Saw this NPR piece.
Hapa seems to be simultaneosly gaining and losing relevance. Some people like its all-embracing gloss, others get tripped up with its smell of cultural appropriation.
I don't think "Hapa" has legs.
The fatal flaw with "Hapa" is something that stands for something too broad risks standing for nothing at all. "Hapa" has nothing it stands for.
But who would've guessed that the question of "how do we offend the fewest people possible?" would be the stumbling block?
That the most threatening undoing will come from those who see it as an imposition and theft of a Hawai'an concept and I.D. tells you all you need to know. This article reminds us "Hapa" was the stuff of faddish picturebooks- it was never worth struggling for.