ABSTRACT
In Hawai’i, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic conflicts are played out – in part – in terms of language ideology, at a level of complexity unmatched anywhere in the mainland. What follows are anonymous excerpts from discussion boards where people who live or have lived in Hawai’i for long periods talk about how they see themselves, and about the difficulty of navigating the complex relationships between ethnicity, race, class, language and privilege. The aboriginal Polynesian language of Hawai’i was the only language spoken in the islands until they were colonized, when Hawai’i was annexed by the US and her government forcibly disbanded. Okamura outlines the systematic degradation of Filipinos in Hawai’i throughout the twentieth century, during which time Filipino men were seen (and treated) as emotionally volatile, primitive, sexually aggressive and violent. This historical animosity is directly relevant to the language-focused discrimination in Fragante’s case.
