Note: This is part 5 of a larger webpage. The larger webpage is entitled "Dialogs with a racist -- Bringing to public awareness the explicit, enthusiastic, and unapologetic racism of Trisha Kehaulani Watson, a featured blogger on the public website of the largest circulation newspaper in Hawaii." To see that larger webpage, go to
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/DialogsRacistWatson.html
One Drop
[Race has been "the basis of discrimination and prejudice against millions of people in the United States for centuries. ... To be blunt: White people have historically had a problem with just about everybody. ... And so, because we are Hawaiian, we are entitled to the opportunity to change that. Since 1893 we have asked the United States to begin to right the wrong. We have asked for justice. We are still waiting."]
Trisha Kehaulani Watson dialog started May 30, 2009
Honolulu Advertiser featured blog He Hawai'i Au
http://hehawaiiau.honadvblogs.com/2009/05/30/one-drop/
Original essay by Trisha Kehaulani Watson
This wasn't the blog I was going to post, but I've had about enough of self-interested people who are attempting to rewrite American and Hawaiian history.
I will explain why ancestry (or race, color, nationality, or ethnicity) matters: it's been the basis of discrimination and prejudice against millions of people in the United States for centuries.
It's why the United States fought a Civil War. It's why millions of people took to the streets during the Civil Rights Movement. It's why the Civil Rights Act was passed. It's why we still have Title VII (among many other laws) today. It's why there is an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It's why there is a Hawai'i Civic Rights Commission.
To be blunt: White people have historically had a problem with just about everybody. It wasn't the Japanese (e.g. Japanese internment camps during World War II), Chinese (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Acts), African-Americans (e.g. human slavery), or just about every other ethnic minority in history to start any of these conflicts. And let's remember that when it came to discriminating against minorities, "one drop" was more than enough, as in the case of Japanese internment camps when an individual only had to be 1/16 Japanese to be interned or Homer Plessy who was only 1/8 African-African and forced into a segregated railway car.
Further, from 1790 (one of the earliest acts of the US Congress) until 1952 (barely 50 years ago), naturalization was reserved for "White persons" and millions of people have been denied that opportunity on the basis of race. (For an excellent book on this, see Ian Haney Lopez's White by Law, New York Press, 1996.)
Therefore, requiring the same variable that was the basis of the discrimination to be the basis of the reparation is fair. To somehow ask society to be colorblind so soon after one group built itself socially and economically into an overwhelming position of wealth and power by discriminating against everyone else based on the color of their skin is unrealistic and hypocritical.
I went into American Studies, because I, like my Queen, Lili'uokalani, believed that the United States could possibly live up to its own fundamental values and give all people the freedoms and liberties it so passionately gave to its citizens.
I was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., and I believe in his dream.
This is a famous speech; most know it. I now share with everyone a speech I find more inspiring, and one more appropriate as to why we have not even begun to walk down the road toward justice for Hawaiians.
[Quote]
President Lyndon B. Johnson's
Commencement Address at Howard University: "To Fulfill These Rights"
June 4, 1965
Dr. Nabrit, my fellow Americans:
I am delighted at the chance to speak at this important and this historic institution. Howard has long been an outstanding center for the education of Negro Americans. Its students are of every race and color and they come from many countries of the world. It is truly a working example of democratic excellence.
Our earth is the home of revolution. In every corner of every continent men charged with hope contend with ancient ways in the pursuit of justice. They reach for the newest of weapons to realize the oldest of dreams, that each may walk in freedom and pride, stretching his talents, enjoying the fruits of the earth.
Our enemies may occasionally seize the day of change, but it is the banner of our revolution they take. And our own future is linked to this process of swift and turbulent change in many lands in the world. But nothing in any country touches us more profoundly, and nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the revolution of the Negro American.
In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope.
In our time change has come to this Nation, too. The American Negro, acting with impressive restraint, has peacefully protested and marched, entered the courtrooms and the seats of government, demanding a justice that has long been denied. The voice of the Negro was the call to action. But it is a tribute to America that, once aroused, the courts and the Congress, the President and most of the people, have been the allies of progress.
