Mufasa, you bring up a lot of points that would take a book to answer. First of all, “haole” is a Hawaiian term for whites. I think it used to refer to anyone from the mainland, but now it has come to mean pretty much any white person. “Hapa” means mixed. It could possibly come from the Korean word “hapcheo” which means to join or unite.
Apparently much of the Hawaiian Pidgin comes from a combination of corrupted Japanese, Korean, Chinese and native Hawaiian. Jared Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee” has a very nice discussion of pidgin languages. It is quite amazing how pidgin quickly develops within a couple of generations into a full blown language with no loss of expressive power of an established language. It seems to support Noam Chomsky’s notion that language is hardwired into the human brain.
As for the Asian women and white men phenomenon, “The Third Chimpanzee” also devotes chapters to the nature of human attraction. Studies tend to show that people tend to marry people who resemble those one grew up with. So, a Chinese girl growing up in a predominantly white area would probably marry a white man.
Also, that tendency is also balanced by the human tendency to marry outside of one’s immediate family group. This appears to be an inborn incest taboo. In a study done in Israeli kibbutzes, it was found that most people tended to marry outside of their own kibbutz, because the other people in their kibbutz were seen almost like brothers and sisters, though they were not blood related.
The third factor for women, is that they tend to marry “up.” They marry into power and money. It is possible that white men, with established power and wealth in this country, are seen as more attractive by women.
This is not to deny that Asian women of past generations have genuine grievances towards their men (as do American women in past generations). My aunt’s voice filled anger and indignation at recalling the times she had been treated badly by Korean men because she was a woman. Strangely, what made matters worse was that she was very pretty. She could not just blend into the background, but attracted a lot of unwanted attention. But she didn’t marry an American simply out of spite. At her age of 30, she was simply too old for most discriminating Korean men. Also, she did have a long-time love who was Korean, but my grandmother did not approve of the man’s family background. My aunt had resigned herself to being an old maid until my uncle came along.
Inspite of my aunt’s negative opinion, in general, of the Korean men of her generation, she does not carry that feeling to today’s Asian men. Perhaps her love of her outstanding nephers color her judgment ;-). In fact, she has a lower opinion of Asian-American women. In the name of liberation and modernity, she feels that they have totally abandoned all sense of propriety and womanliness. They have gone too far in the opposite extreme.
From my perspective, with apologies to those Asian-American women out there who do not fit the description, most have gone out of their way to be “American” to the extent that they have become extreme caricatures of “American” traits. A part of that is to marry outside of their race. A move that I can only interpret as self-loathing.
I don’t have an issue with the interracial aspect per se. In fact, I have a couple of friend, who happen to be white, who I would be very happy if my sister was to marry, rather than any Korean guy I know. I have issues with the reason most Asian women get with white guys. If these women made choices in a color-blind manner, we would see much less Asian women-white man pairings.
I do have to add that, we in the Korean-American community, tend to police their own a little too strictly. Because we live in a society in which any individual action is seen by the majority as being representative of the whole minority group, one feels this extreme pressure to not fuck up. One feels that it is very difficult to be an individual, without being incorrectly perceived within the group and outside of the group. So, many people just rebel and go against all the influences of their parents. A part of that is marrying outside of their group.
In my personal case, though I married another Asian (Japanese), I did not marry another Korean because I did not follow the religion of the majority of Koreans living in the U.S. I just had too much pride to stoop to attending church to just meet girls. The Korean-American community life revolves around church, and I just don’t fit in. To me shared values and world view are the most important things. If a black girl or a white girl met those criteria, I would have married her.