The New Race State

I was somewhat surprised to read back in July of a propsal in the form of a Senate bill from Senator Akaka that seems to create a state of apartheid-like proportion in Hawaii. The idea is that native Hawaiians would establish a sovereign government apart from the State and American governments. The new government, if formed, would negotiate with the State of Hawaii and the United States over land, resources, and jurisdictions. This new government would not be subject to the Bill of Rights, a document that is, in my opinon, the most valuable ever having been or ever to be written. Senator Akaka also says that this new entity could even secede from the Union.

I had two thoughts upon reading this, the first an observation that only native Hawaiians could participate in this new government (and the new government gets to decide who is and who isn't a native) and the second a shellshocked 'what the hell, where is e pluribus unum now?'

Supporters of this concept range far and wide (but not in large numbers), but I was most concerned with the grassroots supporters in the Hawaii and the people who came up with this ill-concieved plot to unravel another piece of our already strained culture.
I am concerned about the concept of a state founded on nothing more than race... what does that sound like? It's very un-American, this being the great melting pot where commonality rather than difference is at least supposed to be the idea. It also how people are dehumanized. When you start to see people as members of a racial group rather than as humans like you, it bcomes too easy to view them as less than human because they are not 'one of you/us'. Further, to have that kind of 'us and them' attitude without the Bill of Rights is to create a breeding ground for at best bigotry and at worst directed violence. I would have said genocide (as in, say, Kosovo, or any other place where populations stratify and divide by race*), but I find it unlikely that the United States would allow that.

Now, what happened here? There is no popular call for this in Hawaii, as most Hawaiians (and I say that to mean people who live there) are not racists. I suspect that many also know what separatism leads to. Surely, a separate Hawaii will bring about the prosperity and good governace known by the other separated communities in the U.S., the Native Tribes. They may have seen the stellar example of the Quebecoise as well and how well that's been going.
So not only is there no popular call, there are still plenty of people alive who recall a day back in 1959. On that day, with 94 percent in support, Hawaiians became residents of one of the United States. Many of those people worked hard to prove that Hawaii was viable as a state. Now as for what's gone wrong, the government out there won't even acknowlege Statehood Day, once a huge and vibrant celebration... on the grounds that it's divisive?

I think that what has happened is a power grab. With the potential to make a new nation, those who work to ram this bill through will be a postion to be top dogs in a nation. That's reason enough. Further, the fact that this bill crates a separation based on race is a classic power grabbing move, used by many tyrants from the anti-civil rights activists of this nations darker days to Slobodan Milosevich or even the Third Reich. Last, where is the referendum? The people of Hawaii might want a say in their state being ended.

Alson Ramsay of National Review has another take that I find to be very interesting as well. He proposed that this is the result of the new 'multiculturalism'. On a side note here, I see that today, multiculturalism has come to mean division by race... not the acceptance and celebration of other cultures, but of the supremacy of all other cultures over the mixed one that was created in this nation. Anyway, Ramsay points out that this new multiculturalism has given voice to an extreme minority to cite spurios grievances (that the land was taken from ordinary, native, Hawaiians by the U.S.**) to advance an ill-concieved agenda (a race state). Ramesh Ponuru, also of National Review, adds that this could set precedent for Aztlan and their ilk to gain traction in their fight to carve out chunks of California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

My overall perspective on this is that under no circumstances is it right to differentiate people in any way based on race. There is only one race involved here, the human race. People are people. Though they come from different places and grow in different ways, they are not different kinds. Mexican, Nordic, Navajo... those are where you are from, not the kind of human you are... but that's another post entirely.
It is wrong to take a people united and then to divide them up and place them under different governments. There is alrady an established goverment for all those people, a legitimate, popular, elected, government. Do not divided what is united. If a large majority of Hawaiians want this, then there would be some merit to the idea, stupid as it might be. However, as long as it remains a racial issue, it must not come to pass for any reason.


*Remember the pain cause by separated races in this Nation...
**When Hawaii was a kingdom, the monarch owned nearly everything...