Selling the "Golden People": Hawai‘i Tourism and the Commodification of Race, 1959–78

In the frenetic aftermath of its admission to U.S. statehood in 1959, Hawai‘i embarked on a multifaceted project to transform itself into a racial and consumer paradise—a place where Americans could purchase a transformative leisure experience and simultaneously showcase to the world the social and material benefits of the American way of life. While Hawai‘i had long been known as the ‘melting pot of the pacific’ for its mix of Polynesian, Asian, and European cultures, with statehood that notion acquired new stakes. Against the background of worldwide decolonization, Hawai‘i was now to serve as an exemplar of America’s commitment to both self-rule and racial tolerance.

With jet travel arriving in Hawai‘i the same year as statehood, the Hawai‘i tourism industry, aided by the backing of the new state government, worked to exploit the state’s newfound prominence, luring planeloads of mainlanders who thronged its beaches, hotels, and cultural spectacles. In the process, this paper argues, tourism helped turn race and ethnicity into saleable—if intangible—commodities. Tourists to Hawai‘i were drawn by the promise of warm weather and scenic beauty, but many also came looking to partake in the islands’ celebrated ‘Aloha Spirit,’ an elusive vision of social harmony that Hawai‘i boosters marketed as the defining feature of the Hawaiian vacation. By attending ethnic festivals, eating exotic food, and interacting with locals, visitors might even bring some Aloha Spirit home with them. Hawai‘i’s multiethnic society thus became not only a site of consumption, but also an object of consumption itself.

This paper helps bring much-needed historical attention to the impact of tourism on American society and culture, and its role in constructing racial and national identities. It also emphasizes the significance of statehood to modern imaginings of Hawai‘i, challenging scholarship arguing that Hawai‘i tourism has relied predominantly on primitivist tropes.