The Washington Post has an interesting article today about the debate in Hawaii over whether various government programs and schools can be reserved to native Hawaiians — those “with a drop of Hawaiian blood.”
This debate involves, among other matters, the degree to which native Hawaiians (whatever the blood count required to qualify) resemble native American Indian tribes with their special “trust relationship” to the federal government.
Since you should read the whole article, I will comment here only on a couple of quotes that struck me as significant. Here’s one:
“Things are being brought to a head in the courtrooms,” said Nainoa Thompson, a prominent Hawaiian leader and a Kamehameha Schools trustee. “These are threats to the core of every single right that we aspire to. We’re in a very critical time in Hawaiian history.”
If in fact the only rights native Hawaiians care about are the rights to programs and institutions that exclude non-Hawaiians, then it seems to me that statehood for Hawaii was probably a mistake. Or in the alternative, perhaps some of the state should have been set aside as reservations where pure Hawaiian institutions could be maintained.
Here’s another:
The state’s attorneys defend Hawaiian assistance programs on the ground that Congress has long treated Hawaiians not purely as a race, but as an indigenous political group having a special trust relationship with the United States. Hawaii’s congressional delegation has used the same argument in pushing, without success so far, legislation that would formalize a political status for indigenous Hawaiians akin to that of American Indian tribes.
“Of course there is a racial element to being a native person,” said Jon Van Dyke, an attorney representing the state agencies. “But the distinction is that the rest of us and our ancestors came to the United States understanding we would be in a multicultural, pluralistic community. But the native people were just here when the rest of us came.” Latecomers have a mother culture elsewhere, but native Hawaiians have only the islands as a cultural base, he said.
Leave aside the special pleading historical inaccuracy of Van Dyke’s quote (neither the Puritans nor any of the original settlers, black or white, had any idea they were settling a territory that would, over a couple of centuries, become a “multicultural, pluralistic community”). Most Americans are indeed “latecomers” compared to the native Hawaiians — my family certainly is — but for the overwhelming preponderance of us our “mother culture” is right here, not “elsewhere.”
Perhaps Mr. Van Dyke speaks Dutch at home, but I doubt it.
Welfare programs are one thing. But as near as I can tell, the Kamehameha schools are private schools. They don’t take federal funding. What right does the government have to dictate who they have to admit? If they have to take non-Hawaiians, then why are they allowed to give an entrance exam? Won’t that discriminate against the learning-disabled?
Laura,
Good question, but take a look at these two articles: article one, article two.
A pretty strong argument can be made that black letter U.S. civil rights law prevents even private schools from excluding students on the basis of race. Or, even if the practice is not altogether barred, at least that such discriminating instiutions and those who contribute to them can receive no tax benefits (just ask Bob Jones U.). An interesting comparison is to the Girard College (actually, a high school) case, where the will of a Philadelphia philanthropist that provided for the creation of a school for poor white youth was set aside as discriminatory.
I see how the Girard case applies. I don’t see how the Rice vs. Cayetano case, “which struck down Hawaii’s practice of letting only people with Hawaiian blood vote for Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees” applies since of course you can’t deny people the right to vote based on their race.
I also don’t see how race-specific scholarships are legally OK if the Kamehameha school isn’t.
And I’m queasy about this: “Furthermore, the requirement that ‘the teachers of said schools shall forever be persons of the Protestant religion’ could also possible call into question the enforceability of the will under current federal discrimination in hiring standards.” This seems to say that you can’t count on getting a religious education for your child in a private school, since the school may be forced to hire teachers not of the religion you want.
I suspect you’re right: if the schools are thoroughly private, i.e., no state involvement in administering or managing the trust that supports them, etc., they well be legal. Unlike racial preferences, however, its policy is totally racially exclusionary. That makes its positions somewhat more suspect than, say, Bob Jones or the private “segregation academies” that sprang up in the South after Brown. Those schools didn’t have blacks, but they didn’t have formal policies that excluded them. And certainly no contributions to the Kamehameha Schools, under Bob Jones, would be tax deductible.
Two more relevant articles: one and two.
This I understand:
“School officials said they would not appeal the preliminary injunction because Ezra ruled not on the legality of its Hawaiians-only policy, but on the fact that the Kamehameha School had recruited Mohica-Cummings last year, then rescinded admission two days before classes started.”
What about private single-sex schools? Are those legal?
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The government has no right in interfering with a private school’s racial policy. Some races actually are better at certain skills than others. The races, genetics, and blood lines are very real no matter how much people are afraid to admit. The country is being ignorant in ignoring these differences. This school wants a good native hawaiian environment for their students. If the schools says they want natives then they should only allow natives, period.
[…] vigorously to restrict admission to certain members of that family, only those who had “a drop of Hawaiian blood.” The issue was resolved in 2007, the Associated Press reported, only when the school agreed […]