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Gateway State: Hawai‘i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire
22
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0
References
2020
Year
Critical Race TheoryColonialismEthnohistoryIndigenous PeopleRacial StudyCultural StudiesAmerican LiteratureSocial SciencesIndigenous StudyBlack Feminist ThoughtRaceSettler ColonialismWhite SupremacyGateway StateAfrican American StudiesCultural DiversityAmerican IdentityEthnic StudiesCultural HistoryLanguage StudiesIntersectionalityIdentity PoliticsAmerican RaceIndigenous FeminismsPowerful AnalysisAnti-racismCultureHawaii StatehoodBlack FeminismCultural AnthropologySocial JusticeSocial Diversity
In Gateway State Sarah Miller-Davenport offers a powerful analysis of the interconnectedness of race, culture, domestic politics, and foreign policies during Hawaii's journey to statehood in Cold War America. In the 1950s–1960s period, rising demands for racial justice and equality at home and decolonization movements around the world fundamentally reshaped American race, culture, and international relations. Miller-Davenport situates her study of Hawaii statehood and the promotion of its social amity of racial-cultural relations in this larger context, deftly making local history into an important global inquiry. Drawing on her rich archival research of diverse sources, she illuminates the different forces and interests eager to present Hawaii as a paradise of cultural and racial mixing and social harmony for both domestic political consumption and international projection of “America's democratic credentials to the decolonizing world” (p. 49). She critiques the marketing of Hawaii as a model of national progress of racial-cultural inclusiveness and the aberration of American multiculturalism.