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Anti-Caucasian Racial Hate Crimes in Hawaii -- Southern Poverty Law Center brings the issue to national awareness in a flawed but valuable Intelligence Report article.

An important article about Hawaii appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the quarterly magazine "Intelligence Report" published by The Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Prejudice in Paradise -- Hawaii Has a Racism Problem" by Larry Keller
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1081

It was accompanied by an addendum about Hawaii history, also by Larry Keller:

"Roots of Resentment Go Way Back"
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=449

Below is a review of the article, followed by extensive quotes with links to numerous relevant webpages. The links include two very important pdf files related to incidents mentioned in the article. After several years of denial and delay the Hawaii Department of Education was forced by the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education to sign a consent decree regarding a series of anti-Caucasian racial hate crimes in the public schools in Kealakehe (Kona). The pdf file of the settlement agreement includes the signatures of the Superintendent of Schools and Deputy Attorney General of the State of Hawaii, and is accompanied by a pdf file showing a lengthy list of findings of fact which warrant the consent decree.

But there are many other incidents of racial hate crime besides what happened in Kealakehe -- enough to cause the highly respected watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center to take notice, investigate the facts, and publish a report.

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REVIEW OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER ARTICLE

Although the article is a breakthrough in recognizing that Caucasians can be a victim group for racial hate crimes, the article also seems to enable ethnic Hawaiian racists by giving them an excuse for violence on account of historical grievances.

The mission of the magazine "Intelligence Report" is to describe hate groups and hate crimes throughout America, including lists naming such groups and maps showing where they are. Mostly the hate groups are chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, skinheads, and rogue militias; and the victims of hate crimes are African-Americans, Jews, and sometimes homosexuals.

SPLC describes itself this way: It "was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, SPLC is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups. Located in Montgomery, Alabama – the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement – the Southern Poverty Law Center was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, two local lawyers who shared a commitment to racial equality. Its first president was civil rights activist Julian Bond."

The article about Hawaii in Fall 2009 is notable because it might be the first time the distinguished SPLC has identified Caucasians as a victim group for racial hate crimes. In SPLC publications Caucasians have always been the perpetrators while Blacks and Jews have been the victims of hate crimes.

This left-leaning, liberal organization freely sprinkles the term "white supremacists" throughout its publications. But SPLC just cannot seem to bring itself to use the corresponding label "ethnic Hawaiian supremacists"; even though that is clearly the correct label for the theoreticians who inspire the perpetrators of the hate crimes described in the article about Hawaii.

In fact, the article goes out of its way to include an addendum entitled "Roots of Resentment Go Way Back" outlining a history of Hawaii portraying ethnic Hawaiians in two ways: they have justifiable anger against (today's) Caucasians for (alleged) colonial oppression of the natives and for the 1893 white-led revolution that overthrew the monarchy; and today's ethnic Hawaiians are courageously fighting to take control of their own future through the Akaka bill and a zealous secessionist movement.

Although the history described by the article is somewhat skewed, the logical way for SPLC to make use of that history would be to explain clearly that it is a litany of real or imagined grievances from 1778 to 1959, taught to students from kindergarten through university, and ballyhooed in the media, providing fuel for the fire of racial hatred against Caucasians.

But instead of giving that obvious explanation, the article has the effect of making SPLC into an enabler of hate crime against Caucasians by somehow giving the Hawaiian racial supremacists an excuse for the violence they spawn. The article could very well lead readers to believe it's OK to hate the racial group you've been told oppressed your ancestors two centuries ago, and it's understandable (perhaps acceptable?) when hatred spills over into violence.

Under such an analysis, hate crimes against Caucasians could even be regarded as yet another element of ethnic Hawaiian victimhood, because the aloha spirit Hawaiians would naturally display has been killed by oppression at the hands of Caucasians. Oh, those poor, downtrodden natives! The haoles (Caucasians) first committed genocide against them through newly introduced diseases for which the natives had no resistance. Then the haoles colonized the natives, overthrew their monarchy, made their language illegal, and stole their ancestral lands through annexation to America. And now the haoles have actually reached into the natives' very souls to destroy the aloha spirit which is the core of the Hawaiians' essential nature. Auwe! [how awful].

