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Aloha zen in the White House |
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Lelei LeLaulu |
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Not surprisingly, many people, and places, are claiming Barack Obama as their own. En route to the White House the president alighted in many places and touched lots of people in diverse locales so it’s no surprise so many are trying to catch some of Obama’s pixie dust. Overlooked in the pixie dust rush is the fact Barack Obama is the product of a Polynesian island. He was born and schooled on Oahu, “the gathering place” of the archipelago known as Hawaii, the 50th state of the Union. Everybody in Hawaii is from somewhere else. It’s not a problem, Hawaiians are proud of their diversity. You ask a Hawaiian what they are and they will go into great detail: “quarter Samoan, eighth Irish, eighth Japanese, eighth Cantonese, some Portuguese and a sprinkling of German and Tongan.” Unlike other parts of the U.S., even Chicago and Cambridge, one’s diversity is seen as a strength on the Polynesian islands, where the majority is a minority. Even the flora of the islands explodes with the brilliance of hybrid vigor. Growing up in the warm, familial, embrace of the “Aloha Spirit” undoubtedly equipped the young Obama with an easy multicultural mobility, which enabled him to attract votes across a diverse cross-section of the continent. The Aloha Spirit showed him the power of communities in dealing with common problems. Is it any wonder the landlocked young Obama gravitated so easily to being a community organizer in big, cold, urban Chicago? “Ohana,” or sense of family, underpins the world of Hawaiians. It is based on the recognition of the importance of the family and how it extends its embrace outwards to broader communities. The warmth and hospitality routinely extended to strangers is a manifestation of the “Aloha Spirit.” Look at how gently he treated Chief Justice Roberts when the top judge in the land flubbed his lines. Obama repeated the jurist’s mistakes and afterward praised Roberts for “helping him out” in a couple of patches. A sensitivity to dignity you wouldn’t see every day in the land of Gov. Blagojevich. Did you see the new president, and his daughters, hailing the Punahou School contingent in the inaugural parade with the Pacific island salute of the extended thumb and pinkie? In an essay for the Punahou Bulletin, published in 1999, two decades after his high school graduation, Obama wrote: “The opportunity that Hawaii offered to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.“ “Hawaii provided Obama with a situation in which his mixed ancestry was minimally important,” observed Hawaiian Democratic Congressman Neil Abercrombie. “In Hawaii, diversity unites us rather than divides us. It’s not a threat. Nobody gave a damn whether Barack Obama was black or white. That gave him confidence.” Michelle Obama knows her husband. Years ago, when Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell set out to write a book about the promising new U.S. senator, Obama’s wife urged him to visit the state in which her husband was born: “There’s still a great deal of Hawaii in Barack,” she said. “You really can’t understand Barack until you understand Hawaii.” Still, the new president carries his multicultural background easily. When the D.C. schools were closed in January by what midwesterners would characterize as a “dusting” of snow, the new president joked that in Chicago, schools wouldn’t even let kids come inside during recess in such a light snow fall. A few days later David Axelrod, Obama’s closest adviser, said the new “informal” look at the White House was, in addition to being a manifestation of the president’s style, also the result of the president ratcheting up the West Wing thermometer. “The guy’s from Hawaii,” Axelrod said. “You can grow orchids in there!” And how did Axelrod describe the new buzz in the White House? “Aloha Zen,” he said. First published on 9 Feb 2009 on http://devex.com 
Lelei LeLaulu is a development entrepreneur lurking at the confluence of climate change, tourism, food security and renewable energy. A coordinator of the Oceania Sustainable Tourism Alliance, Lelei is also executive director of the Small Island Developing States Climate Action Program of the Earth Council and president of Sustainable Solutions, a renewable energy company in the Dominican Republic. He was president and CEO of the development and humanitarian agency Counterpart International after serving the United Nations on a series of summits and global conferences which in the 1990s defined the international development agenda. The former journalist hails from Samoa. |
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