Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. xiii, 340 pp. (Illustrations.) US$28.95, paper. ISBN 9781478014379 .
Scholarly interest in both the history of migration to the Hawaiian Islands and contemporaneous issues in ethno-cultural identities in Hawai‘i has often excluded the experiences of the Black men and women who have made the archipelago their home since the 1800s. Similarly, the movements of people of African descent have been centred on the “Black Atlantic,” largely omitting the Pacific region. This book addresses this significant gap in the literature in several permutations. The title refers to Nitasha Tamar Sharma’s research participants’ present experiences of Hawai‘i as shaped by indigenous resistance to rigid racial structures, and removed from deeply entrenched continental American hierarchies of race, providing an alternative domain in which to experience life as a person of African descent. It also alludes to the Hawaiian Kingdom as a place where slavery was outlawed, and race did not factor into the prospects of citizenship for Black migrants.
The author examines Hawai‘i as a “haven” with multiple caveats, addressing the complexities of the experiences of Black locals (African-descended, often multiracial individuals who were born and/or raised in the islands) and recent Black transplants who have relocated for work or adventure with racial identity questioning, stereotyping, antiBlackness, and local racial hierarchies. Sharma also discusses the long relationship between the American civil rights movement and indigenous rights movements in Hawai‘i, with a particular focus on their convergence in the Movement for Black Lives.
The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 traces the histories of the earliest Black settlers, further nuancing previously established narratives of the Black presence in Hawai‘i as centred on African-American professionals. As well as highlighting the outstanding accomplishments of Black royal advisors, educators, and politicians (particularly women) and members of the US military, Sharma acknowledges those whose names have been lost to “archival silences” (59) and census terminology that erased Black identities, including whalers and sailors from Cape Verde and England, and plantation labourers from the southern United States. Some settled and married Hawaiian and local Asian women, establishing a population of Black multiracial locals who experienced “both integration and invisibility” (69) in Hawai‘i, where racial binaries of Black and White did not exist.
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on ethnographic fieldwork with individuals who articulate different typologies of Black identities: Black locals and Black transplants. Sharma discusses Black locals’ varied relationships to their Black ancestry, and how Hawaiian concepts of genealogy can conflict with Black American ideals of Black-only identity and racial authenticity, which confronted the participants during visits to the continental United States or interactions with Black transplants. These more recent migrants found Hawai‘i, as African-Americans, a place of “sanctuary and a reprieve” (162) from social structures defined by race, and fixed expectations of Blackness. Transplants also demonstrated explicit awareness and articulations about racism, in contrast to Black locals.
Although many of the research participants describe their experiences of Hawai‘i as a haven, where Black individuals experience relief from the “racial hypervisibility” (151) of the continental United States, the invisibility of Black individuals and identities in Hawai‘i is addressed in chapter 4. The author examines the ways racism manifests in Hawai‘i in the absence of a Black/White binary, and the lack of understanding of Black cultures and experiences.
Through accounts of experiencing racism at school, in the workplace, and with police, the author’s research participants present the complex scenarios of how Blackness struggles to fit into indigenous and local understandings about ethnicity and racial prejudice. Sharma discusses how racist incidents can be downplayed in Hawai‘i, or how attempts can be made to diffuse them through local humour, obscuring real racial hierarchies that favour white residents and some Asian settler-colonist groups (local Japanese and Chinese) and disfavour others (Filipino, Samoan, and Micronesian). Deeply rooted attitudes of antiBlackness in Asian cultures, and stereotyping of Black residents as being members of the military, mark them as outsiders, and in the latter, tie them to American imperialism.
After examining the racial struggles within Black communities in Hawai‘i, in chapter 5 Sharma turns to the intersections of Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and Black activism, highlighting historical relationships, such as with the Black Panthers, and current allyships. Arguing that Black political movements were foundational to the emergence of Hawaiian anticolonial resistance, as well as the establishment of Hawaiian studies, the author illustrates deep commonalities in both scholarship and social action.
Invoking the indigenous Hawaiian concept of kuleana (responsibility), Sharma concludes with a call for Black histories, and the present intersections of local and global activist issues, to be incorporated into primary, secondary, and tertiary education in Hawai‘i. She argues that such measures will bring into focus the realities of historical and current racial politicization—in particular the institutionalized discrimination against Hawai‘i’s Micronesian communities—as well as foster deeper understanding of the lived Black experience.
Research on Black individuals and communities in Hawai‘i disrupts common, often uncritical tropes about the islands’ multiculturalism. Sharma’s research not only adds further nuance to the small body of work on Black settlers in Hawai‘i, past and present (with particular focus on Black multiracial identity), but also how Black identities in Hawai‘i challenge Black/White and Native/settler binaries. Her research opens opportunities for further dialogue among Native, Black, and critical mixed-race studies scholarship.
This book will be of interest to scholars of Pacific settlement histories, transnational and ethnocultural identities, colonialism, and indigenous activism. For those teaching Pacific studies courses, this volume adds a new dimension to Hawaiian histories of migration, settler colonization, and multiculturalism, as well as current alignments in social justice movements.
Michelle Ladwig Williams
Independent Scholar, Auckland