Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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Ford also criticized the Hawaiian representation in Congress, lamenting the fact that “[i]t is not possible at present for Hawaii to send a white delegate to Washington.” Passage of the Hawaiian Organic Act of 1900, which restored the voting rights of many indigenous islanders, had seen to that. The best that Ford could say of Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole, the territory’s representative in Congress (as well as a surfer and recent heir to the Hawaiian throne), was that as “a native he does not stand in the way” of white progress. This was attributable, Ford suggested, to the “particularly fortunate” fact that Kuhio was accompanied in Washington by a Merchants Association–paid secretary, George B. McClellan, “an American-born worker who, as the equal of any in the national capital, is respected by all his coworkers with whom he labors shoulder to shoulder for the Americanization of our island territory.”⁶⁹ Ford’s concern was not solely with Hawaiian nationalists, however. He especially feared the racial threat presented by the influx of Asians. “The most recent official reports from Hawaii,” Ford wrote in Collier’s in 1909, “indicate that over fifty-one percent of its population is Japanese and that the little brown people there are outracing, births over deaths, all other nationalities in the islands combined. Perhaps seventy-five per cent of the population of Hawaii is of Oriental extraction.” It seemed terrifying that, barring a change in demographic trends, “another generation may see Hawaii a State of the United States, with yellow Senators sitting in our Capital [sic] at Washington.” Of course, Ford reassured his readers, the “hope of the people is otherwise, and a campaign, with limitless capital behind it, is now in progress to repeople the islands with white men.”⁷⁰