Abigail Thernstrom, Harvard educated Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, recently testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the wisdom of renewing or not renewing emergency provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act that create “safe” Congressional Districts so that Blacks or Latinos will be elected to Congress roughly in proportion to their presence in the US population.

Much of Professor Thernstrom’s testimony could profitably be applied to the current debate over whether or not we should have a separate sovereign government for native Hawaiians. Just substitute the words “native Hawaiians” for the word “black” wherever it appears below.

She notes that “we’ve arrived today at an interesting historical moment. By numerous measures Blacks and Hispanics are becoming integrated into mainstream American life, and yet, simultaneously, our federal government is segregating them politically.” And she quotes Justice Clarence Thomas: “We have involved the federal courts, and indeed the Nation in … segregating the races into political homelands that amount, in truth, to nothing short of a system of political apartheid.”

Indeed, Hawaiians have also been “integrated into Mainstream American life” to a significant degree as evidenced by the fact that native Hawaiians have served as Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Supreme Court Chief Justice, Attorney General, Honolulu Mayor, City Council Chair, Honolulu Police Chief, Fire Chief and so on. Yet some now want to reverse this integration and indulge in the apartheid that so concern Thernstrom and Thomas, in order to preserve certain federal financial preferences.

And, Thernstrom maintains, “when the state treats blacks as fungible members of a racial group, they become in Ralph Ellison’s famous phrase "invisible men," whose blackness is their only observed trait. But that view -- the view that individuality is defined by race--is precisely what the civil rights movement fought so hard against. Do we really want to sign onto the notion that group racial traits override individuality -- perpetuating old and terrible habits of thought?”

Thernstrom concludes her testimony as follows: “I urge distinguished members of this Committee to be careful what they wish for. This bill may bring champagne on the day it’s passed, but tears down the road. Racial classifications, however prettily they are dressed up, are -- and always will be -- the same old classifications that have played such a terrible role in this great and good nation. They separate us along lines of race and ethnicity, reinforcing racial and ethnic stereotypes, and turn citizens into strangers. Haven’t we, as a nation, had enough of this miserable stuff?”

Again, she could well be talking about the Akaka Bill‘s sorting of Hawaii‘s citizens by racial and ethnic background and in Orwell’s famous phrase “making some more equal than others.”

We in Hawaii can do better than that. Aloha should be for all!

Tom Macdonald, retired President/CEO of Hawaiian Trust Company, lives in Kaneohe.