Ernest Brevin, the British Foreign Secretary after World War 2, knew that a mutual defense treaty of European states without the U.S. wouldn’t be much of a treaty. He had to draw them in. And the first step in doing so was to select the right name: North Atlantic Treaty. That geographic construction was rather novel, it wasn’t about Europe all of a sudden, and provided a context for President Truman and the U.S. Congress to reexamine the urgency for America to formalize a Western military alliance as the cold war loomed (McFarland, Keith D., and David L. Roll. Louis Johnson and the Arming of America: The Roosevelt and Truman Years. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005. 234-36. Print.).
Labels matter.
Hapa is one of those labels.
It sounds Hawai'ian (no wonder becasue it is Hawai'ian). Naturally it sounds welcoming. It conjures an expansive rainbow, and you just want to stream to it.
The problem though is Hapa is too vague. It tries to be everything to every mixed person.
Like NATO, Hapa sucked people in that it shouldn't have (see here also). Consequently, Hapa will face threats of a break up in the future.
Just as things get interesting, just as I've waited my turn to engorge myself on facts and details pertaining to my mix of Chinese-Western, Hapa will pull me away.
The reason I wrote my book is I found less and less meaning in Hapa (read further here).
Labels matter, yes. But specifics matter more.