One of those things that can be counted on as consistently as the sun coming up is that any report, such as the recent U.S. Civil Rights Commission draft report, because it recommends rejection of the Akaka bill will be characterized by the latter’s proponents as “biased.”

In a May 3, 2006, article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin Sen. Daniel Akaka is quoted as saying, “To learn that the commission has produced a staff draft report with biased conclusions contradicts a fair process”. Why is it to be automatically assumed that the draft report is based upon “biased conclusions” rather than that Sen. Akaka is operating from biased premises? Why is Akaka’s opinion the only “fair” one? It is so easy to shout “bias” whenever anyone disagrees with you.

Sen. Daniel Inouye was quoted in The Honolulu Advertiser on May 5, 2006, as saying “I was dismayed to learn that the (commission) voted ... to adopt a seriously flawed report that unfairly characterizes the Akaka bill as race-based and discriminatory.” The Akaka bill IS race-based and discriminatory and just saying it isn’t doesn’t make it so.

Using the terms “indigenous ancestry” and then by using those terms claiming that the Akaka bill doesn’t establish a race-based government is simply disingenuous. Playing semantic games and playing fast and loose with language doesn’t change the facts. Qualifying people according to the racial heritage, i.e., “indigenous ancestry” is, in fact, race-based criteria pure and simple.

This is one of the reasons that politics has become so dishonest and is held in such low regard by so much of the populace. Politicians say things that are clearly untrue and expect the people, simply because the politicians have said so, to believe it. Same is true for most of the editorial writers in the mainstream media. Nowhere is this more true than the editorial positions on the Akaka bill in the major daily newspapers here. They just keep making the same blind assertions over and over again.

Sen. Inouye is also reported to have said, “From what I have learned, not only does the report have significant errors of fact and history, but the process in which the commission considered the report was also highly suspect.”

This is another typical tactic used by proponents of the Akaka bill. Any conclusions other than the politically correct ones are claimed to be based upon “errors of fact and history” while never identifying what these are. Once again, fact and history according to whom? While our senators would never admit it, there is significant disagreement as to what really took place at the time of the overthrow and who was truly responsible.

The Native Hawaiians Study Commission (NHSC) reached one conclusion in 1983 and because that conclusion wasn’t what Daniel Akaka wanted to hear he worked for years to get the Apology Resolution passed specifically to refute that conclusion. Whatever evidence is at hand that the U.S. wasn’t directly responsible for the overthrow is simply rejected out of hand. There is never any real discussion of the facts because the only facts accepted are those that arrive at the predetermined conclusion endorsed by Akaka.

The other tactic is to personally attack those who don’t tow the proper line. This is the intent behind another Inouye quote about the Civil Rights commission report, “The meeting was disorganized and unprofessional; commissioners were forced to take a 10-minute break because they did not understand what they were voting on. Given those factors, how can anyone give credence to its report?”

This is very clever, call into question the professionalism of those you don’t agree with. It is, of course, simply a hit piece by Inouye. If they didn’t know what they were voting on then a 10-minute break wouldn’t have been long enough to truly cure them of their ignorance. The assertion is, on its face, preposterous.

Not to be outdone in this department Representative Neil Abercrombie had this to say about the report “I wish they had taken a more objective approach based on history and the context of the cause that is involved with Native Hawaiians. It's very difficult sometimes for people who have a political agenda to be able to actually step back and give an objective evaluation.”

Once again, first attack those that have a differing view as not being objective and not understanding history in the proper way. Then attack them personally. Only those people who disagree have a “political agenda” but Rep. Abercrombie could never be guilty of this himself, could he? This tactic is used over and over again by Inouye, Abercrombie and those of their ilk.

The comparison of Native Hawaiians indigenous status to that of Native Americans and Native Alaskans is flawed for one very important reason. The Hawaiian monarchy was not an indigenous government. It was a government that included people from all nationalities and racial composition. The idea of an indigenous Native Hawaiian government had already been given up by the Hawaiians themselves.

So the idea of returning to a Native Hawaiian government based upon indigenous ancestry is to return to something that only briefly, if ever, actually existed. That is why the insistence of Inouye and others that opposing the Akaka bill denies the historical facts is entirely wrong. They are the ones who are trying to rewrite the facts and the history.

One of the commissioners who voted against the report, Michael Yaki, makes this very error in asking “But what I wonder is if we say no (to the Akaka bill) then how do we explain to them (Native Hawaiians) why Native Americans and Native Alaskans have that right.” The explanation is that the situations are not analogous. Native Americans and Alaskans have had continuous self governing entities exclusively governing their peoples all along. Native Hawaiians gave up such a form of government long before the overthrow.

All of these arguments for the Akaka bill are all red herrings to avoid this fact. Focusing on the details of the overthrow and what culpability the U.S. had, if any, are all diversions from the fact that the Hawaiian Kingdom had ceased to be a Native Hawaiian kingdom, no matter how much Hawaiians of that day, and some Hawaiians of today, dislike that fact.

To establish a government that would turn Hawaii into a two-tiered society based upon racial heritage would be one of the greatest mistakes that the United States could make. It will divide and eventually destroy the racial harmony that has existed for over a hundred years in these islands. It will set a precedent that will justify any number of groups to make the same claim about any part of the U.S.

The Native Hawaiian people live throughout the islands, side by side with those who have come from other places to live here. The Akaka bill will seek to divide those who live side by side based upon a single criteria and seek to set some of those people on one side of an imaginary line, and others on the other side of that line.

It will even set some Hawaiians against others depending upon whether or not they seek to join the newly reorganized Hawaiian government, giving special preferences and benefits to those that do join and penalizing those that don’t, even though their heritage is exactly the same. If our elected officials cannot see that this is simply wrong then the people of Hawaii should demand a vote on the issue to make it clear to them whether the people think it is wrong or not.

This is little doubt about how that vote would come out which is why they are trying to impose the Akaka bill from the top down, by Congressional mandate, in the first place. Otherwise they wouldn’t be afraid of a vote of the people first.

References

http://starbulletin.com/2006/05/04/news/story06.html

http://tinyurl.com/kjqdc

Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and can be reached at: mailto:newmand001@hawaii.rr.com