I went to a public beach on my layover. The farthest reaches of one. Just kept walking…away. From all the gringos.

… A quiet, wiry old surfer dude the SAME shade of brick-red black I consciously basked in getting every summer, with shiny anime eyes like the ones in my head came up to me and grinned like I was one of his wayward grandkids… Spring of 2000. He’s how I found out the truth.

… Did the same thing our old grandparents did. Said “Go look. See for yourself.”

& I did. Revolutionary. Changed everything in regards to how I look at those islands and that occupation. Lowkey radicalized my ass.

Real Native. Not the ones that married into the families of the violent whites who decimated the brunt of those that looked like him and stole everything, only to still be fn miserablein fn paradise. & it’s been a tell ever since. 26 yrs deep. A marker.

Because that occupation started way back but Hawaii became a state in the 20th century. In fn 1959. The last queen and princess of Hawaii during annexation got attacked AS NIGGERS on those legendary train rides in the late 1890s. By fucked in the head whyte folks.

It used to make the…white…water carriers and whitewater carriage hit different from the Hawaiians who loathed Black folks, even as their elders and poorer communities were rocked with the same pathological diseases that ravaged poor Black communities. It engendered a disgust I never thought would subside or abate.

But eventually it did. Not by empathizing with the self -haters. Which is the BS course of action this culture prescribed for vitriolic stewing in response to another’s hatred. That only keeps the hate wheel going. Letting it go for real helped a lil but only by the space it made for the true salve.

…What healed it?