“Okay, what’sBlack film? It’s not Hollywood or it’s ‘againstHollywood’ ” so that’s a fairly radical ideawhen you’re first confronted with it.
The same can be asked about Indigenous film, specifically Pacific films. What makes a film Indigenous? Does it have to follow particular themes, ideas, or structures?
“The Three Evils of Society,”Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave us a message and a gravewarning; “We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution ofvalues...when machines and computers, profit motives andproperty rights, are considered more important than people,the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism areincapable of being conquered.”
It's incredible how Dr. King's words are still so relevant, even today. It's as if society has not learned. As a student of history, I am reminded that change is slow but it does happen.
We havenever been more empowered and yet, in many ways, are stillso disenfranchised.
This mirrors our own struggles as Pacific Islanders, in particular, Native Hawaiians. We continue to thrive, evolve, and empower ourselves, yet we continue to face subversive efforts to disenfranchise our people. A recent example is the attacks on Kamehameha School's admission policies.
First, we have to realize that, for the most part, we can’t rely on most whitepeople. It is a recurring historical truth. Sure, there are white exceptions whoare antiracist and want liberation, but they are rare. I am glad to see a largenumber of white people in the streets protesting on behalf of Black lives. Iremain cautious, though. I have seen countless videos of white millennialsescalating out-of-control situations when we know that Black and Brownpeople are going to experience the brunt of white supremacy’s force. I’m stillstruggling with the video footage of a young white woman yelling in the faceof Black police officers, including a Black woman, that “they are the problem”and telling the Black woman to “smile for Breonna Taylor.”4 While I dobelieve the police need to be abolished, this white woman was more engagingin an act of whiteness than one of genuine protest. She might have sincerelybelieved in police abolition and desire justice for Breonna Taylor, but she mustnot forget that she is white, and even though Black police officers can showout for their white officer peers, and they are working for the state, it stilldoesn’t sit right by me. Just because you are anti-police, that does notnecessarily mean that your whiteness has disappeared or that anti-Blackracism is gone.
This is interesting to bring up because I have also thought about this when it came to indigenous movements like the protest for TMT. I also sometimes question the motives of some indigenous "spokespeople" who claim authority on knowledge. I wonder what others think about this.
t might seem controversial to call Africans and their descendants’Indigenous peoples, but it is not. To reclaim, insofar as we can imagine, theIndigenous roots of Africans in the diaspora is neither an attempt to replaceIndigenous peoples of the US nor to act as settlers in some real or imaginedreturn to Africa, as previous generations have done. However, we do have toaccount for the fact that, besides some cultural remnants that were able tosurvive historical erasure, Africans living in the US, because of enslavement,were stripped of their heritage
This is a poignant argument to make. I cannot imagine the horror of having to be forcibly removed from your homeland, taken somewhere you've never been before, and stripped of your cultural identity. It's incredible to see how African slaves tried to hold onto their identity and use it to persevere, but also how it evolved due to their horrific experiences.
According to political scientist William Galston, liberal democracyhas four components: republican principle, democracy, constitutionalism, andliberalism. He defines “republican principle” as popular sovereignty. Peoplelegitimate the government. “Democracy” means that all citizens have equality,and the structure of the government is inclusive citizenship.“Constitutionalism” means that the structure of the government exists inwritten form, a document like, for example, the US Constitution. Liberalismcenters on people’s individual rights and privacy. us, liberal democracycombines all these elements, though popular sovereignty is limited.8 USliberal democracy has been “living beyond its means” since the beginning.9e Founding Fathers have built debts that they or contemporary whiteAmericans will never be able to pay off.
I am glad that Mays points out the hypocrisy of American democracy. As a teacher who teaches both US Government and Hawaiian History, I cannot help but always recognize the dichotomy between the two histories. I try to remind my students that, despite the ideals that the US nation is founded on, it has fallen short of what it promises.