Now that a conservative group is preparing for a legal assault on admission policy of Kamehameha Schools, which favors students with “Native Hawaiian ancestry,” I thought I would share my own perspective.
The phrasing of the group’s challenge makes it sound as if Kamehanmeha uses the “Native Hawaiian ancestry” criteria to create an ethnic barrier to entry for those with other ethnic backgrounds, a sort of educational apartheid.
In reality, that is simply not the case. And Kamehameha’s student body confounds attempts at categorization that rely on traditional understandings of ethnicity and race.
I went searching for a statement of what “Native Hawaiian ancestry” means. In my day, I remember being told you needed to claim something like 1/32 Hawaiian blood, based on genealogy. I couldn’t find any statement on Kamehameha’s website about a current blood quantum.
Apparently that’s because this metric is no longer used, if it ever actually was, according to Google’s review.
Ancestry requirement, not blood quantum. Applicants must submit documentation verifying they have at least one ancestor who was Hawaiian before 1959. Unlike the Hawaiian Home Lands program, which has a 50% blood quantum requirement, Kamehameha has no minimum blood quantum.
What does this mean?
Recall that Hawaiians had a very high out-marriage rate of any ethnic group going back 200 years, meaning that a large percentage of Hawaiians married non-Hawaiians beginning soon after western contact. Hawaiian women married or had childrfen with non-Hawaiian men at a high rate.
Hawaii’s census originally categories were simply “Native” and “non-Native.” Early in the 1800s, outmarriage by Hawaiians quickly gave rise to the term “hapa-haole” to refer to those of mixed Hawaiian and European or American ancestry. This later was turned on its head and “part-Hawaiian” became the term for a mixed family background.
Whatever the terminology, the result of a century of dramatic decline in the Native Hawaiian population as a result of introduced diseases, coupled with high outmarriage, has left painfully few “Hawaiians” today who are not also a multitude of other ethnicities, with Hawaiian often being a relatively small part of their overall ancestry.
In high school, I had a girlfriend who graduated from Kamehameha. She looked Hawaiian, but would proudly chant down her heritage, and I recall it went like this: “Hawaiian, Indian, Dutch, Scotch, English, Irish, Chinese, Portuguese, German.”
I’m guessing this is relatively typical, although the specific ethnicities might be different today.
When you look at Kamehameha students as a group, visually they are as multiethnic as you can imagine. There are haole-looking blonds, those who appear asian, and Hawaiians, both those who look stereotypically Hawaiian and those who do not. If you had a large group of Kamehameha students and asked, “How many of you are [fill in the ethnic group]?” a lot of hands would go up. Call out any ethnicity, the response would be the same.
So it’s just wrong to look at Kamehameha as being based on some kind of ethnic segregation. In practice, it is quite the opposite, it’s hard to find any group that has been excluded. Kamehemeha has created probably the most diverse group of students to be found anywhere, rich in a variety of ancestries. It’s a mix that confounds traditional ways of viewing and understanding race and ethnicity, inclusion and exclusion.
The big question remaining, I suppose, is whether the law can accommodate such an understanding.
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What a tremendous explanation, Ian. Thank you.
This was inevitable with this Supreme Court–the wonder is that it has taken them this long to bring a follow-up case to the earlier litigation that got settled. And, with conservatives in charge at the Court, they’ll almost certainly win. That will be a terrible thing for Hawaii, and the local response will be volcanic.
I don’t think I have a drop of Hawaiian blood so I can’t comment on what that is like. I’ve had conversations about racism with people who have either had bad experiences living here, or never lived here. I always say that has not been my experience. I have literally never been the victim of overt racism since I moved here 30 years ago, but I tried to assimilate into the local culture rather than impose my culture of origin on others.
Instead of hapa-haole or part-Hawaiian, we like to call multi-ethnic families a “mixed plate.” I tell people we have less racism here because you would have to hate your own grandchildren. I’m sure we have our isolated bigots like anywhere.
The group initiating this lawsuit is based in Virginia and has no stake in this game. I’m guessing not a single Hawaiian in the organization. IMO they are just oblivious to their own privilege, and interested in eliminating the hard-fought rights of others who are different from them. I could say something inflammatory right now but I’ll keep it to, “I see a theme here.”
Way back, didn’t Henry Rice get some legal issue brought up in same legal scenario?
