Then There’s None and one went into academe…

And then yet you’ll find Hawai‘i

In colonialism, media, politics on 19 March 2008 with 1 comment

Jodi Kantor at the New York Times writes:

Since he was very young, Senator Barack Obama has been something of a mediator of racial concerns, shuttling between black and white worlds and trying to translate the concerns of one to the other.

But how might the Hawai‘i of Senator Obama’s youth signify outside black/white divides where the history of the islands isn’t so much about the legacies of African slavery haunting the landscape? Answer: In the questions that Hawaiian sovereigntists have raised over whether Senator Obama was born in the United States or in the independent Kingdom of Hawai‘i. Via the Honolulu Advertiser.

A few independence advocates claim that Hawai‘i legally remains a country today, making Obama and hundreds of thousands of others born in the Islands over the past 50 years not “natural-born” citizens or eligible to be president.

Also:


1 Comment

I just wanted to say thanks for adding my blog to your roll, and it’s exciting to see your new one touching on Native Hawaiian along with Native American topics.

The ways Obama’s Hawaiian (along with his Kenyan, African American and many other) ties are portrayed in the media have definitely been interesting to me over the last few months. The tension between his varied background as (he himself has seemed to argue) placing him somewhere “post-race” and at the same time, the very specter of how America is, in fact, nowhere near the colorblindness it purports, is fascinating. While there’s much to be critical of, of course, I was still surprised by the power of his “speech on race” recently.

Posted by Maile on 28 March 2008 @ 12pm

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"Ragpicker and poet: both are concerned with refuse." Then There's None is a cultural archive of sorts for an assistant professor of American Indian Studies at a Big Ten university.

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