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HONOLULU (KHON2) -- It was tense hours for those stuck inside The Kahala Hotel and Resort during Saturday’s barricade. A guest who stayed two flights above the suspect said he has traveled back home, but it is an experience that is difficult to leave behind. Get Hawaii’s latest news sent to your inbox, click here to subscribe to News 2 You, a daily newsletter. https://nxslink.khon2.com/join/6sd/signup A gunman barricaded himself inside his hotel room and forced all guests at the Kahala to seek shelter. Some people sheltered in the lobby and ballroom, others like David Fox remained inside their room when...

In a surprising apology, Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Canadian outdoor apparel giant, admitted to helping advance the “vastly incorrect notion” that the outdoors is for white people only, criticizing decades worth of its own advertisements and catalogues for depending almost exclusively on white models to sell wares. “Outside is for everyone,” MEC CEO David Labistour said in an open letter Monday. “It’s time we acted like it.” The letter — titled “Do white people dominate the outdoors?” — includes a collage of old MEC ads: white people hiking and biking and rock climbing and cross-country skiing; white people in khaki...

I was sitting on my daughter’s bed reading Laura Ingalls Wilder, and this and other scenes in “Little House on the Prairie” stopped me cold. What had been, in my gauzy memory, a beautiful and pure story was complicated by passages like this: “Why don’t you like Indians, Ma?” Laura asked, and she caught a drop of molasses with her tongue. “I just don’t like them; and don’t lick your fingers, Laura,” said Ma.

News is distancing itself from a racist remark made by one of its paid commentators on Sunday. The commentator, David Bossie, was arguing on "Fox & Friends" with Democratic strategist Joel Payne, who is black. He told Payne, "you're out of your cotton-picking mind." Payne was stunned by the remark. He told Bossie had had "some relatives who picked cotton, and I'm not going to sit back and let you attack me on TV like that." Bossie, a veteran conservative activist, was a deputy campaign manager on the Trump campaign. He also served as a deputy director of Trump's transition...

The iconic black-and-white photograph of a young woman being ogled by men on an Italian street has been removed from the Center City restaurant Gran Caffe L’Aquila after its owner said he recently received about two dozen complaints from customers that it depicts sexual harassment. The poster-size image had hung along the main staircase to the second floor of the Italian restaurant, visible to a portion of its second-floor dining room through a picture window, since its opening in December 2014. Co-owner Riccardo Longo said complaints began last month, shortly after Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein began facing public accusations of...

Growing up in New York in the 1980s, comedian Hari Kondabolu was like many young people. He watched “The Simpsons” and he adored “The Simpsons.” There was just one thing that bothered him about it. Amid the fictional Springfield barflies, incompetent doctors, clowns and crazy eggheads was a truly cartoonish character — Apu, the Kwik-E-Mart clerk who sold expired food, ripped off customers and delivered the sing-songy slogan “Thank you, come again.”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” George Orwell In what is eerily evocative of a Stalinist purge of history, all of American history is being scrubbed by the new fascists. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are now in the cross hairs. It doesn’t matter to the fascists if it isn’t...

Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark..."

When I was young, a phrase I heard rather frequently was “Don’t make a federal case out of it.” These days, however, you don’t hear that so often, probably because it’s now ridiculously common and absurdly easy for people to “make a federal case” out of nothing more than a gripe – provided it’s a politically correct gripe. As an example, consider the recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) case involving a post office worker who complained of illegal “workplace harassment” because another worker persisted in wearing a cap with the Gadsden Flag and its “Don’t Tread on Me” motto....

This item popped up the other day at The Volokh Conspiracy and it’s a rather sad sign of the times. ..... On January 8, 2014, Complainant filed a formal complaint in which he alleged that the Agency subjected him to discrimination on the basis of race (African American) and in reprisal for prior EEO activity when, starting in the fall of 2013, a coworker (C1) repeatedly wore a cap to work with an insignia of the Gadsden Flag, which depicts a coiled rattlesnake and the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me.” Complainant stated that he found the cap to be racially...

Muslims didn't even complain. Wegmans was just afraid that they might: "The associate further added that - the store had Muslim workers, 'my employees may not know what this stands for, Ex-Muslims of North America, and I don't have enough time and people to educate them on what it is,' and although they were not sure if the employees would be offended, they 'can't put them in that situation.'" Of course, Wegmans. To put them in the situation of getting offended would be absolutely intolerable. No one should ever have to live with the fact that somewhere else, some people...

