One poster in particular is getting all butthurt about it being a racial slur.

I am a Kauai HS and Chaminade Univ. graduate who lived there and may return to the islands to live. If any of the outraged critics watched Hawaii Five-0, they'd know the term "haole" is Hawaiian for white person but it is not a racial slur unless presented as such via an adjective that is offensive. The TV series uses it often. You won't hear Italian, Jewish or AA terms on TV but you will hear the word "haole".

This is an example of two cultures that differ and the term, "When in Rome. . . ." applies. If anyone compares the Mainland culture to that of Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, they are just ignorant (by definition, not meant as a slam).

Relax brah, and Aloha!

(I'm working on my Spanish today).

I think everybody on Kauai was at his funeral.

Knew it wasn't used as a slur.

My family arrived in Honolulu over 100 years ago. The family has lived in the same house in Honolulu for 80 years. The Japanese side of the family came to the Islands as indentured cane workers. Friends still call me haole, and doesn't bother me a bit. Just another one of those "local haoles".

I know haoles are not supposed to dabble in Pidgin, but the "Pidgin Shakespeare", Lois-Ann Yamanaka is a friend, and has granted me a special dispensation.

To which they reply- "Brah, hapa haole". With a grin of course.

Shoots. No can win.

Ps got your back

Sorry I'm a late arrival to this thread, but the print on my iPad mini is so mini that I often land where I didn't intend to these days.

After 8 years trying to explain on DU how Hawai'i and Hawaiian culture differ profoundly from the Mainland, I have just about given up.

I went to my HS reunion last October -- it was wonderful. I reconnected with folks I'd known since 5th grade at Kainalu Elementary. Kailua High School was where we ended up. Then graduated UH Manoa. Public school all the way.

As for African Americans, despite the military presence, there were all of 3 AA kids at KHS in the mid 60s in a school of almost 2,000. They were a tiny tiny minority, all military dependents, in a population of Asians, Polynesians, and haoles. Like me. I'm a haole, and was never a military dependent.

I read once that Michelle tells her husband's newer friends that they won't "get" Barack unless they "get" Hawai'i, and I believe that. It formed me deeply -- many of my classmates are expats like me, and a subtext to our reunion was how we carry Hawai'i with us wherever we are.

(Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Station) Your 3 AA classmates must have been the children of officers.

And I never really realized that about "Barry", as he was known at Punahou. I guess that's because I "get" Hawai'i.

His daughter was in my class. The football player came from Camp LeJeune before Hawai'i and lived in Waimanalo. The last one was just some random freshman when I was a senior.

As for Punahou, I knew a couple of kids in Jr. Hi who peeled off to Punahou, but that took kala my family emphatically did not have. I really admire how the president's grandmother et al pulled together to see that the one child they had with them could have that opportunity (I'm the eldest of 4).

When I was a young(ish) married in the mid 1970s my then husband and baby and I lived in a condo in Waianae. We bought it during construction and had no idea the neighborhood would turn into overflow housing for the military -- enlisted men and their families, a few in the Sgt. range. Those wives were some truly unhappy women; one of them told me that Hawai'i should be classified as a "hardship post."

As an aside, there were a large number of AAs. There were also I thought were a surprising number of black/white couples given the era we were just emerging from.

And I was a local haole....