my subject were a Caucasian named Smith, would I have made the point to write that he was Caucasian? Probably not.

The reason is that whatever you think of race, the fate of Native Hawaiians as a group in Hawaii has been an important issue since Captain Cook set foot on the Big Island. And over time Native Hawaiians collectively have been relegated to the bottom of the socio-economic ranks in our society, which is a shame that all of us live with today and one that many still are struggling to rectify.

So when a young Native Hawaiian, whose prospects for success are dimmed at birth by the nature of his ancestry, I think it significant to mention the fact that he is Native Hawaiian when obstacles are placed in his path whether they are the direct result of racial discrimination or not.

I hope this lends some insight into the thought process behind what I wrote and my thanks to Chunkster for encouraging me to think a little more critically about it. As always, I welcome your comments.