An interesting commentary on Race in the race

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The Way We Live Now
Mixed Messenger
By PEGGY ORENSTEIN
...Hawaii, Obama’s childhood home, is the most diverse state in the Union: 21 percent of residents identified as “Hapa,” a Hawaiian word meaning “half” that has gone from being a slur against mixed-race Asians to a point of pride — and has increasingly been adopted by multiracials of all kinds on the Mainland...

Am I the only person who thinks this is a horrible word? If there was a child in my life of mixed race or dual heritage or whatever I would be damned if I wanted them to think they were any kind of "half". Whatever they are, they are "whole". But maybe it's a more complex word than this brief article allows.

...Will Hapa Nation eventually make tracking “race” impossible? Will it unite us? Or will it, as some suggest, further segregate African-Americans from everyone else? The answer to all these questions may be yes.

This part I don't get. Why would African-Americans feel alienated by mixed race people creating their own culture from the ground up. Isn't that what the descendants of slaves, separated from land and family and sense of community had to do?

Just an added note - the three African men I work with on Saturdays have a strong belief in family, charity (ie giving) and community. I know if I asked them how to "solve" the problem of the balck underclass in the US their answer would be, "Make them stay in school and get a good job, otherwise forget them!" I can't help thinking that Europe fucked a whole continent with slavery and colonialism, and America has mostly had to deal with the fallout.