words.

on hyphen magazine's website, there was this article: "Rethinking the Definition of Hapa"

it brings up various points - mainly it boils down to how the use of "hapa" has been empowering to people who identify as mixed race, but also how the appropriation of "hapa" from its original meaning was, in actuality, a violent act against Native Hawaiians, who developed the term. one point that i thought was especially enlightening mentioned that some people of mixed heritage initially refused to use the term hapa because they thought it was associated with the japanese and their colonial/imperialist mentality. once they found out it was hawaiian, they thought it was ok to use and found power and affirmation towards their mixed heritage, but then they obviously strayed from its original meaning. little did they realize that the appropriation of the term "hapa" from hawaiians, in effect, becomes an act of imperialist force, done by other marginalized people. it's an interesting paper over the power of a word and who takes ownership of it, especially since the author is obviously conflicted between the two sides.

at work, my coworker brought up how she didn't agree to the use of "concentration camps" to refer to the otherwise known as "internment" or "relocation" camps set up by the u.s. government during world war II for people of japanese ancestry. i too felt a bit of umbrage when i first came to museum and read that in an article i was proofing for our members magazine. but i had difficulty deciding which word i actually thought would be better. relocation is too sterile. internment comes off as too bureaucratic. concentration seems too strong, but only because of the connection to the nazi concentration camps.

for me, with the association to the nazis aside, which i'm not doing lightly, i feel that concentration camps would be the best term. it's more forceful - the government didn't just move people (relocation) or locked them up for awhile (internment). they actively took people from their homes AND place them behind barbed wire, so that they could be all put in a few restricted areas (concentration). but i understand how my coworker thought it was a bit exploitative and an example of appropriation.

i actually wikipedia'ed the term "concentration camp" and it comes up under "internment." (ah ha!) according to them (these facts will need to be substantiated at a later time), the term was used before WWII, stemming first from the spanish "re-concentration" in the late 1890's. this referred to the tactics used to stomp anti-insurgency in cuba. later, "concentration camp" was used to describe those operated by the british in south africa during the second boer war (don't ask me what that is), also as a means to confine and control people. it was only after WWII and the nazis did the meaning become more violent, extremely derogatory, and synonymous with death and extermination.

it's pretty amazing, when one thinks about how people perceive words and then the actual etymology of the words. you examine at what point in a word's history a person comes in and learns its meaning and that, in itself, could reveal a bit about where a person is from or what they were taught. it just reinforces how powerful - yet complicated and misleading - words can be. if we all followed one language - or even just agree to one meaning for each word and vice versa within an language - communication would be simpler. but i don't think it would be as meaningful or influential. certain words simply have different correlations and interpretations for different people and i think, in the end, despite the complications, it's good to find out why we interpret the same words differently. our interpretations are informed by our experience. it can bring us all one step closer to each other - if we just bothered to have that conversation.