If SPLC wants to write an article about anti-Caucasian hate crimes, it should focus on those crimes and not present a skewed history from two centuries ago which seems to give an excuse for violence. If SPLC did the same sort of thing in its articles about neo-Nazi or skinhead hate crimes against Jews, it would then also have to include the skewed historical analysis created by those groups to justify their crimes by portraying Jews as controlling the banking system and the media, oppressing poor whites, and engaging in a worldwide conspiracy to strip Americans of our sovereignty.

So in the end, the SPLC article about Hawaii leaves us wondering whether a liberal organization fighting the good fight against white supremacist hate crimes can ever bring itself to fully acknowledge that the role of the races is reversed in Hawaii, where whites are the "niggers." And we must wonder whether liberals can recognize that demands for race-based political power are just as morally repugnant when asserted by dark-skinned people as when asserted by whites.

There's also an important difference between anti-Caucasian hate crime in Hawaii and anti-Black or anti-Jew hate crime on the mainland, which the SPLC article fails to mention. Mainland hate groups usually have a very small number of intellectual or inspirational leaders whose fiery rhetoric inspires a far larger number of face-bashing, leg-breaking, relatively unintelligent goons to attack the victims. The leaders and the goons have a close working relationship within their hate groups, and the leaders give "marching orders" to the goons. But in Hawaii it's very different.

In Hawaii there are a large number of ethnic Hawaiian racial supremacist intellectuals with respectable jobs as professors, lawyers, and executives in race-based "legitimate" socially approved institutions such as Kamehameha Schools and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Those intellectuals are often not members of any sovereignty group. Then there are dozens of Hawaiian sovereignty groups, each one led by either one or two intellectuals or by a charismatic activist. Some of the leaders even claim to be King, or Regent Pro-Tem, of a nation of Hawaii now restored to rightful governmental authority by the group. These sovereignty groups are constantly quarreling with each other over doctrinal disputes (much like Baptists vs. Methodists vs. Lutherans vs. Episcopalians; and all of them vs. Catholics). But on special occasions many of them come together to sponsor highly visible "peaceful" marches or protests which the media publicize ahead of time and report admiringly afterward. Finally there are a few ethnic Hawaiian "low-lifes" who enjoy beating up Caucasians or stealing from them for drug money, but who are mostly not affiliated with any intellectuals or sovereignty groups. The low-lifes who actually commit the racial hate crimes are acting on hatred for haoles for reasons they are only dimly aware of -- real or imagined historical grievances clearly described by the intellectuals, whose propaganda has infested the curricula of all public and private schools from kindergarten through university and is regularly featured in the media and in bills in the state Legislature and U.S. Congress

Despite its flaws, the SPLC article is extremely valuable because it describes a series of racial hate crimes against Caucasians in Hawaii and brings that issue to national attention. Following are some quotes from the SPLC article, selected because there are important webpages that discuss those topics in detail. Complete text of the SPLC article is available on the SPLC website where there are also links to lists of mainland hate groups, maps of where they are, and descriptions of crimes they have committed.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1081

Below are two sets of quotes from the SPLC article with accompanying links to webpages providing further information. The first set is descriptions of specific examples of actual violence and intimidation. The second set is descriptions of Hawaiian history which seem to justify or give an excuse for the violence.

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QUOTES FROM SPLC ARTICLE DESCRIBING SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF ANTI-CAUCASIAN VIOLENCE AND INTIMIDATION (WITH LINKS TO RELATED WEBPAGES)

** Quotes from SPLC article regarding Tina Mohr and the racial hate crimes against her schoolgirl daughters:

Tina Mohr has lived in Hawaii for 25 years. She has Native Hawaiian friends. But in the 2003-04 school year, her twin blond-haired daughters, aged 11 at the time, began getting harassed by Native Hawaiian kids at their school on the Big Island. "Our daughters would come home with bruises and cuts," she tells the Intelligence Report.

One of her girls was assaulted twice in the same day. In one scuffle, she had her head slammed into a wall, and her attacker continued to threaten her. Her daughter suffered a dislocated jaw and had headaches for five weeks, Mohr says.

