Racist

This summer, my sister M, who currently lives in Spanish Fork, Utah, went to Hawai'i to visit the family. While there, she went to the beach with Sister T (no relation to Mr. T) and T's kids. Sister T's eight-year-old son was wearing some red-white-and-blue Old Navy board shorts. Now, Sister T is married to a Chinese-American, which makes her kids half-Chinese, but they're all pretty fair-skinned so, especially when they're with her and not their dad, people assume they're just white. Or, as we say in Hawai'i, haole.

So Sister M, Sister T, and Eight-Year-Old Nephew are walking down the sidewalk at the beach. A couple locals--meaning people who look local because they have brown skin and at least one-sixteenth of their ancestors may have been native Hawaiians--are sitting under a tree maybe five feet from the sidewalk. And as Sisters and Nephew are passing, Local 1 looks at Nephew, then at Local 2, and says, "F***ing patriotic haole."

Sister M shot them a nasty glare (or, as we say in Hawai'i, "stink eye"). To say that about--and in front of--an eight-year-old!

When Sister M told me about this, I was furious. If I had been there, I thought, I would have done more than glare. "What the hell is your problem?" I would have yelled. "You stupid f***ing racist!"

And then Sister T would have reprimanded me for using such language in front of her child.

And, truthfully, I wouldn't have really done anything more than give them stink eye because I'm much bolder in my imagination than I am in reality.

Segue to this past Monday evening. Tolkien Boy and I are in the locker room after another buffifying session of weightlifting. A white dude walks by the brown dude cleaning the shower, then stops, looks at Brown Dude's t-shirt (which I assume said something about Mililani High School on it), and says, "Ho, brah, you went Mililani High School?"

"Nah," says Brown Dude. "I went Kam. But I grew up in Mililani. Why? You from Hawai'i?"

"Yeah," says White Dude, laying the Hawaiian Pidgin accent on thick. "I from La'ie. Our house stay on Naniloa Loop, right across da temple."

They proceed to talk about people they know in each other's church wards. Following are Master Fob's thoughts:

"Who does this haole think he is? There's no way he talks like that naturally. He's just trying to impress the brown dude."

"I bet he's not even really from La'ie. His dad probably did a teaching exchange at BYU-H so maybe he went to two years of high school there. He's probably really from Utah."

"He's not as cool as I am. I was born in Hawaii."

"Stupid haole."

I really don't want to raise my children in Utah. There are things you can learn in a culturally diverse society that you can't learn in a place where everyone looks, talks, and thinks like you. But I really really don't want to raise my children in a place where they'll learn that there's something wrong with having light skin.