Small Business News
August 2005 | Online Edition
Thoughts on the Akaka Bill
by Tracy A. Ryan
Libertarians are opposed to the so-called “Akaka” bill aimed at granting ethnic Hawaiians the status of an Indian tribe. There are lots of issues involved in this bill, but we believe it runs contrary to the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. America does not have a record on race relations that many of us are proud of. The Fourteenth Amendment that aimed to undo racial discrimination was passed in the 1860s following the Civil War. Yet it wasn’t until the 1960s that African-Americans began to receive the protections it promised. Much struggle was involved. Let’s not go backwards. If Hawaiians have grievances to discuss, let’s look to other ways than Akaka to respond to them.
In my 2002 campaign for Governor, I was clear in opposing the Akaka Bill. In television programs filmed for Olelo, I repeated my position. I was open to discussing it with Hawaiian groups, finding many of them opposed to this bill as well. Other Libertarian candidates have been no less frank on the issue. Had I had more support from the many Akaka bill opponents who voted for our current pro-Akaka bill governor, I might have been invited to appear in the one major televised debate that went out over all the broadcast channels. This might not have changed the election results, but it would have given viewers a more balanced view.
During the 2002 campaign it was clear that Hawaiians constituted a swing vote. Candidates were jumping over themselves to appear pro-Hawaiian. Campaign managers made professional estimates regarding where the most votes could be had for their candidates and candidates developed positions accordingly. Libertarians create their positions based on applying the principals of libertarianism to the issues of the day. We do not develop positions by counting noses.
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs, commonly referred to as OHA, (oh-ha), was created by the State of Hawaii in 1979 to administer programs aimed at ethnic Hawaiians. OHA could have done a perfectly fine job of this without establishing blood quantum tests for radical discriminatory purposes. Based on their own publications it is clear that ethnic Hawaiians constitute a large proportion of the people in need of the kinds of services to be offered by their agency. The overlap between OHA clients and people of Hawaiian ancestry would always have been high.
The State blindly decided to conduct public elections for OHA trustees based on allowing the franchise to only those persons who could prove Hawaiian ancestry. Everyone should have known this was unconstitutional. The surprise is that it took until 2000 before the US Supreme Court ruled it so. The Court also eliminated the race qualifications for serving as an OHA trustee. It should be clear that if OHA is an organ of the state they must abide by the Fourteenth Amendment. If they insist on race basing themselves they would have to first become some sort of private entity. No plan, even a theoretical one, has been advanced explaining how OHA could divorce itself from the State of Hawaii and become private. This is because OHA has chosen to seek an end around the Supreme Court decisions through Senator Akaka’s bill.
The Akaka’s bill is not a child of, what for lack of a better term I will describe as, the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. It was dreamed up to help a State agency continue to act in violation of the Constitution. The bill may discuss native government and other issues, but I believe this language is simply aimed at tapping into the political strength of Hawaiian activists. Not surprisingly to those familiar with Hawaiian activists it has had quite a different effect. For the most part the Hawaiian activists do not support this bill. They certainly do not view it as establishing Hawaiian sovereignty.
Suppose you were a black man applying for a job and the employer told you “sorry, we don’t hire blacks here”. You have been discriminated against. You have suffered potential economic loss by the actions of another individual. There are no ambiguities. Now say that many generations ago you had a Hawaiian ancestor. He represents 1/64th of your genetic makeup. The rest of your genes are all European. Can you now claim damages for the harm done to your 1/64th Hawaiian ancestor from people living today who cannot be shown to have ever done you any harm at all? The fact is it was probably some of your other 63/64th ancestors who did the harm to begin with. So should one part of you sue the other?
Republicans have used the Akaka bill as an opportunity to direct criticism at the various Hawaiian sovereignty groups. Since the Akaka bill talks about creating a native government this may not be entirely inappropriate. Libertarians have other views in some of these areas. Beyond the clear issues I have outlined above there is no consensus among Libertarians on Hawaiian sovereignty. Add to this that there are dozens of Hawaiian groups advocating dozens of differing views on sovereignty.