The torment continued in the summer between 5th and 6th grades. Native Hawaiian girls stalked and threatened her daughters and yelled "fucking haole" at them. Midway through the 6th grade, Mohr began to home-school her daughters.

She filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education in 2004. It was only recently, on Dec. 31, 2008, that the division finally released its report. The report concluded there was "substantial evidence that students experienced racially and sexually derogatory name-calling on nearly a daily basis on school buses, at school bus stops, in school hallways and other areas of the school" that Mohr's children attended.

The epithets included names such as "f*****g haole," "haole c**t" and "haole whore," according to the report. Students were told "go home" and "you don't belong here." Most of the slurs were directed by "local" or non-white students at Caucasians, especially those who were younger, smaller, light-skinned and blond.

The report also concluded that school officials responded inadequately or not at all when students complained of racial harassment. Students who did complain were retaliated against by their antagonists. "They learned not to report this stuff," Mohr says of her own daughters.

The Hawaii Department of Education settled Mohr's complaint with a lengthy agreement in which educators promised to take various steps to improve the reporting, investigating and eliminating of student harassment in the future. Today, Mohr's daughters are again attending the school where they used to have trouble. They haven't been assaulted, but one was threatened on a school bus earlier this year.

** Relevant webpages:

December 2008 letter to Tina Mohr from the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, listing the OCR findings of fact which resulted in a settlement agreement (below) forced on the Hawaii Department of Education.
http://big09a.angelfire.com/USDOEOCRfindingsletterDec08.pdf

December 2008 official settlement agreement forced on the Hawaii Department of Education by the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education. Signed by the Superintendent of Schools and Deputy Attorney General of the State of Hawaii.
http://big09a.angelfire.com/USDOEwHDOEsettlementagreementDec08.pdf

"School discrimination probe results in deal. A Kona parent says her child was attacked in 2004 and that racial tensions continue" Honolulu Star-Bulletin, January 16, 2009
http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20090116_School_discrimination_probe_results_in_deal.html

"State faulted in bullying case"
Honolulu Advertiser, January 20, 2009
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2009/Jan/20/ln/hawaii901200338.html

"Civil rights complaints in schools. Alleged violations could threaten schools' federal funds. ... Hawaii's public schools could potentially lose federal funding if the state fails to resolve allegations that several Hawaii Island students have been targets of harassment, violence and retaliation because of their race, sex and disability. State and federal officials have sought resolution to these alleged civil rights violations for more than two years, exceeding the typical 180 days it takes to settle "most cases" by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. ... Twenty-year Hawaii residents Tina and Sanford Mohr filed civil rights complaints in December 2004 with the U.S. DOE Office of Civil Rights alleging their children, who were both born and raised in Kona, were assaulted and repeatedly bullied because of their race and gender. The Mohr's then 11-year-old daughter suffered severe injuries, including a dislocated jaw, after being assaulted in May 2004 by a fellow, female Kealakehe Elementary School student following weeks of taunting that included sexually related epithets and racial slurs, such as 'f------ haole.'"
West Hawaii Today, August 1, 2007
http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2007/08/01/local/local02.txt

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** Quote from SPLC article describing a hate crime in a Waikele (Oahu)shopping center in 2007 which caused an uproar in Hawaii and was also covered in the national media:

A violent incident with racial overtones in 2007 near Pearl Harbor prompted a good deal of soul searching about race in Hawaii. A Native Hawaiian man and his teenage son brutally pummeled and kicked a Caucasian soldier and his wife near Pearl Harbor after the soldier's SUV struck the other man's parked car. The son shouted "fucking haole" while attacking the soldier. The husband and wife suffered broken noses, facial fractures and concussions. A prosecutor said the assault was a road-rage incident, not a hate crime. But it generated much debate on newspaper websites and blogs about the use of the word haole and whether whites are the targets of racism in Hawaii. "It is a hateful place to live if you are white," wrote a woman on one Hawaii website's comments section. A Hawaii native who is white wrote, "Racism exists in Hawaii. My whole life I've never really felt welcome here." A sailor stationed at Pearl Harbor added that "this island is the most racist place I have ever been in my life."

