They Followed the Trade Winds

They Followed the Trade Winds: African Americans in Hawaii was conceived in 2000 to provide a comprehensive written treatment of the African American presence in Hawaii. It appeared as Social Process in Hawaii (Volume 43, 2004). This new volume adds topics in new studies on African Americans in Hawaii.

Editor Miles Jackson provides a discussion of Hawaii’s African Americans participating in the arts. Through music and poetry, African Americans have added to Hawaii’s sense of jazz, theater, dance, filmmaking and poetry. Jackson also looks at participation in organizations like the Honolulu Symphony and Honolulu Opera Theater.

Contributor Elisa Joy White, Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at University of California at Davis, examines Blacks living in Hawaii as "local". White provides a comprehensive examination of the historical, social, cultural and political variables that contribute to the exclusion of African American Americans. In her chapter "Representations of Blackness and the “Popolo' Problematic", White presents an analysis of the use of the Hawaiian word “popolo' to refer to individuals of African descent, providing a richly provocative analysis of the depth of racism in seemingly innocuous contexts. She discusses “popolo' through a variety of media representations of Black identities in Hawaii. Her treatment of “popolo' as used in Hawaii fills a gap in the global literature and the impact and use of epithets in describing ethnic groups in many parts of the world.

Readers will also find an updated bibliography, which includes all of the recently published books on Barack Obama, President of the United States of America.