A proposal by the Obama administration to create a new relationship with ethnic Hawaiians may have backfired.
As we mark the 50th anniversary this year of the Civil Rights Act, nothing could be a greater betrayal of that law than to revoke its protections for many residents of Hawaii and exempt Hawaii’s state government from its mandate that all Americans be treated equally under the law.
Some senators are trying to push through a bill that would re-authorize the discriminatory housing policies implemented in Hawaii by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which provides special benefits for “Native Hawaiians.”
Native Hawaiians are defined as “any descendant of not less than one-half part of the blood of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands previous to 1778.” According to the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands’ website, this means “you must have a blood quantum of at least 50 percent Hawaiian.”
This exemption means the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands can discriminate in favor of “Native Hawaiians” and a “Native Hawaiian family” and against others such as whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
In other words, the federal government is authorizing Hawaii (and providing it with taxpayer funds) to engage in blatant discrimination by providing government benefits for some of its residents and denying federally funded benefits to others based solely on their ancestry and “blood quantum.”
How Hawaii (Legally) Discriminates Against Non-Native Hawaiians
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a “tribe” is a political and not a racial entity, Lilly said. “If there was such a tribe, then all the multi-ethnic peoples who were citizens of the Hawaiian monarchy would be members of that tribe,” Lilly said.
Hans von Spakovsky agrees. He’s a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who spent four years working in the civil rights division at the U.S. Department of Justice, specifically on such issues.
“Not only is it unconstitutional, but the administration has no authority to enter into such a relationship,” von Spakovsky said. “It is a sign of how the Obama administration believes in official discrimination and sanctions it. They continue to divide up our country and raise the walls between different races. I find it disgusting that they want to do this.”
http://dailysignal.com/2014/07...aiians-runs-trouble/