** Large webpage providing news reports and commentaries about this incident, plus analysis.

"Road Rage or Racial Hate Crime? (Thinking carefully about an actual incident of racial violence in February 2007, and how such violence can be used as a political tool to bolster demands for Hawaiian sovereignty)"
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/RoadRageVsRacialHateCrime.html

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** Quote from SPLC article mentioning mass physical attack against people trying to celebrate Hawaii Statehood Day holiday in 2006:

A vocal segment of Native Hawaiians is pushing for independence to end the "prolonged occupation" by the United States and governance by natives. Demonstrators shouting racial epithets at whites disrupted a statehood celebration in 2006.

** Webpage link:

"Hawaii Statehood Day 2006 -- Celebration at Old Territorial Capitol Building (Iolani Palace) Disrupted by Hawaiian Ethnic Nationalist Wannabe-Terrorists" (extensive compilation of news reports and commentaries)
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/statehoodday2006.html

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** Quotes from SPLC article about non-celebration of Statehood Day on the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's admission to the union, August 21, 2009:

[Because of Hawaii's history:] Little wonder then that as Hawaii prepares to observe the 50th anniversary of becoming the 50th state on Aug. 21, it will a muted celebration, devoid of parades or fireworks.

The non-celebration will consist largely of educational events at various venues. Iolani Palace won't be one of them. Once home to Hawaii's monarchy and where the last monarch was imprisoned after her government was overthrown, the palace is a potent symbol of anti-statehood — and anti-white — sentiment.

Republican state Sen. Sam Slom learned that the hard way. Although Statehood Day is a holiday in Hawaii, there were no celebrations for about 10 years, until he organized one in 2006 at the palace. He and others were confronted by demonstrators shouting racial epithets. Slom, who is Caucasian and has lived in Hawaii since 1960, said the 30 to 40 "hard-core" protesters intimidated a high school band, which left early, as well as some spectators.

The 50-year anniversary events figure to be "soft celebrations" aimed at defusing sovereignty passions, Slom says. "It is a divisive wedge that some people have exploited," he says. "There are people who have made it a racial thing. [But] the vast, overwhelming majority are proud to be United States citizens."

Still, a statehood commission planning commemorative events opted not to re-enact the phone call to the Territorial House of Representatives meeting at Iolani Palace in 1959 informing representatives that Congress had voted in favor of Hawaiian statehood. Commission member Donald Cataluna strongly opposed a reenactment, according to the Honolulu Advertiser, saying he "didn't want any blood to spill."

That won't completely mollify sovereignty activists, Slom predicts. "There will be protests, there's no question about it."

** Webpage link:

"Hawaii golden jubilee (50th anniversary of statehood) included ripping the 50th star off the U.S. flag and burning it. Congress must not pass the Akaka bill because it would empower anti-American secessionists." Webpage includes videos, photos, and news reports of an anti-statehood parade that included bashing the head off an effigy of Uncle Sam, pulling out a U.S. flag, cutting off the 50th star and burning it; accompanied by anti-American and anti-Caucasian speeches and chants.
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/StatehoodGoldenJubilee.htm

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QUOTES FROM SPLC ARTICLE DESCRIBING HAWAII'S HISTORY IN A WAY THAT SEEMS TO JUSTIFY OR GIVE AN EXCUSE FOR ANTI-CAUCASIAN VIOLENCE (WITH LINKS TO RELATED WEBPAGES)

** Quotes from SPLC article about Professor Haunani-Kay Trask's explanations about why anti-Caucasian violence is appropriate:

Professor Haunani-Kay Trask believes Native Hawaiians have every right to feel hostile toward whites. A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, is one of the most caustic critics of whites in the islands. In her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, Trask wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism." In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart." [Speaking about an anti-Caucasian racial hate crime described in the SPLC article] "There is no doubt in my mind [the attack] was racially motivated," she adds.