LEGAL PROTECTION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Thus we have seen the high court of the country declare that discrimination based on race was repugnant to the Constitution, and therefore void. We have seen in 1957, and 1960, and again in 1964, the first civil rights legislation in this Nation in almost an entire century.
As majority leader of the United States Senate, I helped to guide two of these bills through the Senate. And, as your President, I was proud to sign the third. And now very soon we will have the fourth--a new law guaranteeing every American the right to vote.
No act of my entire administration will give me greater satisfaction than the day when my signature makes this bill, too, the law of this land.
The voting rights bill will be the latest, and among the most important, in a long series of victories. But this victory--as Winston Churchill said of another triumph for freedom--"is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
That beginning is freedom; and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down. Freedom is the right to share, share fully and equally, in American society--to vote, to hold a job, to enter a public place, to go to school. It is the right to be treated in every part of our national life as a person equal in dignity and promise to all others.
FREEDOM IS NOT ENOUGH
But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.
This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
For the task is to give 20 million Negroes the same chance as every other American to learn and grow, to work and share in society, to develop their abilities--physical, mental and spiritual, and to pursue their individual happiness.
To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in--by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. It is the product of a hundred unseen forces playing upon the little infant, the child, and finally the man.
PROGRESS FOR SOME
This graduating class at Howard University is witness to the indomitable determination of the Negro American to win his way in American life.
The number of Negroes in schools of higher learning has almost doubled in 15 years. The number of nonwhite professional workers has more than doubled in 10 years. The median income of Negro college women tonight exceeds that of white college women. And there are also the enormous accomplishments of distinguished individual Negroes--many of them graduates of this institution, and one of them the first lady ambassador in the history of the United States.
These are proud and impressive achievements. But they tell only the story of a growing middle class minority, steadily narrowing the gap between them and their white counterparts.
A WIDENING GULF
But for the great majority of Negro Americans-the poor, the unemployed, the uprooted, and the dispossessed--there is a much grimmer story. They still, as we meet here tonight, are another nation. Despite the court orders and the laws, despite the legislative victories and the speeches, for them the walls are rising and the gulf is widening.
Here are some of the facts of this American failure.
Thirty-five years ago the rate of unemployment for Negroes and whites was about the same. Tonight the Negro rate is twice as high.
In 1948 the 8 percent unemployment rate for Negro teenage boys was actually less than that of whites. By last year that rate had grown to 23 percent, as against 13 percent for whites unemployed.
Between 1949 and 1959, the income of Negro men relative to white men declined in every section of this country. From 1952 to 1963 the median income of Negro families compared to white actually dropped from 57 percent to 53 percent.
In the years 1955 through 1957, 22 percent of experienced Negro workers were out of work at some time during the year. In 1961 through 1963 that proportion had soared to 29 percent.
Since 1947 the number of white families living in poverty has decreased 27 percent while the number of poorer nonwhite families decreased only 3 percent.
The infant mortality of nonwhites in 1940 was 70 percent greater than whites. Twenty-two years later it was 90 percent greater.
Moreover, the isolation of Negro from white communities is increasing, rather than decreasing as Negroes crowd into the central cities and become a city within a city.
Of course Negro Americans as well as white Americans have shared in our rising national abundance. But the harsh fact of the matter is that in the battle for true equality too many--far too many--are losing ground every day.
THE CAUSES OF INEQUALITY
We are not completely sure why this is. We know the causes are complex and subtle. But we do know the two broad basic reasons.
And we do know that we have to act.
First, Negroes are trapped--as many whites are trapped--in inherited, gateless poverty. They lack training and skills. They are shut in, in slums, without decent medical care. Private and public poverty combine to cripple their capacities.
We are trying to attack these evils through our poverty program, through our education program, through our medical care and our other health programs, and a dozen more of the Great Society programs that are aimed at the root causes of this poverty.
We will increase, and we will accelerate, and we will broaden this attack in years to come until this most enduring of foes finally yields to our unyielding will.
But there is a second cause--much more difficult to explain, more deeply grounded, more desperate in its force. It is the devastating heritage of long years of slavery; and a century of oppression, hatred, and injustice.
