Each state or area will proceed in its own way and pace. So it is with California.

Each time I visit the Golden State I’m impressed at how much the non-haole population has grown. You can envision that predicted day in the 2020s when everyone will be a minority or mixture. Like Hawaii, yet different.

Island diaspora

This trip, for example, I was struck by the number of Asians at Bay Meadows horse racing track south of San Francisco. It reminded me of the old Happy Valley track in Hong Kong.

And I noted how Bay Area residents from Hawaii have Web sites telling of parties, entertainment, and special restaurants, bars and stores. A San Francisco Examiner story estimated that 23,000 Hawaiians and other Polynesians live in Northern California. That doesn’t include much larger numbers of former Hawaii people of other racial groups. The Hawaii diaspora keeps growing.

Mestizo agenda

Still, important as the influx from Asia and the Islands might be, the bigger story is the growth of California’s Latino population and its growing influence.

Latinos make up nearly a third of California’s 33 million residents, and are likely to grow to 40 percent in the next 15 years.

Scholar-writer Gregory Rodriguez recently discussed the impact of this in a Los Angeles Times article: “As Latinos become the largest minority in the country, they will continue to undermine traditional U.S. racial and ethnic politics.

“Just as Jews were the quintessential American minority in the first half of the 20th century, and African Americans set the standard for racial debate in the second half, Latinos will redefine America’s understanding of race and ethnicity in the new century.”

(I like it that my two Bay Area granddaughters have Latino blood as well as Asian from Hawaii.)

Rodriguez’s point is that racial mixing has been much more common in Latin America than in other immigrant homelands or among whites and African Americans. That often means a different and more moderate outlook on racial politics for Latinos.

At the same time, however, other social divisions will remain, including income inequality. Rodriguez concludes: “A great Latino political presence may even help ensure that economic class will be to America’s 21st century what race was to the 20th.”

What would such a new paradigm — less “people of color” vs. whites and more haves vs. have-nots — mean here?

Unity in diversity

Hawaii, as we say, is a special place with a high degree of intermarriage and mingling of races. We seem more like Latin America in that respect than other parts of the United States.

Some would argue that Hawaiian sovereignty is less about race and more about pride and political status. And behind that are some serious Hawaiian economic and social needs that call for help from a united community.

Of course, any Hispanicization of the debate in California and elsewhere on the Mainland doesn’t automatically translate to Hawaii. However, Hawaii has more Latino residents than most people realize, tens of thousands (some claims run to an amazing 100,000), ranging from old-time Puerto Rican to newer Mexicans.

And that doesn’t include Filipinos. Their homeland has its own Hispanic heritage and a tradition of racial and ethnic mixing.