Hawai'i has an annual Martin Luther King Day calendar of events that carries a message about our multi-ethnic society the rest of the country might find relevant at this point in history.

It's an ironic development, considering that this state was slow to adopt the holiday observance, which even now is a minimally funded labor of love by volunteers.

The message is this: Preserving the civil rights of America's increasingly diverse population is a cooperative job for a coalition of minority interests.

That message resonates here very well because all of the Islands' constituent groups can be considered minorities. The black-white duality of race issues in other cities — where Martin Luther King Day is still viewed primarily as an African-Amercian celebration — doesn't fit Honolulu's ethnic spectrum.

The local chapter of the NAACP is multi-ethnic, for example. Pageants and dramatizations staged by schoolchildren to honor the pre-eminent black leader of the 20th century depict the rainbow hues of Hawai'i's population.

Civil rights here truly have depended on a partnership among minority groups, none of which individually has the numbers to effect change.

Increasingly, the rest of America is starting to resemble Hawai'i in diversity. Mid-sized cities and even small towns are becoming home to more than one or two minorities.

This holiday celebrates the ideal of many peoples joining to form one nation. And in a year when a black candidate finally has a chance of being elected president, today serves to remind all Americans that their best interests are served through partnership, not power struggles.