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Yim and Yamamoto open with the same assessment: race relations in Hawaii are getting worse, and the greater danger is that most residents refuse to acknowledge it. Drawing on her Price of Paradise chapter, Yim identifies four ethnic pressure points. First, a deep suspicion of newcomers regardless of race, rooted in what Yamamoto describes as a localism that hardened in the 1970s against Japanese investors and Caucasian transplants. Second, economically stressed immigrant families whose unsupervised children drift toward youth gangs. Third, Hawaiian sovereignty, which Yim sees as positive for native Hawaiians but threatening to other groups who view Hawaiian gains as their own loss. Fourth, the Japanese-American "model minority" stereotype — Yamamoto argues it masks dysfunction, overstates political control, and prevents honest self-criticism within that community. Roth raises the Haunani-Kay Trask controversy, which Yim recalls as generating an unusually passionate flood of letters to the Advertiser. Yamamoto contextualizes Kill Haole Day as an expression of accumulated anger in the 1970s rather than an ongoing practice. Both guests call for formal public dialogue on race, warning that Hawaii risks repeating Los Angeles patterns where ethnic groups fight over a shrinking economic pie instead of working to expand it.
Transcript
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