** Webpage about Trask:
"Professor Haunani-Kay Trask: Some Speeches and Writings Illustrating the Anti-American and Anti-White Attitudes of the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/trask.html

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** Quote from SPLC article describing Ken Conklin

** Webpage about Conklin:

"Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. Who is Ken Conklin? What does he look like and sound like? What is his background? What does he believe in? Why did he come to Hawaii? Why does he pick on ethnic Hawaiians?"
https://www.angelfire.com/bigfiles90/ConklinBio.html

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** Quote from SPLC article in which the Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii describes racial violence against whites as being "minor compared to the larger issues underlying it."

The resentment some Native Hawaiians feels toward whites today can be chalked up in part to "ancestral memory," says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii. "That trauma is qualitatively different than other ethnic groups in America. It's more akin to American Indians" because Hawaiians had their homeland invaded, were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity, and had an alien culture forced upon them, he says. Stories about the theft of their lands and culture have been passed down from one generation to the next, Matsuoka adds. ... Racial violence directed at whites in Hawaii, while deplorable, is minor compared to the larger issues underlying it, Matsuoka says.

** Related webpages:

"Violence and threats of violence to push demands for Hawaiian sovereignty -- past, present, and future" [A major webpage with twenty sections describing and documenting how violence and threats of violence have been used as political weapons by Hawaiian sovereignty activists including King Kamehameha, Queen Liliuokalani, crew of Hokulea voyaging canoe, Rev. Charles Maxwell (former Chair of the Hawaii State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights), Rod Fereira (at the time head of three major ethnic Hawaiian institutions), Senator Dan Akaka, and others.
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/HawSovViolence.html

"Racism in the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement (with special focus on anti-white racism)"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/racismhawsov.html

"Hawaii's Most Important Civil Rights Issues -- An attorney who is a member of the Hawaii State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights publishes his recommendations to the Chairman and members of the USCCR identifying the most important civil rights issues in Hawaii in 2009 and looking forward." Anti-Caucasian hate crimes are on the list, along with Hawaii's plethora of race-based entitlement programs and the proposal in Congress to create a race-based government (Akaka bill).
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/CivilRightsHawAgendaBurgess2009.html

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** Quote from SPLC article about Hawaiian history

Anti-white sentiments such as these have been more than 200 years in the making. The pivotal event occurred when American and European businessmen, backed by U.S. military forces, overthrew Hawaii's monarch in 1893 and placed her under house arrest two years later. The United States annexed the islands as a territory in 1898, and they became a state in 1959.

** Webpage link

"Hawaii Statehood -- straightening out the history-twisters. A historical narrative defending the legitimacy of the revolution of 1893, the annexation of 1898, and the statehood vote of 1959."
https://www.angelfire.com/big09a/StatehoodHistUntwisted.html

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** Entire SPLC article addendum portraying Hawaii history in a way that seems to give an excuse for anti-Caucasian hate crimes:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=449

Roots of Resentment Go Way Back

Conflicts between the Polynesians who settled in Hawaii and whites began as early as 1779, when the locals clashed with English explorer Capt. James Cook and his crew. Cook became the first European to set foot on the islands the previous year, naming them the Sandwich Islands. On a return voyage, he and his men got into a dispute with the Hawaiians, who stabbed Cook to death in the surf.

In 1810, Kamehameha I became Hawaii's first king, and 10 years later missionaries from New England arrived. This time, white people came to stay, although Hawaii remained mostly autonomous in the ensuing decades. When Queen Liliuokalani ascended to the throne in 1891, she drafted a new constitution that would strengthen the monarchy's authority.

American and European businessmen then formed something called the Committee of Safety and sought U.S. military assistance to deal with a purported "imminent threat to American lives and property." U.S. Marines and sailors were deployed and the queen relinquished her throne. President Grover Cleveland ordered an investigation. A report by former congressman James Henderson Blount concluded that the United States had abused its authority. Cleveland ordered the queen's reinstatement, but provisional government president Sanford Dole, older cousin of the pineapple magnate James Dole, refused.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducted its own probe and came to the opposite conclusion as Blount. The Republic of Hawaii was then established in 1894, with Dole as president. An attempt the following year to overthrow the republic was quashed, and Queen Liliuokalani was convicted and imprisoned for a year in Iolani Palace. In 1898, the United States annexed the islands. Hawaii became a territory.

