Hawaii Oh-Oh
By INESTORS BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, October 29, 2007 4:20 AM PT
Congress: Nearly five decades after statehood, the U.S. House passes a bill classifying American citizens by race and establishing apartheid in Hawaii. Is the U.S. about to have its own separatist movement?
Related Topics: General Politics
We have observed that if there was ever a place that came close to Martin Luther King's dream of people being judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, it is Hawaii.
"One of the greatest examples of a multiethnic society living in relative peace" is how the state's longtime U.S. senator, Democrat Daniel Inouye, once described it.
Last Wednesday, the House voted 261-153, with an incredible 39 Republicans in the majority, to approve the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, sponsored by one of Hawaii's two representatives, Democrat Neil Abercrombie.
The other, Democrat Mazie K. Hirono, says: "This is a historic vote and one that helps to perpetuate righteousness by righting a historic wrong."
The bill would essentially classify "native Hawaiians" as the rough equivalent of an American Indian tribe, with similar rights to form a separate governing entity with the power to negotiate with state and federal governments over issues such as control of natural resources, lands and assets.
But under the definition of "tribe" established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, "native Hawaiians do not qualify as a tribe." The people who make up a tribe must be geographically isolated as a group like, say, the Navaho or Cherokee nations.
The 400,000 or so "native Hawaiians" are interspersed among the general populations of all 50 states. And, unlike American Indians, native Hawaiians didn't have their lands taken by force but willingly joined the United States.
We're not sure what "historic wrong" Rep. Hirono wants to righteously correct. This bill, and a similar one sponsored by Hawaii's other senator, Democrat Daniel Akaka, was spawned by a historically flawed resolution passed in 1993 and signed by President Clinton.
It apologizes for America's aiding and abetting the overthrow a century earlier of the Native Hawaiian government of Queen Liliuokalani — in effect stealing Hawaii from the Hawaiian people.
Except it didn't happen quite that way.
Hawaiian scholar Rubellite Johnson, who helped establish the Hawaiian studies program at the University of Hawaii, says much of the supposed historical justification for this legislation is "a distortion of the truth." Not only was the U.S. "not directly involved" in the forced abdication of Queen Liliuokalani, Johnson says, but most of the Hawaiian monarchy supported U.S. annexation.
In any event, the issue was available for discussion in 1959. That's when native Hawaiians voted for statehood in a plebiscite that officially transferred sovereignty to the U.S. and rendered moot the question of whether Hawaii was stolen from its people.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar effort to create a state-sanctioned, race-based entity composed of native Hawaiians back in 2000. In Rice v. Cayetano, it ruled that under the 15th Amendment, which forbids discrimination in voting based on race, a race-based government in Hawaii was unconstitutional.
Ambercrombie's legislation would establish an American Quebec, only worse, and could become a conduit for reparations and other subsidies at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, much as reparations are demanded for the institution of slavery.
The fact that the measure is being taken seriously lends encouragement to other segments of the ethnic grievance industry, such as those who insist the southwest United States was stolen from Mexico. Would they demand similar recognition?
Not even a presidential veto may stop this bill. Hillary Clinton voted for the Senate version in 2006, and she would undoubtedly sign it into law as president.
Presidential candidate John Edwards is fond of saying there are two Americas. Prepare for two, three, and maybe even more.