In late February 2020, as part of the Duke Immerse: Global Inequalities program, nineteen Duke students and staff traveled to Honolulu to study disparities in the economy, housing, education, and more. The region’s unique history and demographics provided a compelling lens through which to consider these inequities: starting with the Chinese laborers of the 1850s, who first traveled to Hawaii to work on sugar and pineapple plantations, to the Native Hawaiian population of today who, following the island’s annexation in 1897 and the subsequent attacks on their culture, now have few pathways to upward social mobility.
