The Home of Steven Barnes
Author, Teacher, Screenwriter


Friday, September 09, 2005

A colonized third World Country...

I remember someone saying this to me about Hawaii, and there are certainly ways that it is true.  The talk about "Sovereignty" recently involves the desire of Native Hawaiians to teach their children in their own language in certain schools--without non-Hawaiians present.  this isn't legal according to Federal law, and is a point o focus for the protestors and planners.  Fine. I have no idea what the truth is, and talkign to the natives, they seem far more laid-back about having "lost" their independence than most indiginous folks I've talked to...possibly because the vast inflow of tourist dollars makes life fairly easy.  Not sure.  but there was one thing that I saw that I just had to comment on...
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There were tons of mixed-race couples to be seen, and not one of them was a native Hawaiian male with a white or black female.  All of them were white males with Asian or Hawaiian women, with a sprinkling of Black males with the same.  I suspect that anywhere you go, anywhere in the world that a people have been colonized, you will find this phenomenon--women being attracted to the powerful males who dominate their culture.  It is interesting that iin the early days of American history, white males had sexual access to black females, and that even now, with statistics suggesting that the actual ratios go in the opposite direction, media images continue to present white male dominance in interracial relationships--in other words, the theater of the mind has replaced the political/sexual realities of the past.
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It makes me wish I was an Anthropology student.  It would be interesting to study colonized peoples around the world, and see what patterns repeat.  I KNOW that it has to irritate the males that their women are running with the white guys.  That has to result in increased violence, leading to police pressure on the locals, and jailing or killing the most aggressive.  Females will get preferential treatment in hiring and education, leading to additional pressure, leading to the death of the most aggressive native males.  Alcoholism, joblessness, and drug addiction would follow.  My guess is that any whe4re you go, in any colonized country, a disproportunate percentage of the colonized males are incarcerated, and tend to have shortened lives due to stress and violence.  And this would be true in, say, Ireland, where both colonized and colonizers are white--so it ain't a black-white thing, although it certainly suggests some answers about American culture, doesn't it?
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Just musing.  Thoughts?

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