Becoming Citizen-subjects: Chinese and Public Health in Hawai`i

• In Event: 2184 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 16. Immigration, Refugee Status, and Health

Abstract

Using the window of the Chinese relationship to the medical community and particularly the Board of Health, I examine the place of Chinese in Hawai`i in the early to mid 20th century. As in other places, Chinese in Hawai`i were often associated with and assumed to be carriers of disease and in that way faced some of the same challenges as did Chinese in other locations (such as San Francisco). In the course of attempting to contain a plague outbreak in Honolulu’s Chinatown, for example, the entire district was burnt to the ground in 1900. But by the 1930s and 1940s, Chinese in Hawai`i had broken through some of those challenges. Chinese moved from being subjects—governed as foreigners and not participants in Hawai`i society—to being citizen-subjects in a few short decades. By the 1950s, they held key positions in Hawai’i’s Board of Health, including Director. In some ways, we can see those changes as reflecting the acceptance of Chinese in Hawai`i society, particularly by haole (white) leaders. But the process also reflects the complex process of the racial discourse that accompanies the citizen-subject, and particular aspects of that racial discourse that are unique to Hawai`i society. Hawai`i, as a place without a racial or ethnic majority, is a particularly useful site in which to examine the politics of health and ethnicity.

Author

• Nancy E. Riley, Bowdoin College