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Jewish World Review August 23, 2005 / 18 Av, 5765 Backsliding: Hawaii's race-based nation By Kathryn Lopez
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Thirty-two years ago, Martin Luther King Jr., famously dreamed that
his children would "one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character."
Three decades later, at least in Hawaii, that dream is imploding.
In 2005, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, is pressing for a future where
his "grandchildren and great-grandchildren" may be allowed to
establish a nation, born out of what was once Hawaii — entirely
race-based. Though the senator says he himself is not a proponent of
independence itself, the trajectory he'd put his home state on may
end there.
Unlikely as it seems now, your grandchildren may one day need a
passport to sunbathe in Maui. And the starter pistol that set the
50th state on the road to a wholly un-American independence day
would have been fired by our own U.S. Congress.
The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005, now
sitting on Capitol Hill, promises to establish a dangerous
precedent. The bill would create a tribe consisting of direct
descendants of those indigenous to the Hawaiian islands, wherever
they now are. The bill, proponents say, would allow Native Hawaiians
to "exercise their right to self-determination by selecting another
form of government, including free association or total
independence."
Although it's easy to assume that this is exactly how Native
Americans operate in the United States, the analogy doesn't fly.
Indian tribes generally existed before statehood as tribes, and
continued living, working and associating as tribes. There is no
such recognized Native Hawaiian population. In a state where
intermarriage is high, there is no active, mainstream "Native
Hawaiian community" clamoring for independence. Congress, on the
slim chance the act is adopted, would have manufactured it — and
for no good reason.
The move is stunning given the lip service we collectively give to
equal rights. As former Department of Justice lawyer Shannen Coffin
pointed out in recent House testimony, in this bill "racial
discrimination by Congress is the first step in the formation of the
Native Hawaiian government." The bill "specifically defines, as a
matter of federal law, the racial group eligible to determine the
governmental organization and membership of the Native Hawaiian
government."
As a paper from the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate puts
it: "Federal Indian law should not be manipulated into a racial
spoils system. If Congress can create a government based on blood
alone, then the Constitution's commitment to equality under the law
means very little. Rather than putting that constitutional question
to the Supreme Court, Congress should answer the question itself and
defeat this legislation."
Ironically, despite the current push, at the time Hawaiians voted to
join the union in 1959, the territory took pride in its diversity,
that it was a "melting pot." And, in fact, even under a monarchy,
Hawaii was never a race-based entity. As one historian described the
kingdom: "The policy being followed looked to the creation of an
Hawaiian state by the fusion of native and foreign ideas and the
union of native and foreign personnel, bringing into being an
Hawaiian body politic in which all elements, both Polynesian and
haole, should work together for the common good under the mild and
enlightened rule of an Hawaiian king."
Even if you are continental-U.S.-bound with no hope or desire to sit
on the sun-drenched sands of Waikiki, you should care about this
bill. As Coffin told Congress, "The bill sets a terrible precedent
of racial separateness and, if followed in other instances, would
balkanize the American people."
In a 1995 case, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia warned: "To
pursue the concept of racial entitlement — even for the most
admirable and benign of purposes — is to reinforce and preserve for
future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race
privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of the government, we are
just one race here. We are American."
But before we even get to the judiciary determining its legality,
something demeaning would have already happened: The Congress of the
United States would have embraced racial mandates.
"The bill," says Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights, "is the triumph of the politics of racial identity and
ethnic pleading over the American creed. It's the logical conclusion
to multiculturalism run amok — the balkanization of America. And it
sets a very troubling precedent for further ethnic separatism."
And yet, with the support of some prominent Republicans, including
the governor of the state, Congress is currently set to say "Aloha"
to a race-based Hawaii.
Ask Greg Brady what happens when you mess with ancient, bad taboos.
You don't want to go there, Congress.
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