SPECIAL NATURE OF NEGRO POVERTY
For Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences-deep, corrosive, obstinate differences--radiating painful roots into the community, and into the family, and the nature of the individual.
These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and they must be dealt with and they must be overcome, if we are ever to reach the time when the only difference between Negroes and whites is the color of their skin.
Nor can we find a complete answer in the experience of other American minorities. They made a valiant and a largely successful effort to emerge from poverty and prejudice.
The Negro, like these others, will have to rely mostly upon his own efforts. But he just can not do it alone. For they did not have the heritage of centuries to overcome, and they did not have a cultural tradition which had been twisted and battered by endless years of hatred and hopelessness, nor were they excluded--these others--because of race or color--a feeling whose dark intensity is matched by no other prejudice in our society.
Nor can these differences be understood as isolated infirmities. They are a seamless web. They cause each other. They result from each other. They reinforce each other.
Much of the Negro community is buried under a blanket of history and circumstance. It is not a lasting solution to lift just one corner of that blanket. We must stand on all sides and we must raise the entire cover if we are to liberate our fellow citizens.
THE ROOTS OF INJUSTICE
One of the differences is the increased concentration of Negroes in our cities. More than 73 percent of all Negroes live in urban areas compared with less than 70 percent of the whites. Most of these Negroes live in slums. Most of these Negroes live together--a separated people.
Men are shaped by their world. When it is a world of decay, ringed by an invisible wall, when escape is arduous and uncertain, and the saving pressures of a more hopeful society are unknown, it can cripple the youth and it can desolate the men.
There is also the burden that a dark skin can add to the search for a productive place in our society. Unemployment strikes most swiftly and broadly at the Negro, and this burden erodes hope. Blighted hope breeds despair. Despair brings indifferences to the learning which offers a way out. And despair, coupled with indifferences, is often the source of destructive rebellion against the fabric of society.
There is also the lacerating hurt of early collision with white hatred or prejudice, distaste or condescension. Other groups have felt similar intolerance. But success and achievement could wipe it away. They do not change the color of a man's skin. I have seen this uncomprehending pain in the eyes of the little, young Mexican-American schoolchildren that I taught many years ago. But it can be overcome. But, for many, the wounds are always open.
FAMILY BREAKDOWN
Perhaps most important--its influence radiating to every part of life--is the breakdown of the Negro family structure. For this, most of all, white America must accept responsibility. It flows from centuries of oppression and persecution of the Negro man. It flows from the long years of degradation and discrimination, which have attacked his dignity and assaulted his ability to produce for his family.
This, too, is not pleasant to look upon. But it must be faced by those whose serious intent is to improve the life of all Americans.
Only a minority--less than half--of all Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents. At this moment, tonight, little less than two-thirds are at home with both of their parents. Probably a majority of all Negro children receive federally-aided public assistance sometime during their childhood.
The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled.
So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together--all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.
TO FULFILL THESE RIGHTS
There is no single easy answer to all of these problems.
Jobs are part of the answer. They bring the income which permits a man to provide for his family.
Decent homes in decent surroundings and a chance to learn--an equal chance to learn--are part of the answer.
Welfare and social programs better designed to hold families together are part of the answer.
Care for the sick is part of the answer.
An understanding heart by all Americans is another big part of the answer.
And to all of these fronts--and a dozen more--I will dedicate the expanding efforts of the Johnson administration.
But there are other answers that are still to be found. Nor do we fully understand even all of the problems. Therefore, I want to announce tonight that this fall I intend to call a White House conference of scholars, and experts, and outstanding Negro leaders--men of both races--and officials of Government at every level.
This White House conference's theme and title will be "To Fulfill These Rights."
Its object will be to help the American Negro fulfill the rights which, after the long time of injustice, he is finally about to secure.
To move beyond opportunity to achievement.
To shatter forever not only the barriers of law and public practice, but the walls which bound the condition of many by the color of his skin.
To dissolve, as best we can, the antique enmities of the heart which diminish the holder, divide the great democracy, and do wrong--great wrong--to the children of God.
