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Jeff Chang’s background seems like that of a typical Hawaii-born resident who joins the brain drain from the islands to the continental United States. I’m referring to those who leave to attend college and decide to remain there after graduating, primarily for the better-paying jobs.

Others join the brain drain after earning a college degree in Hawaii, then move to the continent for its employment opportunities. While many in the brain drain eventually return home, many others, like Jeff, do not.

In Jeff’s case, after graduating from Iolani in 1985, he was admitted to the University of California, Berkeley and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. He went on to graduate school at UCLA, receiving a master’s degree in Asian American studies.

He appeared set for an eminent academic career when he was accepted into the doctoral program of the Berkeley sociology department, one of the top departments in the nation, but he declined the offer to pursue his interest in hip-hop music.

Well beyond being a representative islander in the brain drain, Jeff is internationally recognized as a social activist, scholar of race and popular culture, and . They include “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation” (2005), “Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America” (2014), and “We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation” (2016).

Jeff’s current book project is a cultural biography of Bruce Lee because of his underappreciated role in the Asian American community.

Jeff returned briefly to Hawaii in early March to give a public lecture at his former rival school Punahou.

Before a capacity audience, he spoke about how “racial reversals in the past decade” have shifted race relations in the “opposite direction toward resegregation and greater polarization” and an “ideology of hate projected onto others.”

He argued that “to work for a better society and an end to segregation,” we need to emphasize “how we are bound to each other,” as we were before 1965, the peak of the civil rights movement, when there was “a consensus that our fates are intertwined.”

Asked if he thinks he’ll ever return to Hawaii, Jeff quickly replied, “Yeah, for sure. I would like to. It’s a family question of course. I foresee us splitting time between Hawaii and the continent. We’ve been thinking about how to do it for years.”

A Loss Of Local Knowledge And Culture

Hawaii would gain so much from the return of such highly educated, knowledgeable and socially committed islanders like Jeff.

In addition to the brain drain is the “cultural drain” from Hawaii, a concept that my friend Jon Matsuoka wrote about 25 years ago when he was dean of the University of Hawaii Manoa School of Social Work.

He asserted that when local people leave the islands for the continental U.S., as many were doing in the 1990s, they take their knowledge, values and appreciation of Hawaii and its diverse peoples with them.

This shared culture of local people can be referred to as local culture. It often is popularly represented and understood in trivial ways, such as eating plate lunches, wearing rubber slippers and making the “shaka” sign. In contrast, I have argued that local culture, more significantly, consists of an appreciation and attachment to the land, peoples and cultures of the islands.

Note that my definition of local culture is not race-based. Anyone, including whites, can acquire and practice local culture and over time be considered local.

Civil Beat columnist Denby Fawcett has written perceptively about being a “local haole” in an essay I used to assign to students in my ethnic studies classes. For both of us, the term “local haole” is not an oxymoron, although I know that many disagree.

A major potential consequence of the culture drain is diminishing concern for the islands and those who live here when local people move away. Ongoing inmigration from the continental U.S. and the economic and cultural globalization of Hawaii are additional factors that are contributing to the decline in the cultural distinctiveness of the islands.

This distinctiveness, if not uniqueness, is what many residents value about life here. Thus, one long-term threat of the culture drain is cultural homogeneity as the islands become more like the “mainland.”

The brain drain and culture drain are occurring because people have been leaving the state in increasing numbers since the 1990s.

Population Decline

According to the U.S. Census, in 2020 and gained about 95,000 residents during the previous decade, the slowest annual growth rate in state history.

However, since 2017 our population has declined for the sixth year in a row. Prior to that year, the last drop in the state population was in 1999 and, before that, 1963, in both cases probably as a result of economic forces.

One need not be a population demographer to figure out why people are departing. The high cost of living, especially for housing with the median price of a three-bedroom home at a little less than $1 million, is literally forcing people out.

In 2017, the economy was booming, driven by annual gains in the millions of tourists arriving to spend their dollars and yen, and the unemployment rate was among the lowest in the nation. More capital circulating in the local economy increased the demand for housing, driving prices skyward and islanders outward.

The coronavirus pandemic with its record unemployment rates in Hawaii also led residents to move to states with lower rates and more jobs. Both in the good times and the bad times, migrating to the continental U.S. manifests a sense of powerlessness to control the political and economic future of Hawaii.

Like other islanders, Native Hawaiians have been actively involved in the brain, culture and people drains to the continent. Graduates of for the most academically prestigious colleges and universities in America, just like their counterparts at Iolani, Punahou and some of the public high schools.

When they migrate, Native Hawaiians take both Hawaiian culture and local culture with them. They have transplanted the former, as is evident in hula halau, canoe paddling clubs and olelo Hawaii language classes, and contributed to the emergence of the latter.

But Native Hawaiians’s bidding aloha to Hawaii is much more significant than for other island ethnic groups. American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau indicates that in 2021 more Native Hawaiians resided in the continental U.S. (370,000) than in Hawaii (309,800), their homeland.

This major change represented a reversal of those relative positions in 2011 and indicated the magnitude of recent kanaka migration to the continent, particularly during a decade when the Hawaii economy was especially robust and jobs were widely available.

To no great surprise, the American Community Survey reported that the largest population growth of Native Hawaiians (and other Pacific Islanders) occurred in Clark County, Nevada, .

This population drain of Native Hawaiians to the continental U.S. does not necessarily mean a loss of Hawaiian culture when they move because sufficient numbers still remain in the islands for its maintenance.

Barring a substantial movement, population loss also may not negatively impact Native Hawaiian political efforts to advance their goals for self-determination.

Much of this struggle occurs outside the electoral arena, such as the recent protests at Mauna Kea, and thus is not dependent on Native Hawaiians voting for their own candidates for elective office. But what is especially being lost for Native Hawaiians and other islanders on both sides of the Pacific when they join the diaspora on the continent are their close family ties with one another.