What Does It Mean To Be LOCAL In Hawaii? (and why it matters)

so question number one were you born and raised in hawaii question number two did you graduate from high school in hawaii and question number three when people ask you where you're from do you say hawaii if you answered no to any of these questions you're probably not a local okay so who is considered a local in hawaii and i'm not talking about what it takes to be a hawaii resident so you can get the five percent come on a discount i mean what exactly does it mean to be local local do you have to be born and raised in hawaii do you have to live here for so many years what about native hawaiians and does being local even matter these days determining who is local and who isn't is kind of an overwhelming task and so i asked myself what would be the simplest way to make that determination and i came up with the three questions that i asked earlier and so i want to talk about why i think determining who is local matters and further unpack these three questions and also what do you think make someone local in hawaii please let me know in the comments below before moving on i do want to acknowledge that there is a lot of history behind that term local and i won't go into it here but if you're interested i provided a link to an article that talks about the first references to the term local back in the 1930s and it's actually quite interesting [Music] so there's this joke maybe you heard it how do you know someone is from hawaii don't worry they'll tell you and i laugh because it's kind of true locals who were born and raised in hawaii are very proud of that fact and they will often let you know it's one of the most important identifiers for locals psychologist henry tajdale talked about it in his social identity theory where a person's sense of who they are is based on their group membership and for locals that membership being a local from hawaii is attached to who they are like an opihi on a rock that even when they're not in hawaii it still holds strong when i was on the mainland this is how i introduced myself hi my name is chris and i'm from hawaii those two facts were seemingly inseparable being local is also important because it provides me with group identification which instantly connects me to so many people i mean if you ever ran into another local on the mainland and started talking story you know exactly what i'm talking about so yes who is local does matter but probably less than most people think and i'll get more into that at the end of the video and as we trade into some touchy feely waters here i just want to remind people that i'm not the official judge of localness this is just the perspective of one local who believes that no matter where a person comes from everyone should be treated with aloha were you born and raised in hawaii this one is a big indicator if someone is local i see this a lot in my comments i was born and raised in hawaii and that's usually the first thing that the person says to then qualify the rest of their comment which lets me and everyone else know that they're from hawaii and know what they're talking about based on their experience living here likewise you'll notice that people will sometimes call out the fact that they themselves weren't born and raised in hawaii as if to qualify their response but in a different way and why do you think they do that well i think it's because they recognize the distinction between someone who is born and raised in hawaii and someone who is not and while some people would view their perspectives as less than not me so the born aspect of born and raised is pretty easy to determine you're either born in hawaii or not but the raised part is a little tough to define does raise mean until the age of 18 does it mean 10 years what if you were born somewhere else but moved here at the age of 3 or 16 and this is where i take the person's word in however they answer this question if they say yes i was born and raised in hawaii that's good enough for me and i'm not going to ask them how many years they were here or what hospital they were born at because being raised in hawaii is unique it means that the person was raised on local values on things like trying to get along with others generosity friendliness and the importance of family it also means we probably share a lot of similar experiences growing up from the toys that we played with to the kind of foods that we ate to the ways that we celebrate holidays and all of this matters because it helps us identify who we are in the world around us [Music] so what school you in grad okay first of all if you don't understand this question and think that people want to know what college you went to you're not local sorry this is probably the second most important thing that people want to know about you when they first meet you in hawaii after knowing what your name is and why is that because where you went to high school says a lot about you was it a rich school poor school rough school i think it would be a really tough call to call yourself a local if you didn't graduate from a hawaii high school it may seem trivial but i think going to high school in hawaii serves as a way to make a connection because locals want to connect with each other for example let's say i meet someone new and i asked them what school they graduated from if they say campbell high school well i didn't graduate from there but i know a few people who did so to keep the conversation going i'm gonna follow up and ask if they know my friends and sometimes this gets a little weird because people will ask me if i know their friend and i'll ask them when did their friend graduate and it turns out to be like 10 years before me so no of course i don't know that person but still it's a way that we're trying to connect so say what you will about the hawaii education system but those high school years in hawaii are special not just with graduation and prom and late nights at zippy's but there are a lot of shared experiences that we locals go through even though we attend different high schools throughout the state graduating from a local high school says a lot about you and your connection to hawaii and likewise if you don't graduate from a local high school you kind of lose that connection you lose that chance to know someone that others may know and because hawaii is such a small place by not going to school here you kind of set yourself apart if i were to ask you where you're from would you say hawaii if the answer is no or you have to qualify it with some long explanation well originally i was born in chicago and then my family moved to california and then we visited hawaii once and eventually my family moved here when i was 16. yeah then i wouldn't consider you local and i think this comes down to when you are local you know it and there's no explanation needed again if someone says yes i'm from hawaii i'm not going to hold some investigation on their past because frankly it shouldn't matter what i think or what anyone else thinks if you consider yourself from hawaii then that's great and that's something that no one can take away it means that you have a special connection to the islands and a shared value system with other locals all right so what about those people who move here or retire here later in adult life i mean i know they want to be local too right and yes they get the karma and a discount but can they really say that they are from hawaii and if not i would consider them a local resident meaning someone who lives here but is not originally from here and i'm not trying to make people feel unwelcome in fact some people may say that a discussion like this local versus local resident versus tourists is hurtful and creates the vision and maybe it does for some people but i think it categorizes people in a way that is reflective of real life and the glances and judgments that we make in that split second in the grocery store or on the street tashfeld identifies this in his stages of social identity theory categorization identification and comparison again i'm not saying that if you aren't a local you are somehow a second-class citizen i mean there are definitely some locals who would say that you know they want to classify people as locals or not so they can justify treating people a certain way which i think is terrible determining who is a local is supposed to be a fun discussion to have that identifies and celebrates our differences in the way that local people do and i hope in the end we collectively as a state treat everyone with aloha no matter where they're from i also wanted to acknowledge native hawaiians in this discussion of local and i don't want to turn this into a political debate because i could get out of control so all i'll say is that they have a very special connection to hawaii and the land that transcends the terms of local local resident or whatever labels we happen to use so those are my thoughts on what it means to be a local were you born and raised in hawaii did you graduate from hawaii high school if i asked you where you're from would you say hawaii and i think that those questions should pretty much determine one's localness or not and i'm sure that there are people out there who would disagree with me and if you do please let me know in the comments below how you would categorize if someone is local or not and again being local or not shouldn't really affect the way that we treat others it doesn't matter if your family has been living here for generations or you just got off the plane yesterday you're still a person and aloha isn't reserved just for locals or people who look the same as you or think the same way that you do it's my understanding that it's supposed to be for everyone so please let me know what you think in the comments below thanks for watching and aloha hello hello [Music]

Channel: Hello From Hawaii

Views: 20,154

Keywords: living in hawaii, Life in hawaii, what is it like in Hawaii, Moving to hawaii, hello from hawaii, hawaii, oahu, honolulu, hawaii life, life on hawaii, hawaiian life, locals in hawaii, what it means to be local in hawaii, being local in hawaii, who is local in hawaii, localness in hawaii, what does it mean to be local in hawaii

Id: nBTy1Rot6ak

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021