And I pledge you tonight that this will be a chief goal of my administration, and of my program next year, and in the years to come. And I hope, and I pray, and I believe, it will be a part of the program of all America.
WHAT IS JUSTICE
For what is justice?
It is to fulfill the fair expectations of man.
Thus, American justice is a very special thing. For, from the first, this has been a land of towering expectations. It was to be a nation where each man could be ruled by the common consent of all--enshrined in law, given life by institutions, guided by men themselves subject to its rule. And all--all of every station and origin--would be touched equally in obligation and in liberty.
Beyond the law lay the land. It was a rich land, glowing with more abundant promise than man had ever seen. Here, unlike any place yet known, all were to share the harvest.
And beyond this was the dignity of man. Each could become whatever his qualities of mind and spirit would permit--to strive, to seek, and, if he could, to find his happiness.
This is American justice. We have pursued it faithfully to the edge of our imperfections, and we have failed to find it for the American Negro.
So, it is the glorious opportunity of this generation to end the one huge wrong of the American Nation and, in so doing, to find America for ourselves, with the same immense thrill of discovery which gripped those who first began to realize that here, at last, was a home for freedom.
All it will take is for all of us to understand what this country is and what this country must become.
The Scripture promises: "I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out."
Together, and with millions more, we can light that candle of understanding in the heart of all America.
And, once lit, it will never again go out.
[End quote]
Hawaiians are still waiting for so much as much as a promise from the United States that hope and opportunity are coming. As it stands today, we have nothing.
Hawaiians have an only empty apology. We have no real resources. No real opportunities. No real redress. We Hawaiians live in another nation much like the one Johnson describes here, and we have been segregated into it because we are Hawaiian.
And so, because we are Hawaiian, we are entitled to the opportunity to change that.
Since 1893 we have asked the United States to begin to right the wrong. We have asked for justice.
We are still waiting.
------------
** Replies:
by Scott:
Dr. Watson-you play the role of victim so well. You were born in the country that offers the greatest opportunity if you are willing to work hard for it, and I see that YOU have. Good for you, but you are rotting the minds of those who agree with you and don't have the smarts to see through your bull****. You are handicapping the young Hawaiians with your polarizing rhetoric and I am confident that most people will see beyond your point of view.
by Ken Conklin:
Ethnic Hawaiians are NOT Negroes. They are nothing like Negroes. Ethnic Hawaiians have never been enslaved (except for the "Kauwa" caste which was enslaved by the other Hawaiians). Ethnic Hawaiians in Hawaii continue to live in the same place as their ancestors, where they enjoy the presence of their ancestral spirits and the places featured in their ancestral stories, unlike American Negroes. The United States owes nothing to ethnic Hawaiians beyond what the U.S. owes to all its citizens of all races.
by hipoli:
One on very simple level - I agree with Scott: Education is the greatest ladder to freedom, equality, and life's general indicators of success and happiness. As you know. From the most pristine private schools to the poorest public school - basic education will take a human to levels that overcome every possible obstacle. As you know. But Scott, I dont think she's playing victim, because we know she is not. So, what is she doing? And how could she be more effective?
---------
** Rebuttal
by Trisha Kehaulani Watson:
Ken,
Being that I have a PhD in American Studies (in addition to a BA and MA in the major) and a JD (law degree), I can assure you that you've just picked a fight you can't win, being that I can probably line up a whole string of internationally recognized academics to back me up on this one. I'm not saying we're African-Americans, just as we are also not Native Americans, but I'm saying there are significant comparisons between the oppressions, injustices, and ultimately, remedies between Native Hawaiians and other ethnic minority groups. People like you try to argue your point by isolating minority groups from one another and turning us on one another. Yet all minority groups are joined in the reality that we have faced common oppression and prejudice from the United States and are entitled to redress for those actions. My points are academically, legally and historically sound, unlike yours.
