Author: Sarah Miller-Davenport
File Type: pdf
How Hawaii became an emblem of multiculturalism during its journey to statehood in the mid-twentieth century Gateway State explores the development of Hawaii as a model for liberal multiculturalism and a tool of American global power in the era of decolonization. The establishment of Hawaii statehood in 1959 was a watershed moment, not only in the ways Americans defined their nations role on the international stage but also in the ways they understood the problems of social difference at home. Hawaiis remarkable transition from territory to state heralded the emergence of postwar multiculturalism, which was a response both to independence movements abroad and to the limits of civil rights in the United States. Once a racially problematic overseas colony, by the 1960s, Hawaii had come to symbolize John F. Kennedys New Frontier. This was a more inclusive idea of who counted as American at home and what areas of the world were considered to be within the U.S. sphere of influence. Statehood advocates argued that Hawaii and its majority Asian population could serve as a bridge to Cold War Asiaand as a global showcase of American democracy and racial harmony. In the aftermath of statehood, business leaders and policymakers worked to institutionalize and sell this ideal by capitalizing on Hawaiis diversity. Asian Americans in Hawaii never lost a perceived connection to Asia. Instead, their ethnic difference became a marketable resource to help other Americans navigate a decolonizing world. As excitement over statehood dimmed, the utopian vision of Hawaii fell apart, revealing how racial inequality and U.S. imperialism continued to shape the fiftieth stateand igniting a backlash against the islands white-dominated institutions. **Review Gateway State is a great book about Hawaii statehood and a pathbreaking story of race and foreign relations in postwar America. By viewing this Cold War crossroads from local, national, and global perspectives, Sarah Miller-Davenport deftly integrates Hawaii history into U.S. history. Gateway State gives readers a whole new way of thinking about the United States in the Pacific world in the twentieth century.--Christopher Capozzola, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This powerful book reveals the ways that Americans ideological uses of racially integrated Hawaii--as message to a decolonizing world and model for a desegregating mainland--bolstered racial and imperial inequalities, and promoted new forms of intractable, hierarchical difference in the name of multiculturalism. Deeply researched and elegantly crafted, Gateway State is a critically important work in the historiographies of U.S. racial formation, overseas colonialism, and the United States in the world.--Paul A. Kramer, author of *The Blood of Government Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines* Gateway State is an indispensable book that argues for Hawaiis centrality in U.S. postwar global expansion, race relations at home, and the fraught origins of multiculturalism. Put simply, this is an important work.--Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Columbia University A highly original, deeply researched, and lucidly presented work, Gateway State offers a rich investigation into the political, cultural, and discursive efforts that moved Hawaii to statehood. With crisp and forceful arguments and vivid abundant details, this highly teachable book will have a significant impact on American and transpacific studies and considerations of the United States in the world.--Penny Von Eschen, Cornell University Gateway State centers the political importance of Hawaii in the midst of post-World War II global decolonization and racial liberation movements in the United States. Well-researched and brilliantly argued, this book examines how leaders positioned the fiftieth state as a racial and consumer paradise, and how colonized subjects resisted this Cold War agenda. This fascinating work expands the understanding of connections between the Cold War and civil rights.--Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, University of California, Irvine About the Author Sarah Miller-Davenport is lecturer in U.S. history at the University of Sheffield.