Six decades later, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill allowing Hawaiian statehood, and 94% of residents voted on Aug. 21, 1959, in favor of it. Even so, there are today many sovereignty groups in Hawaii. One of them, the Hawaiian Kingdom Government, maintains that Hawaii has been "under prolonged occupation" by the United States and even filed an unsuccessful complaint with the United Nations Security Council in 2001.

On the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of Hawaii's monarchy in 1993, Congress passed what became known as "The Apology Resolution," expressing regret for the "suppression of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people." President Bill Clinton signed the measure. It was about that time that "we started seeing more [Native Hawaiian] activism," says state Sen. Sam Slom.

Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka later began regularly introducing a controversial bill that would recognize people of Native Hawaiian ancestry as a sovereign group, similar to Native American tribes. If passed, the bill would create a native-run government that would negotiate with the U.S. government for things like the transfer of lands. The legislation is pending before Congress.

Even pro-sovereignty advocates are divided over the bill, with opponents contending it would leave Hawaii still beholden to the U.S. government and hamper their efforts to restore the islands as an independent nation controlled by natives. Others, however, see the establishment of an independent Native Hawaiian government as a first step toward eventual independence.

** Related webpages:

"Historical Issues Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty -- Revolution (Overthrow of monarchy), Annexation, Statehood, Indigenous Status, Hawaiian Language Ban, Ceded Lands, Etc." [a compilation of webpages about those historical events showing that there is no historical, legal, or moral justification for race-based political sovereignty for ethnic Hawaiians]
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/historical.html

"Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State" [302 page book]
http://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa

"Why all America should oppose the Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill, also known as the Akaka bill."
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/bigfiles40/AkakaNationalSummary.html

"For Media and the Public: Up-to-Date, Basic, Quick Information About The Hawaiian Government Reorganization Bill (Also known as the Akaka bill). Three matched pairs (companion bills with identical content) of the Akaka bill are active in the 111th Congress."
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/medianotes.html

"Major Articles Opposing the Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill (Akaka bill) -- INDEX for years 2000 - 2009"
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/AkakaPublishedOpposition.html

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FULL TEXT OF SPLC ARTICLE

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1081
Southern Poverty Law Center, "Intelligence Report"
Fall, 2009

"Prejudice in Paradise -- Hawaii Has a Racism Problem"

by Larry Keller

Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, "Go back to the mainland" and "Take your white ass off our beaches," says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey.

When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting his ear, and choked and punched him, Padron says. Police officers persuaded the Padrons not to press charges, saying it would be expensive for them to return for court appearances and a Hawaiian judge would side with the Hawaiian assailants, the doctor contends.

"There is no doubt in my mind [the attack] was racially motivated," she adds.

With no known hate groups and a much-trumpeted spirit of aloha or tolerance, few people outside Hawaii realize the state has a racism issue. One reason: The tourism-dependent state barely acknowledges hate crimes. That makes it hard to know how often racial violence is directed at Caucasians, who comprise about 25% of the ethnically diverse state's 1.3 million residents. Those who identify themselves as Native Hawaiian — most residents are of mixed race — account for nearly 20%.

Hawaii has collected hate crimes data since 2002 (most states began doing so a decade earlier). In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. (All other things being equal, the state would be expected to have more than 800 such crimes annually, given the size of its population, according to a federal government study of hate crimes.) There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents. But that doesn't begin to reflect the extent of racial rancor directed at non-Native Hawaiians in the Aloha State, especially in schools. For example:

The last day of school has long been unofficially designated "Beat Haole Day," with white students singled out for harassment and violence. (Haole — pronounced how-lee — is slang for a foreigner, usually white, and sometimes is used as a racial slur.)

A non-Native Hawaiian student who challenged the Hawaiian-preference admission policy at a wealthy private school received a $7 million settlement this year.

A 12-year-old white girl new to Hawaii from New York City needed 10 surgical staples to close a gash in her head incurred when she was beaten in 2007 by a Native Hawaiian girl who called her a "fucking haole."

Little wonder then that as Hawaii prepares to observe the 50th anniversary of becoming the 50th state on Aug. 21, it will a muted celebration, devoid of parades or fireworks.