Scott and Hipoli,
Although I would consider myself having been disadvantaged, I am certainly no victim. My parents sacrificed considerably to send me to Punahou, and I clearly benefited from that education. I had opportunities. I believe every Hawaiian should have those opportunities. I should not be an anomaly. I believe we should give every Hawaiian the opportunity to have three things: adequate health care, adequate housing and a great education. And Scott, I'd also like answers to Hipoli's questions please. Thank you.
---------------
** Further responses:
by Scott:
Dr. Watson-I should clarify myself by stating that it's not you who is playing the victim, but you are setting young and impressionable Hawaiians up to play the victim card as they enter adulthood. I see so much anger and division at a young age by Hawaiians and I can't help but think that it's your (and Trask)'s radical approach to the topic that is setting these young people up for a life of and us vs. them mentality. Personally, as a young caucasion from the mainland, I am automatically put off by you, as in your earlier blogs you state that you flat out hate the mainland, my home, and here you pretty much tell that that you're not a big fan of white guys, like myself. You'll notice that I have no problelm addressing you as Dr. Watson. You have earned it and you deserve to be addressed appropriately. With regard to your concern that Hawaiians should have access to: health care, housing and an education. They do! They're Americans, like you and me, plus they get the added benefit of a tax funded enteties like OHA and DHHL to assist them. Beyond that, their barriers are largely self imposed and stem from generational poverty, often due to not educating themselves and entering a life of crime, and flat out laziness that is born out of an entitlement mentality.
by Scott additionally:
I just re read the paragraph of Family Breakdown, and I find it laughable. For, in 2010, a person to blame the breakdown of a modern black family on a white person is disguisting. I ask anyone to re read that paragraph and tell me if you seriously agree with that. Pure rubbish, and this is the exact kind of "blame" mentality that impressionable people are getting from this message. To think that I should apologize when I see that 70% of New York City crime is committed by blacks, that most black fathers run out on their kids, to see 65% of the prison being populated by blacks...you'll find no aplogy from me. That is ridiculous. Boy this white man's guilt is really killing me, I can't even live on an island in the middle of the ocean in 2010 and escape it....laughable Dr. Watson!
by Jere Krischel:
Keoni ‘Olohana was one of the ali'i who unified the Hawaiian Islands with Kamehameha the Great. As a close advisor to the King, he was appointed as the governor of the Big Island, and today his body lies in Mauna ʻAla, the Royal Mausoleum. His son was the Kuhina Nui to King Kamehameha the third, and his grand daughter was the beloved Queen Emma. But the Akaka Bill will not recognize Keoni as Hawaiian. Keoni, regardless of his rank, stature or accomplishments would not be allowed a place in the Akaka Bill's new government. Keoni used to be called John Young, and his ancestors came from England. Although he and his family were instrumental in the creation of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the Akaka Bill would reject him simply on the basis of his bloodline. He Hawai'i au; he mau Hawai'i kakou a pau. I am Hawaiian; we are all Hawaiians.
by MacKenzie:
"Being that I have a PhD in American Studies (in addition to a BA and MA in the major) and a JD (law degree), I can assure you that you've just picked a fight you can't win,"
If you have to fall back on your degrees, you have no case. I know PhDs who are idiots and lawyers who are in prison. You probably do too.
"being that I can probably line up a whole string of internationally recognized academics to back me up on this one."
That certainly worked for the tobacco and asbestos industries and Wall Street.
Try humility . Wisdom doesn't come from degrees.
-------------
** Further rebuttal by Trisha Kehaulani Watson:
MacKenzie,
I agree that wisdom doesn't come from degrees (and say as much in my dissertation), but when a lack of degrees from western institutions has been used against Hawaiians time and time again as to why we can't possibly control our own institutions or fates, degrees do count and are important to point out. As Dr. Konklin as spent the better of his comments referencing his (self-published) book, pointing out that I am equally educated matters.
Perhaps if I was white and male all of this would be easier for everyone to swallow, but I'm not - so I get called every name in the book and questioned as to my qualifications. Then when I point out my qualifications, I'm criticized for not being humble. I always find it ironic that white men are never criticized for their lack of humility. In fact, society encourages it in them and calls it "ambition." What exactly would satisfy everyone in my case?
