James Kahakua’s story is a good place to start, for reasons that will be
clear shortly. In Chapter 12, the sociolinguistic complexities of living in
Hawai’i will be discussed in more depth. For the moment, the fact that
James Kahakua is a native of Hawai’i and bilingual speaker of English and
Hawai’ian Creole English (HC) is not as simple a statement as it might
seem on the surface. Even the phrase “a native of Hawai’i” is fraught with
ambiguity, because it raises the sensitive subject of native Hawai’ian
rights and self-determination. What it means to be Hawai’ian, who has the
right to call themselves Hawai’ian, how to interpret terms like haole,^11
these are questions that are hotly debated. So we return to Mr. Kahakua, a
university-trained meteorologist with 20 years of experience. Kahakua
applied for a promotion which would have required him to read prepared
weather reports on the radio. It is important to note that these reports
would have been prepared ahead of time, so that editing could be
undertaken as necessary.^12
Likewise, it is important to remember that as a life-long native,
Kahakua was absolutely prepared to use the longest and most difficult
placenames (such as ‘Alalā-keiki, ‘Ale-nui-hāhā, Hanakāpī’ai) crucial to
talking about the weather, and very difficult for a mainlander to learn.
Mr. Kahakua was not given this promotion. His employer found him
unqualified to do so, not because he is incapable of reading, but because as
a bilingual English–HC speaker, he has an Hawai’ian accent.
Subsequently, Mr. Kahakua sued his employer under Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act, on the basis of language traits linked to national origin,
and he lost. He lost because the judge, who was not a native of Hawai’i,
believed that it was reasonable to require that radio announcers speak
“Standard American English” (which was not defined explicitly) and
furthermore, the judge added that “there is no race or physiological reason
why Kahakua could not have used Standard American English