Pōpolo

Last May, a few weeks after I moved to Maui, I was at Safeway in line to check out. There was a German couple in front of me and I was a bit lost in thought about how my worlds kept intersecting. Then the cashier, an older African-American man, asked me how I was enjoying my visit.

"Oh, I live here," I said.

With a look of shock, he asked, "How long have you been here??"

I told him it'd only been a few weeks. With a look of relief he said, "Oh, ok, because I haven't seen you around."

A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered to be part of the break-down crew for the annual Whale Days festival. While I was hurrying from one finished task to find another, I was intercepted by two young African-American women I'd seen in passing earlier in the afternoon.

We introduced ourselves and talked briefly about our Maui experiences and, as they were leaving, they noted that "we just had to find you and say hi. You know, when we see one of 'us'."

"The blacker the berry..."

Pōpolo is endemic to Hawaii and 

the Hawaiian word for black people

There have been smaller but similar incidents in between these two. And though I'd wondered and then shrugged it off before, the question finally got to me:

Just how many black people live on Maui that folks are keeping track?

According to the last census: 0.8% of the population in Maui County (that's across four islands, three of which are inhabited), is black.

With an estimated 165,000 people in the county, that's a population only about 1.5 times the size of my high school graduating class.

African Americans came to the islands in the 1800s like so many others to work the plantations. Although the labor conditions may have been better, social conditions for blacks here were said to be little better than they were in the mainland south.

And, of course, it's a LOOOONG way from the support network that most African Americans cultivate.

Hawaii is known for its multicultural makeup. Centuries of international immigrants have resulted in a unique melange that defies easy classification.

A scholar on African Americans in Hawaii wrote, "never underestimate the racial complexity of modern Hawaii." Reportedly, in the 1940s, the local NAACP chapter's members were mostly identified as Japanese, not African American!

I've spent most of my life living as an "other." I don't get as much of a sense of that here because there are so many brown people around. But I realized that when I see other African Americans walking through downtown Lahaina or at one of the resorts or on the beach, I assume they're tourists.

At best, it's my own acknowledgment that not many non-Asian/Polynesian people of color live here. At worst, it's an ugly accumulated bias.

Every day this month my sister has been emailing our family blurbs about notable African Americans. It's been a great opportunity to learn and be inspired, especially in these uncertain and seemingly intolerant times.

I'm trying to learn more. The list of famous Hawaiians is not long, and the list of famous black Hawaiians seems to start and end with Barack Obama.

But I discovered that there's a monument here on Maui to honor African Americans in Hawaii. So, a visit to that memorial park is now on my Maui bucket list.

Because it's good to know the history of the place where you live. But it's even better when you can find some sense of self to help you proudly find your place.


Happy Black History Month!