Further, I have benefited tremendously from the love and support of non-Hawaiians, like my mother, best friend, academic mentors, and maternal grandparents (who raised me). I am not racist; conversely, I work towards ending the effects of historical racism by achieving justice for all groups by holding American accountable for their past wrongs.
I quoted a past President in the hopes of making people realize that great Americans believe in accepting accountability. The pillars of American values are in constant need of reinforcement. Isn't this why we send children into war? To reinforce and protect American values? And haven't we constantly justified war by saying that when you are unwilling to provide justice for even one single person, you threaten justice for everyone.
Why does this not apply to Hawaiians?
-------------
** Further responses:
by MacKenzie:
Dr. Watson,
I wish I still knew as much as you. I don't mean this in an insulting way but you possess a frightening certainty about things that is held either in those who have never held responsibility or who are totally immoral. I presume the former. What happens when you find that you are right but people will just not listen? What happens when you find that you can't solve something? When you have to go back and tell people you can't make the system work? Or will you remain an academic forever? That will be the test and it won't matter if you are male or female or black or white or brown or whatever, or what anyone thinks of you. Will you give up or will you pick up a piece of the problem and start over? Obama's book describes this in Chicago. If you start over, you need to start listening. Right now you are talking at people. You know what they are thinking "White people have historically had a problem with just about everybody", you think you know who they are, but at the same time they were doing bad things, they were running the Underground Railroad, fighting the Civil War, participating in the Civil Rights Movement and passing the Civil Rights Act. Instead you need to put yourself in their shoes, understand their concerns and explain why doing right for Hawaiians is doing right for America.
by hipoli:
I cant believe what I am reading here.
THIS is why the incredibly derogatory term "F'N HAOLE" exists. Its all right here, in this little blog. Dr. Konklin does more to damage and cause further condemnation for haoles in this State than any single other person I've encountered in recent memory. The way you come at the race-discussion and Hawaiians does so much more damage for future generations of haoles in this State than you can even comprehend. Or even care. You dont care. Not really. Not sincerely. All you care about is yourself, making a name for yourself, and promoting yourself and your crap, in whatever inappropriate avenue you can, including other people's blogs (SO TACKY!). So, for the damage you are doing to that poor haole kid who has to face even more discrimination because of how you are leading 'your cause' - F - U. You, Dr. Konklin, are making it HARDER for haole kids. Not better. Dont you get that?
As Ive said - there IS a racial discussion to be had. That haole-kid (public or private school, all the same) shouldnt be harassed, ridiculed, or bullied just for being haole. Can we all agree on that? Reverse discrimination simply does exist in this State. We condemn bullying in our schools, understand that it is wrong. But when its a local kid bullying or giving a haole boy a hard time, we pooh-pooh it. However, just telling kids to leave the haole boy alone doesnt cut it. Just as telling your coworkers or government officials to knock of the snide comments or discriminatory mindset doesnt work either. It doesnt stop the root of what Dr. Konklin is actually correct about - which is - simply - racism against haoles. As a State, there is a blunt and frank discussion about haoles that should be blasted open.
But to me, a mainland haole like Dr. Konklin or Scott, who moved here how-ever many years ago still completely lack any true understanding of what it means to be from here, born and raised. If you both, and all of you Grassroot types had been born and raised here, spent your childhoods in public schools, being raised with hanai families, eat poi in your diapers, lived and breathed everything local - then you all would have the inherent understanding of the bigger picture of what you are so ignorantly speaking of. You, Dr. Konklin, have absolutely no clue of what you speak. You simply have not lived it. All you do is piss too many people off with your arrogant rhetoric and your hateful actions. You take aim at Hawaiians in this Us vs. Them stance, as if they alone are guilty of perpetuating the discrimination against haoles. And then, to top it all off, just because youve decided that Hawaiians are haoles only foe, you go after their programs. Look around, do you see the Chinese community or Japanese community balking against Hawaiians? Dr. Konklin, you singlehandedly make haoles look even worse in this State.
