The Third World in the Fiftieth State

This chapter challenges the progressive narrative of Hawaiʻi's boosters. It does so by analyzing the rise of opposition movements in Hawaiʻi. In particular, groups advocating for ethnic studies programs at the University of Hawaiʻi and related, nascent movements for native rights are considered. While the liberal multiculturalism of state boosters went largely uncontested in Hawaiʻi in the years before and after statehood, by the late 1960s Hawaiʻi's colonial history and its consequences would be reawakened as excitement over statehood gave way to widespread discontent among those excluded from statehood's rewards. Like the architects of Hawaiʻi's cultural exchange institutions, radicals in Hawaiʻi were also responding to Third World movements for cultural nationalism—as movements not to counteract, but to emulate.