Posted on: Sunday, June 8, 2003

EDITORIAL
Hawaiian status fuzzy under Bush regime

For decades, tens of millions of federal dollars have gone to Native Hawaiian health, education, housing, economic development and more. Sen. Dan Inouye made sure of that.

Then along came Harold "Freddy" Rice, a Big Island rancher who filed a lawsuit contended that OHA's Hawaiians-only elections violated the 15th Amendment's ban against race-based voting restrictions. And the U.S. Supreme Court agreed.

Aside from opening OHA elections to all Hawai'i voters, the case — though technically restricted to voting issues — threw the constitutionality of all Hawaiians-only programs into doubt.

"As long as Hawaiians remain classified as a 'race' in the eyes of the federal government, our people will remain vulnerable to legal attacks such as those currently making their way through the courts, which seek to deprive Hawaiians of our rights as an indigenous population with a well-established history of sovereign nationhood," wrote OHA administrator Clyde Namu'o.

Indeed, the uncertain status of Native Hawaiians is not lost on the Bush administration. The Justice Department has asked that Native Hawaiians be removed from a bill benefitting Native American small businesses because it "could be viewed as authorizing the award of government benefits on the basis of racial or ethnic criteria."

Gov. Linda Lingle — who has said she will champion federal recognition of native Hawaiians — shrugs off the letter as an isolated case. But one would have to be blind not to notice that the reluctance to include Native Hawaiians in federal native American programs fits the Bush administration's resistance to racial and gender preferences.

A recent White House policy statement questioned an energy bill that provides racial preferences, particularly in its inclusion of Native Hawaiian organizations. And last September, the Justice Department sent a letter to Inouye raising concerns over a bill to provide affordable housing grants to low-income Native Hawaiians.

As far as the federal government goes, Native Hawaiians don't fit neatly into any box. But that could change if the Akaka bill ever gains momentum. Even if Congress passes it, the obstacles in the Bush administration are formidable. For starters, there's U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who, before he took office, successfully argued against Hawaiian entitlements in the Rice case.

Olson has made it clear that he does not consider Native Hawaiians to be in the same political class as American Indians and Alaska natives. As for affirmative action, Olson urged the court to reject the University of Michigan's admissions system as "a thinly disguised quota" that relied on racial and ethnic "stereotypes."

So if Lingle means to fulfill her campaign promise to Native Hawaiians, she's going to have to work a lot harder on her GOP connections on Capitol Hill. And if Hawaiians truly want federal recognition — and it's not clear how many do — they're going to have to become a lot more organized.