Classroom Warfare

Racial Legacies

The resentment some Native Hawaiians feels toward whites today can be chalked up in part to "ancestral memory," says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii. "That trauma is qualitatively different than other ethnic groups in America. It's more akin to American Indians" because Hawaiians had their homeland invaded, were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity, and had an alien culture forced upon them, he says. Stories about the theft of their lands and culture have been passed down from one generation to the next, Matsuoka adds. (One difference now, of course, is that Native Hawaiians in Hawaii are far more numerous than American Indians are in their own ancestral regions, where the Indians remain politically weak and largely marginalized by the far larger white population.)

Racial violence directed at whites in Hawaii, while deplorable, is minor compared to the larger issues underlying it, Matsuoka says. The Hawaiian spirit of aloha "is pervasive, but you have to earn aloha. You don't necessarily trust outsiders, because outsiders [historically] come and have taken what you have. It's an incredibly giving and warm and generous place, but you have to earn it," he says.

Further fueling the resentment that some Native Hawaiians feel for outsiders are attempts by the latter to usurp entitlement programs given the former to redress previous wrongs. In recent years, non-native residents have used the courts to try and rescind these entitlements on grounds that they are racially discriminatory and violate the U.S. Constitution.

Retired professor and "anti-sovereign" white activist Kenneth Conklin and others prevailed in a lawsuit in 2000 that challenged a requirement that trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — OHA — be of Native Hawaiian descent. OHA oversees huge tracts of lands that the United States took from Hawaii when it annexed the islands as a territory, and collects revenues from them for programs that benefit Native Hawaiians.

The state government was going to sell 1.2 million acres of these lands to developers for two state-sponsored affordable housing projects when OHA and four Native Hawaiian plaintiffs sued to stop the deal. A state court sided with the government, but the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed in favor of the plaintiffs. This March 31, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Hawaii high court erred and sent the case back for further action.

There also was an unsuccessful legal challenge to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, passed by Congress in 1921. The act allows a Hawaiian agency to make 99-year leases at $1 per year to Native Hawaiians (but not other residents) for authorized uses on lands ceded to the United States when it annexed Hawaii. More than 200,000 acres of land were designated for uses such as homes and ranches.

One of the more protracted legal battles involved a lawsuit filed in 2003 by a non-Native Hawaiian student against the hugely wealthy and influential private Kamehameha Schools. Kamehameha operates three campuses for the benefit of children of Hawaiian ancestry. The student's attorneys contended that violates civil rights laws. As the U.S. Supreme Court was about to announce last year whether it would hear the case, Kamehameha paid $7 million to settle it out of court.

'A Hateful Place'

Other white residents, however, wrote that they had had no such experiences. And many people maintained that arrogant mainlanders are the most likely to incur natives' wrath. It's their "cultural inability to be humble [that] is a huge contributing factor in a lot of violence against them," one person wrote. "There is a high degree of arrogance and lack of respect that mainlanders exhibit," added another.

A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, is one of the most caustic critics of whites in the islands. In her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, Trask wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism."

In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart."

Trask's opposite number is Conklin, the "anti-sovereignty" white activist who has lived on Oahu for 17 years and says he loves Hawaii's culture, spirituality and history, but is labeled a racist by some of his detractors. He wrote a book entitled Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State.

"Here in Hawaii, there is no compulsion to speak out on racist attacks. There are all these hate crimes and violent things happening to white people and you don't hear sovereignty activists speaking out against it," says Conklin, who manages a massive website on Hawaiian issues. "The violence has been going on for years and it's always been hush-hush."

State and Race

It's against this backdrop that Hawaii approaches its 50th anniversary of statehood. The non-celebration will consist largely of educational events at various venues. Iolani Palace won't be one of them. Once home to Hawaii's monarchy and where the last monarch was imprisoned after her government was overthrown, the palace is a potent symbol of anti-statehood — and anti-white — sentiment.

That won't completely mollify sovereignty activists, Slom predicts. "There will be protests, there's no question about it."

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** Separate historical analysis accompanying the above article; full text

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=449

Roots of Resentment Go Way Back

— Larry Keller

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Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com

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