The facts are not in dispute by either side, Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii grants a preference to boys and girls of pure or part aboriginal blood. Stated another way if you are of Asian, African American, American Indian, German, Spanish, Italian, Cuban, etc. descent, then you are biased against when it comes to admission into these schools. In the United States, this is called racial discrimination and it is illegal. This was just confirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. (Click here for ruling)

Kamehameha Schools promises to take their fight to the Supreme Court, somehow believing that their prejudice is morally or legally justified–of course it’s neither. The “Hawaiian First” fight is the sub-text to a larger battle looming in Hawaii–the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005–creating a race-based and racially separate government for Native Hawaiians. (Think of it as a sort of “locals only” approach except to be local means having a Hawaiian hertitage dating back to the 1700s.)

Despite the fact that only 20% of Hawaiians support the bill, both of Hawaiian senators continue to be behind it.

As Tim Chapman (Townhall.com) (townhall.com) says:

This new race-based government would be allowed to deny its constituents the protections afforded by the 1st, 5th and 14th Constitutional Amendments because they would not apply to the new “tribal government.”

For this and other reasons, Chapman calls it “the worst bill you’ve never heard of.”

In 1959, some 94% of Hawaiian voters said yes to statehood and living under the U.S. constitution. Why now, 46 years later, certain elements of the constitution should be ignored for reasons of race is beyond comprehension.

Hat Tip Michelle Malkin

technorati: hawaii Akaka

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 11:13 am by Insider and is filed under Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.