Libertarians believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are universal human rights. So to a libertarian thinker all sovereignty starts with self sovereignty. To argue as Republicans have that Hawaiians have no standing to ask for sovereignty because under the Hawaiian monarchy the King and not the people was sovereign flies in the face of this most basic of American principals. Any government that acts without the sovereign consent of its people should be regarded as illegitimate. To do otherwise legitimizes the acts of every dictatorship and totalitarian regime that has ever existed.
Shortly after the 1898 annexation of Hawaii the former president of the Republic of Hawaii, Mr. Sanford P. Dole, wrote an article published in Harper’s Pictorial History of the War With Spain. Mr. Dole wrote that there were 109 thousand people living in Hawaii at the time of the 1896 census. Native Hawaiians and part Hawaiians represented more than a third of the population. Dole stated clearly that the majority of this group had opposed annexation. He also states “naturally the part-whites have a hereditary superiority over the pure Hawaiians, and are, as a rule, more progressive.” I quote this to point out the strong undercurrents of racial prejudice that underlay white writers of Dole’s time. It should be a warning to those who wish to accept all the writings of his contemporaries at face value.
Dole’s article is clear on how various ethnic groups viewed annexation. According to him the Anglo-Saxons and Portuguese supported it. These groups, if I read his figures correctly, made up less than 15% of the population. The majority of the people in Hawaii were Japanese and Chinese immigrants strongly opposed to becoming part of the United States. So if we follow Dole’s article it would seem that any vote that accorded the franchise to all adult residents of Hawaii would have defeated annexation. (i.e. 35 percent Hawaiian vote strongly opposed, 50 percent Chinese/Japanese mostly opposed, and 15% Anglo-Saxon/Portuguese mostly in favor). A vote that included only citizens of the Republic would have been anti-annexation in that the Hawaiians would have outvoted the Anglo-Saxons. A vote of all adults would have defeated annexation by an even larger number if Dole’s estimations of the sentiments of the Asian population were accurate. As a supporter of annexation he would have had no reason to overestimate opposition.
The annexation of Hawaii was a controversial issue in American politics during the 1890s. It bitterly divided the Republican Party between pro-annexationists like Theodore Roosevelt and anti-annexationists like House Speaker Thomas Reed. Roosevelt felt that American needed oversees colonies to demonstrate US importance in world leadership. Reed felt that becoming a colonial power violated the spirit of our founding fathers and the rights of all people to self determination.
During the annexation negotiations between the United States and the Republic of Hawaii the issue of who would have voting rights in the new Territory was a point of some disagreement. Some of the Republic’s people felt that the franchise should be limited based on property ownership. Such a scheme might have allowed the white population to control the ballot box even though they constituted a small fraction of the resident population. To its credit the U.S. government rejected this. Hawaiians probably faired better in many ways under the Territory and the Constitution of the United States than they might have under a continuing Republic dominated by white planters. Sadly, many other groups, particularly the Japanese, had to wait for decades to get the full rights of citizenship.
The question of the legitimacy of American annexation of Hawaii without a vote of support from the people of Hawaii came up in our Federal Courts a few decades ago. The courts skirted the issue as moot. The Court held that no matter what public sentiment had been in 1898 support for Statehood in 1959 was fairly determined.
Libertarians regret that such a contentious issue has befallen our islands. The Akaka bill is bad for our dedication to equal protection under the law. It has upset many of the designated beneficiaries in the Hawaiian community to boot. I am saddened that many other issues relating to Hawaiians have been mixed up in this sorry debate. I hope the bill is defeated in the U.S. Senate so we can move on toward more constructive ways of dealing with problems many Hawaiians, (both those who are Hawaiian by ancestry and those who are Hawaiian in spirit), wish to see addressed.
Tracy Ryan, chair of the Libertarian Party of Hawaii, can be reached by email at: tracy.ahn.ryan@worldnet.att.net
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