Posted on 10/19/2007 12:01:31 PM PDT by SmithL
Waimanalo, Hawaii (AP) -- In Hawaii, where blood and ancestry matter as in no other state, a legal challenge is posing this question: Who is sufficiently Hawaiian?
In Hawaii, ancestry is more than just a matter of ethnic pride. Under a program created by Congress in 1921, Native Hawaiians with strong bloodlines can get land for a home for $1 a year. Those with more mixed ancestry still receive many other benefits, including low-interest loans and admission for their children to the richly endowed and highly regarded Kamehameha Schools.
The help is designed to make amends for the 1893 U.S. overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, the annexation of the islands, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by foreign disease.
In a federal lawsuit filed in 2005, Native Hawaiians with at least 50 percent islander blood want exclusive control over state programs currently open to everyone with at least some Native Hawaiian blood.
In a separate dispute that could also be headed for court, state residents with no Native Hawaiian ancestry are questioning why they can't join a Hawaiians-only voter registry.
The two cases are just the latest in a string of challenges over the special treatment accorded Native Hawaiians.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
(Local joke follows)
Knock knock
Who dare?
Mi ma
Mi ma who?
Really?
If you one local, you get dis...
And you wonder how racial politics came to be in the Islands?
We have Yankees down here that say the same thing about their kids.
To which we answer, "Just because your cat has its kittens in the oven, it don't make 'em biscuts."
There are numerous programs supported by US tax dollars for Hawaiians based only on race. When discussing the unconstitutional attempt by Hawaiian activists to become an independent nation - with full financial support of the US, of course - it is important to note that there are as many Hawaiians opposed to this movement as those who support it.
As a matter of historical correction, the US did not overthrow the Hawaiian government but merely supported the duly established government from an illegal overthrow, no matter what President Clinton apologized for. In addition, when annexing the Hawaiian Islands, the US government satisfied a $1 million debt the monarchy had wrung up at the time.
Ono grinds!
LOL!
When the law is passed, will Derek Jeter and Halle Berry have to pay reparations to themselves?
Well put!
Since most white Southerners descend from colonists from the British Isles, would not the members of the Indian nations who inhabited the South before the colonial period be justified in calling white Southerners nothing but British and Irish carpetbaggers who should return to their homelands across the Atlantic? Are the descendants of Unionist Southerners in places like East Tennessee or the Texas Hill Country illegitimate Southerners? Are the descendants of Southern sympathizers in Northern states like Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio more Southern than the descendants of Southern Unionists? What about the descendants of Southern sympathizers in Arizona, New Mexico, California, or Oregon?
Here’s what this article means: in Hawaii, racism is good, depending on the race involved. Sadly, things like this mean that the civil rights movement, which I supported as a young man with all my heart and mind, is officially dead in Hawaii. Some Hawaiians want an ethnic caste system based on ancestry, and they are able to articulate their goals without reprisal or recrimination. God help them.
To be fair, the original missionaries had good intentions on bringing the word to the native Hawaiians. It was mostly their descendent's that got into the money business. And to be fair again, would any of us not take advantage of the situation that was laid before them?
i love listening to pijin! (my good friend is from Hawaii)...
LOL. very good.
Racism is for me but not for thee.
The AP article contains several “Clintons” (whopping big lies). First off, the U.S. government didn’t overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. The overthrow was by residents of Hawaii, including many haole members of the Queen’s own cabinet. Second, the so-called “native” Hawaiians are Melanesians who came there by boat. Like our own “native Americans” (who are descended from Siberian tribesmen who came over the Bering Straight into Alaska), they’re merely earlier immigrants than the Whites, Japanese and others who live in Hawaii.
That would be a noisy neighborhood.
That's why this business of allowing natives some real-estate privileges does not strike me as particularly upsetting. It compares roughly with Indian reservations on the mainland.
The way many races get along in Hawaii is impressive. It's also impressive to notice the frank stratifications--the Japanese on top, the Chinese second, the haoles third, and the natives always being kept like pets or museum pieces in an openly condescending manner, the Tongans taking up the next layer... (at least, this was the stratification when I lived there.)
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