.All races have been equal Since the Hawaiian constitution of 1843 that is a very noble defense attempt being made for Kamehameha schools, however… Kamehameha schools, and it’s ideologies being taught by their humanities department Has been pushing Keanu Sai’s racist revisionist diatribes for decades. This is why the native teens cruise and beat up white kids . I think I’lll see if I can get my caucasian granddaughters enrolled. Hawaii legally became a republic, territory, annexation, and state of the United States of America. Sincerely, Robin de Vanderpool
Kamehameha School is diverse but I don’t think this administration cares about students of “mix race”. They probably put us in the DEI bracket and that’s against their vision of America.
“it’s hard to find any group that has been excluded.”
People who have no Hawaiian ancestry have been excluded.
At the very least, the “preference” for students of Hawaiian ancestry acts as a de facto bar to others.
That’s the case in a nutshell.
If that were not the situation, there would be no controversy and no court case to make.
It’s one thing to agree with this policy as a remedy for past injustice or to promote other goals.
It’s quite another thing to deny, fail to grasp, or invoke inverse logic to explain away such a policy as if it did not exist.
Because of our interracial mixing for so long, Hawaii’s idea of what it means is uniquely different. Our fellow citizens on the mainland have no understanding. Google “one drop rule” and read up on the American history of social and legal discrimination justified by one drop of blood.
Lynn, my blond and blue son was born here and doesn’t see race. One year in school he was the only white kid in his class. I asked him if it bothered him and he hadn’t even noticed! I don’t think the kids care that much, and the ones who do picked it up from their parents. He was never discriminated against or bullied for being white. Just normal teenage drama, and he is still friends with the same kids he grew up with since preschool. Some of them are married now and making beautiful little mixed babies of their own.
Unfortunately I think they will probably win this lawsuit for reasons Carl stated above. What concerns me the most is that all of these changes will be very difficult to undo.
Kalikala — Your son’s story is beautiful. I’m so glad he did not notice he was the only haole and did not experience discrimination for being white! Unfortunately, I had haole friends and classmates who had to endure “kill Haole Day” on the last day of school. My children are of multi-ethnic mixed race and I am not. So when they got older I asked them about their perspectives on being “poi dogs”. They are fully aware of it, but don’t believe that it has been a negative in their lives. There’s nothing about them that looks like me either. In fact, upon meeting me one of my kid’s friends innocently asked if she was adopted. I gave birth to them so I have no doubts, but I wouldn’t blame them if they ever wondered.
I’ve heard stories about Kill Haole Day. I hope that doesn’t still go on but you can’t completely eradicate ignorance. I know the schools have zero tolerance but they can’t control everything that goes on off campus. I have definitely never seen or heard of gangs of roaming youth cruising for white kids to beat up around here, though, like someone says above.
My child resembles me and his dad so no doubts there. I do notice that a lot of his friends look like they could be adopted, but there is usually one little thing or another you can see in them that is like their parents. Like their smile. I’m glad my son was raised here. There are some limitations but kids are just happier in general. He wouldn’t be the same person if he grew up on the mainland.
I went to a public school and yes, that stuff was real. Actual assaults were never carried out on the last day of school but we all talked about it openly. The Caucasian students all stayed far away from everyone else at the far end of one particular building. Always. Strength in numbers. On the last day of school, I recall seeing two custodians looking at a wall where these students normally sat each day. Someone had apparently smashed a hole in the stairwell wall. They would sit at the base of those stairs. I think it may have been a parting “gift” from those students, because that was their last year at our middle school. They were one grade higher than me, and I never saw them again.
Ian, you are trying to defend a racially exclusionary admissions policy by claiming it is nor really so terrible as it actually is.
in Southern states under racial segregation by law, some states may have had, perhaps, 40% of all kids excluded from government or private schools because they the wrong ancestry. But in Hawaii today, a far larger percentage of kids are excluded from KSBE solely because of ancestry.(lacking a drop of the “magic blood.”
Combined with the Hawaiian creation legend, this is outrageous. One of my essays on my website uses a nasty word to describe this combination. See “Hawaiian religious fascism.”
Pauahi set forth in her will what she wanted her wealth to be put towards. KSBE has one of the largest endowments of any school because of her vision.
It’s still “her” money, and “her” will.
It really is no business for anyone outside of the administration of KSBE and the trustees to be saying what “she” does with it