The history of modern Hawai‘i has been defined by immigration, from the Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Puerto Ricans imported to work on 19th-century plantations, to the Filipino, Korean, and Micronesian migrants who make possible today’s growing tourism and hospitality industry. Arrivals from around the world have shaped and reshaped the islands’ economy and culture, and made Hawai‘i a global crossroads. …

No sector in the state of California relies more on immigrants than health care. One-quarter of the health workforce—from nurses to pharmacists to home health aides—and nearly one-third of all doctors and surgeons are foreign-born. And, according to some studies, patients of foreign-trained health providers actually do better than patients who rely on native-born Americans. How have immigrants working in …

“From the first we have treated our minorities abominably, the way the old boys do the new kids in school,” Steinbeck wrote in “E Pluribus Unum,” an essay in America and the Americans. American identity, the author argued, was forged through this cruel process of hazing the newest, and that once any ethnic group became established, it would pick on …

In a 19th-century story, a fictional press-hating Irish bartender mocks the pomposity of the press by remarking that a newspaper’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That phrase, despite its satirical origins, has since become a sincere media mantra. American journalists routinely justify exploitation and error by portraying themselves as people who right wrongs, and journalism …

Scientists have demonstrated that climate change is real, but polls show that 30 percent of Americans disagree. Scientists have shown that genetically modified foods pose no threat, but, according to one survey, half the country sees such foods as dangerous. And despite scientific assurances about vaccine safety, the number of very young children who don’t get vaccinated has quadrupled in the …