Takara began the lecture, saying, "Aloha. I just got off a plane, so I'm a bit tired. But we'll see how it goes." Her candid opening reflected the rest of the lecture, as Takara shared her personal experiences in an attempt to inform students of the racial prejudices evident in Hawai'i.
She described her experience as a young black girl growing up in Tuskegee, Ala. She attended a predominantly white Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania and eventually matriculated at Tufts University, graduating in 1965. Although her educational experience took place in the North, Takara recalled that she never felt that she escaped the racism that plagued her native South. Only when she studied abroad for a summer in France did she feel differently. "It was the first time I ever felt free," she said.
Deciding to live outside of the United States and away from racial tensions, Takara studied in Western Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. Upon moving back to France, however, she learned that her cousin, a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was the first college student killed in the Civil Rights Movement.
Sensing that she could play a part in fighting the racist contradictions evident in the U.S., Takara moved back home and married a white man who was also active in the Civil Rights Movement. The couple had their first child while Takara taught at the University of California at Berkeley, the stomping ground of the Black Panther movement, and soon decided to move to Hawai'i to escape the racial challenges and tensions of the mainland.
Upon settling in Hawai'i, Takara explained that one was thought of as either a local or an "other." With various identities and paradoxes, the racial harmony that she had dreamed of was abruptly replaced by a harsh reality. "Policemen would come up to me and tell me to move along, like I was a vagrant," Takara remembered.
Perplexed, Takara decided to uncover the reasons behind the discrimination against blacks in Hawai'i. While teaching French at the University of Hawai'i, she first began research in 1977 for an article entitled, "Black Women in Hawai'i." Delving deep into historical archives, Takara discovered that 40-50 percent of blacks came to the islands on whaling ships. "The more and more I researched, the more I found that there were black men who'd actually jumped ship for the islands," she said. Yet, only three percent of the population in Hawai'i at the time was black. Voicing her confusion, Takara asked, "They had to go so far … so what had happened?"
With a cultural and ethnic landscape unlike any other, Takara discovered that Hawai'i was not the "paradise" that she once imagined. With interracial marriage and Christianization by the white missionaries, the few blacks who did stay, she said, "faded into the local community. There was a total assimilation."
Takara also noted that the issue of ethnic and racial identity has changed since she first moved to Hawai'i in 1971. "People were ashamed of being Hawai'ian," she said. "Now it's the exact opposite." With constant contradictions in racial identities, Takara observed that politics were intertwined with ethnic background. "I saw the politics of ethnicity and color," she said.
Similar to the economy of the South, Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos were asked to come work on plantations in the 1850s, while blacks were shunned. "[Locals] thought they'd be troublemakers," said Takara.
Further research led to the startling discovery that most blacks on the island were either recruited athletes or part of the military. According to Takara, black military officers hold prestigious jobs, since segregation in the military lasted up until World War II. She added that, though there are some black communities near military bases, they are rarely seen. "Today, we do not have a visible black community in a place," she said. According to Takara, the permanent black population in Hawai'i is 6,000-7,000, but with the additional military officers, it is 30,000-35,000.
Takara described the situation in Hawai'i as a "lack of aloha." There exists, she remarked, a different reception for blacks than for non-blacks. Takara blames "old stereotypes and a lack of education." Although she feels nobody wants to discuss the racial stereotypes in her state, she continues to make sure her voice is heard. "We have to look at this and look at what has happened and challenge it," Takara said. "I continue to demand that people open their eyes." At the conclusion of her lecture, Takara fielded several questions from interested students. Afterwards, James Park '08 said that Takara's passion for the subject matter was evident. "I came away with an even greater feeling that racial harmony is absolutely important given our world's sad history with domination by white people and the legacy it left," he stated.
Laura Taylor '08, who calls Hawai'i home, agreed. "I recognized and agreed with a lot of what Dr. Takara said about Hawai'i and its unique culture," she said. "I never learned about this aspect of Hawai'ian history in my public school experience … while I was aware of this aspect of Hawai'i's history, I had never considered how fundamental such decisions were to the establishment of our local culture."
The lecture's organizer, Marika Hashimoto '06, responded similarly. "People assume that it's a 'racial paradise,' but it becomes complicated with there being so many ethnic groups and relatively few blacks and whites." The lecture was Hashimoto's house project for the Asian Culture House and was included in the Asian Lecture Series. She was pleased with the turnout and the broad range of people that came to the event.
Hashimoto hopes that people came away with a greater awareness and appreciation for the global racial prejudices that students at the College rarely see. "Being at Amherst, we're used to discussing race in a very specific context, without realizing how different things are in other places that have unique histories," said Hashimoto. "Dr. Takara calls herself very much of an 'interdisciplinarian' … I hope that people came away making connections they'd never made before, between the places they've been and the experiences they've accumulated."