A Georgia woman has her t** in a ringer over a joke Ellen DeGeneres told on her show ... in fact she's so upset she's suing the talk show host for allegedly besmirching her good name. In a segment called "What's Wrong with These Signs?" Ellen showed a real estate sign advertising a broker named Titi Pierce. Ellen assumed -- as we would -- it was pronounced "titty," but Titi says, "as grammar dictates," it's pronounced "Tee Tee." Pierce says in her lawsuit ... no one has ever made such an error in her 35 years on planet Earth. As...

Last month Matt Vespa covered the story of Democrats in Virginia who were talking about changing the name of their annual Jefferson Jackson dinner because of the Dylan Roof shooting or the Confederate Battle Flag or racism or something. That may have sounded rather silly at the time, but it’s turned out to be prophetic. Democrats in Connecticut also have an annual dinner named after the same prominent early Americans – as with their fellows across the nation – and have made the decision to change the name. (Because who would want to be associated with those guys, right?)...

If you like playing medieval-themed video games, you might not be just some harmless nerd — you might be a nerd who is also kind of a white supremacist. At least that’s the opinion of Victoria Cooper, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Leeds in England, who presented a paper titled “Playing Politics: Exploring Nationalism and Conservatism in Fantasy Video Games” at the International Medieval Congress earlier this month. “The Middle Ages is a space where white supremacy is legitimized,” Cooper said, according to an article on Medievalists.net. “The maintenance of white privilege. The gamer community use ‘historical facts’...

Early this year, the University of California’s president, Janet Napolitano, asked all deans and department chairs in the university’s ten campuses to undergo training in overcoming their “implicit biases” toward women and minorities. The department heads also needed training, according to the UC president, in how to avoid committing microaggressions, those acts of alleged racism that are invisible to the naked eye. A more insulting and mindless exercise would be hard to imagine. But Napolitano’s seminar possesses a larger significance: it demolishes any remaining hope that college administrators possess a firmer grip on reality than the narcissistic students over whom...

According to the Rutgers Daily Targum, freshman Emmet Brennan helped author a bill “…to create black, Latino, Asian, and third-gender mascot friends to accompany the school’s original “Scarlet Knight” mascot adopted in 1955.” “Our mascot does not represent how diverse we are as a school,” decided Brennan after he “…noticed the mascot’s fair skin and blue eyes while working as a press box server during the university’s football games.” Katie Park, writing for the Daily Targum, tells her readers: After taking issue with the mascot’s complexion, Brennan began collaborating with student Mohamed Asker who currently serves as the SA’s student...

Most of us make an effort to be sensitive to other people's feelings regardless of race. But a study produced by the University of Illinois claims we shouldn't even bother. The fact that you are white causes people of color discomfort.

Dear America, Lena Dunham and Trevor Noah might not be funny, but that's no reason to form a posse. Lena Dunham received plenty of criticism for her insufferable New Yorker piece titled “Dog Or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz.” In it, the creator of “Girls” weighs the pros and cons of getting a pet or keeping her Jewish boyfriend: “He doesn’t tip,” and “he never brings his wallet anywhere,” and so on. The jokes may tell us something about her comedic abilities, her audience and the New Yorker, but, despite much handwringing, it tells us nothing about anti-Semitism. The ADL’s National...

Don Mullen: Why don’t America’s hotels provide hair products for black as well as white hair? Is there a way to get them to correct this “micro-aggression”? Jenée Desmond-Harris: Thanks for your question. I thought about the issue of hotel toiletries when I was writing the Race Manners column that answered the question, “Is Using Lotion a Black Thing?” In my opinion, the tiny moisturizer that most hotels provide is very clearly not designed for those who want or need to use it on their entire body (read: most black people). But off the top of my head, I’m not...

The white hypocrites who complain about the term "redskins" use the term "native American" which when used in the way they are using it isn't much better than the other n-word. The word "redskins" is a physically descriptive term that doesn't have inherently negative characteristics. The word is one of the English translations of the Ottawa term "Oklahoma". If we consider the characteristics of the people the term "redskins" was first applied to, it's a positive term. The word "native" has two different uses. In general use the term "native " followed by a geographic region is used to indicate...