The state senator is rightly under fire for illustrating the very same problems of racism and privilege he sought to denounce. (Opinion)

Posted by Honolulu Civil Beat on Wednesday, March 31, 2021

I read this story and I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh until I cried. Horrific? Yes. Unexpected? Absolutely not.

This is the Hawaii I’ve come to understand where the Asian majority has taken on the worst aspects of their White counterparts on the mainland. They, and I’m talking about most of the people considered to be successful, have forgotten two important things: 1) almost without exception, when their families came to Hawaii, they were poor and discriminated against, and 2) if they lived in any state besides Hawaii, they would be subject to same hate and violence that was being protested on Saturday.

Forty five seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but it’s obviously a political lifetime for Senator Chang. In that short span, he managed to alienate and disgust everyone there, and denigrate the very cause he was supposed to be supporting. It took only10 sentences demonstrate to the entire world that White privilege is alive and well in Hawaii as embodied by Asians. That you can have all the academic success in the world and still be an idiot. That racial pride, in his case East Asian pride, only increases racial tension.

This is what happens when you venerate private schools and fail to support public schools. When kids spend too much time around other kids who have the same class status and don’t learn how hard it is for the rest of the world who aren’t fortunate enough attend. They grow up to primed to be the community leaders but have no conception of how the people they represent live, work, and feel. Then they do something stupid like this and the only apology they can muster is “I spoke poorly” which is roughly equivalent to “I wouldn’t have bumped into you if you just got out of the way”.