 Some put race behind money
By Yasmin Anwar and Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writers
Emerging results of a new category for Native Hawaiians in the 2000 Census suggest the United States has more than twice as many Hawaiians as was estimated a decade ago.
A lingering question, however, is whether those part-Hawaiians who checked off more than one racial category will dilute the numbers and diminish Hawaiians’ political clout.
Despite a push from Hawaiian rights advocates to mark only Hawaiian, some felt they needed to be true to their full ancestry.
"I’m not just Hawaiian. I’m mixed," said Sean Kalani, 33, a boilermaker from Kalihi who is three-fourths Hawaiian and one-fourth Caucasian.
State lawmakers use the data to reshape political district boundaries. The figures also will be used to redistribute more than $185 billion a year in federal money among states and communities.
OHA Chairwoman Haunani Apoliona is discussing the ramifications of the new mixed race category with census officials in Washington, D.C.
"We’re just not sure how people who checked more than one box will be classified," said Office of Hawaiian Affairs spokesman Ryan Mielke.
Census data released this week show that almost 400,000 people who filled out the form checked Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.
Furthermore, 476,000 identified themselves as Hawaiian and another race, with Hawaiian-Asian as the most prevalent mix.
Previous state and national estimates have set Hawaiians at approximately 20 percent of the state’s population of 1.1 million.
State Department of Health records in 1999 estimated 223,193 Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians around the state.
Dot in the ocean counts
While specifics are still missing, the new data suggests more Hawaiians were counted, the Hawaiian population has grown, and more people identified themselves as Native Hawaiian.
"We might be a dot in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but we count," said Butch Richards, 57, a traditional healer.
He is three-fourths Hawaiian and one-fourth Caucasian, and checked off both those categories on his Census form.
For the first time, the Census has a separate Native Hawaiian category.
Also for the first time, people had the option of choosing from one of 63 race options, including "white," "black or African American," "American Indian and Alaska Native," "Asian," and "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander."
Census figures rank Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders as representing just 0.1 percent of the U.S. population.
Nonetheless, raw numbers are a cause for celebration, some say.
"To think that there are that many Hawaiians in the world is cheerful because everybody was predicting that we would die off," said Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa, director for the Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i.
A 1920 report by the House Committee on Territories concluded that, since 1826, the number of full-blooded Hawaiians had decreased from 142,650 to 22,500.
Through intermarriage and other factors, the numbers grew. According to the U.S. Census, the number of Hawaiians in the United States increased from 166,814 to 211,014 between 1980 and 1990.
The 1990 census only offered five categories: "white," "black," "American Indian, Eskimo or Aleutian," "Asian or Pacific Islander" and "some other race."
Hence, Momi Lovell, 48, never found herself on the forms because she considered herself Native Hawaiian.
Refusing to mark the "Pacific Islander" category, she was among the millions who marked "Other."
"We’re not strangers to our own land," Lovell said. "Strangers have come to our shores. How they (census counters) look at it is just the opposite."
Numbers should be used to help Hawaiians
As director for the census information center for the federally financed Native Hawaiian health system Papa Ola Lokahi, Lovell has an interest in finding out how many Native Hawaiians fit into her database of those with diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
She says she wants the census numbers to be used to help Native Hawaiians become more responsible for themselves.
Indeed, Hawaiian service providers are anxious to get the latest numbers, but at least one agency isn’t counting on them.
The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands benefits Hawaiians with at least 50 percent native blood, a category that will not show up in the Census.
Its waiting list of 19,000 applicants wanting leases won’t dwindle any faster because of census results, spokesman Francis Apoliona said.
The Census is too subjective to prove anything, he said, but "the Census is a gauge mainly for Washington to help us."
Census counts are by their nature subjective and political, said Dean Alegado, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Hawai‘i. But, he said, the results hint at who we are and where we are headed.
"We have to recognize Native Hawaiians because it’s a recognition of historical injustice and a powerful sense of identification with Hawai‘i," he said. "It’s not just cultural. There are some sensitive and political issues that need to be addressed."
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