As I have said, I think the only way any such discussion would even be remotely successful would be with a collective discussion amongst haoles about why they are labeled in such a derogatory manner. What are the sterotypical behaviors and indicators that trigger that condemnation. Going through that exercise is, in fact, eating a good amount of humble-pie. Lets go there - and then maybe that young local boy wont hear his dad swear ' F'N Haole' when some haole pisses him off- which plants that anger in the young local boy who then feels empowered to take it out on his haole classmate.
Finally, Dr. Watson, I so completely disagree with your notion that Punahou is the only great education in this State, that that is the gold standard of education that every Hawaiian should be afforded. Hawaiians and non hawaiians all have an opportunity for a great education, right here in our public school system. I do believe that PhD and JD is from UH, not Harvard. That you sought two advanced degrees here at home is remarkable and sets a fine, fine example for many young adults in this State, many of whom are graduates of our public school system, of all our rainbow of ethnicities, of what can be achieved in Hawaii. Education IS the great equalizer. Hawaiians, as a body of people, would be wise to follow your lead.
by MacKenzie:
I posted something last night that disagreed with Dr. Watson but it was deleted. I note that a longer post by Hipoli with obscenities and deliberately misspelling a person's name is published. This is not a discussion. It is a series of rants. No one is going to convince anyone of anything.
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** Further rebuttal by Trisha Kehaulani Watson:
Hipoli,
If I implied that I think Punahou is the only great education in this state, I apologize. I absolutely do not believe that to be the case. I do think I received a great education there though (and as someone who went there from K through 12, I have nothing else to compare it to), although going to Punahou (as one of very few Hawaiians) was not without its problems. I would simply like to see all Hawaiians receive a great education, whether in a Hawaiian charter school (like Kanu o ka 'Aina, which I believe to be an outstanding school) or other school. It doesn't matter where.
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** Further responses:
by Keahi Pelayo:
To be overly simple. 1. How far back do we go to fix injustices? Didn't Kamehameha displace others in uniting Hawaii? Do we fix this one? 2. I find much of today's present day discrimination to be coming from minorities rather than the majority.
Aloha,
Keahi
by Prof. Anon:
FYI, some 23 billion dollars have been obtained by Kamehameha Schools and state of Hawaii by appropriating the federal status of native Hawaiians of the Blood while the sum total obtained by actual native Hawaiians is six hundred million dollars. I would say when following the money, it is KS and the state who are fostering mistreatment of the True Bloods. What other explanation can there be?
by jason brown:
I feel like I'm in some kind of 1950's timewarp. A time when white was right, and injustice was blind. As a haole, I wonder how long it will take before a majority of my race mates get a grip on what this issue is really about - fifty years? 500? Yes, it's about land theft and indigenous rights, but also the quality of US justice. Or do critics of race-based policies in Hawaii really feel comfortable ignoring their own laws and waving away a century of historical fact?
by Prof. Anon 10 days after earlier comment:
I am waiting for Dr. Watson to comment on the post above regarding 23 billion federal dollars to Kam Schools and the state compared with 600 million dollars to the actual federal natives. Why are you not commenting, Dr. Watson?
by justin hahn:
"To be blunt: White people have historically had a problem with just about everybody." To make this statement full and correct, the author ought to add this phrase: "including themselves." Most "white people" probably didn't care much for or about the groups listed above (Japanese, Chinese, Africans). These were economic considerations, and as such race was only a justifying factor. The "white people" who cared about race, aside from those tricked through the propaganda of the ruling classes, cared only about the economic consequences of enfranchising more people -- they didn't care what color skin they had. (see: Catholics, Irish, etc.) "White people" are not and were not a cohesive group. One could say that "white people" profited from the dejected status of non-whites, but one would probably be wrong, since those profiting weren't just white -- they were also rich and men; rich being the most important factor. "White people" also lost out at the hands of these "white" imperialists, since they, too, were seen just as means to an end like blacks, Asians, First Peoples, etc. If making governmental decisions based on race was bad then, how is it good now? Tell me: how do two wrongs make a right? You are operating an entire system of ethics based on a reversal, and how far can you get with a reversal? If treating someone as a means to an end was bad then, how is it right now?
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