I remember growing up in a small town on the windward side of `Oahu called Kaneohe. There were only three private schools in Kaneohe at that time. Then, like today you needed to enroll into their school system by taking a test. This memory has stuck with me from the age of five years old until today.
I was told by my Mother that I needed to meet with a teacher from the school and that I would be tested on my abilities. I remember taking a short test in a workbook and then sitting down with the teacher and going through a series of verbal recognition. The most important part of my testing took place when the teacher asked me a series of questions. This started with the usual, my name, home address, home phone number etc. However, the teacher kept interrupting to correct me by asking me things like, did I mean to say three instead of tree or Mother instead of Mada. I was so upset with the teacher that I stopped talking and refused to finish my testing.
Of course, by then they had called for my Mother to speak with her about my unusual behavior. When my Mother arrived the teacher explained to my Mother that I did not know how to speak proper English and that would count against me as an effective learner. In other words I was considered stupid. Stupid did not get into private schools.
Now, back to racism in Hawaii, one of my earliest encounter with racism was that teacher insinuating that I was considered less than because I grew up not only learning to speak English, but bits and pieces of pidgin. Not realizing that it was viewed as NO CAN, to speak pidgin. My Mother spoke no pidgin, at all; however my Father was a mix of English and pidgin. I obviously was not allowed to attend my parent’s first choice of private schooling and had to settle for the second choice. Just because of a few vocabulary words in pidgin, racism in Hawaii.
Where does pidgin originate in Hawaii? Pidgin (or Hawaii Creole) originated from English speaking and non-English speaking immigrants trying to communicate in Hawaii. Pidgin is an accumulation of many languages, including Portuguese, Hawaiian, and Cantonese, Japanese, Filipinos, and Koreans. Pidgin became a useful language for each nationality to converse.
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