Just wanted to let you guys know about a video I uploaded onto Current.com about interviews with Hapa people. It can be found here: http://current.com/items/89613372/hapa_perspectives.htm

I’d appreciate your comments and votes!

I figured this would have been missed out on, since you’re picking on points to justify your side. Which is fine. To each their own perspective.

As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again. You’re choosing a side. Fine. Good for you. Hope you feel better about it. The point of the writing was that I didn’t know that there was even a word out there. Regardless of where the origination of the word comes from, the etymology of the word is that it’s been transferred into another culture and diversifying the meaning.

Point being, regardless of perspective, it’s still an interesting word and if we took to the point of justifying origination of language, then we might as well quit speaking English since we’ve also bastardized romantic languages.

It doesn’t matter how many non-Hawaiian people in SoCal or NorCal want to use “hapa” to mean “half asian” — if we want to respect the wishes of Hawaiians (see the realhapas.com website) we should only use the word to mean “half Hawaiian”. You need to do more research if you think that is only the view of author of the Hyphen article.

Personally, as someone who is half Japanese and half white, I don’t want to refer to myself as hapa anymore after reading realhapas.com and discovering how much hatred a lot of Hawaiians have for Japanese Americans. Let them have their word. Let them play by themselves in the corner of the room while the rest of the mixed-asian community hangs out together.

The point is that it’s not as much about being half, as much as the etymology of the word shifting. Note that you’re defining the word as non-PC based on one single assistant professor of AA studies views.

I purposely didn’t mention the Hyphen article due to the fact that while you have native Hawaiians out there that wouldn’t care for that, there is also a large part of the Socal community that does use this word in the fashion stated.

It’s no more as correct as the fact that Hollywood bastardizes the use of “feng shui” because of the fad and quaintness of it. In fact, there are many people that supposedly practice it without actually knowing what it even means. So does that make it raping of culture? Nah. Just another perspective.

If you don’t want to be accused of raping Hawaiian culture, you can only use “hapa” to refer to someone who is half-Hawaiian.

http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/features/web_exclusives/rethinking.php

http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/archives/2007/12/hapa_featured_i.html

Hawaiian hapas don’t want to be associated with other mixed asians in other locations, and they don’t want to donate the word “hapa” to be broader mixed-asian community.

I was born & raised in Hawaii (of 1/2 Chinese, 1/2 Japanese heritage), and I think I first learned the word ‘hapa’ sometime in the late ’70’s in middle school. I was told that it meant 1/2 Haole, 1/2 Japanese, and ‘hapa’ was a concatenation of the two words. And I’ve never encountered a situation to doubt what I was told, although the usage that I seen over the years had it evolve to not only Japanese, but covering all Asians. This is quite new to me, that ‘hapa’ is an actual Hawaiian word, and realhapas.com (and the hyphen article) has a valid point of the appropriation of the word.

Ben has just learned a new word, I just learned that I’ll have to reconsider how I use that same word. (I don’t use the word to describe myself, but those who are part Asian, part Caucasian – now that will have to change.)