Data focused on Native Hawaiians from Census 2010 are now available. Those data have important political implications for Hawaii and all of America regarding the Akaka bill and/or Act 195 state-recognized tribe; and regarding victimhood claims asserted by the Hawaiian grievance industry as a way of demanding sympathy, money, and political power.
Here are a few highlights: If a Native Hawaiian tribe is created, it would be the largest Indian tribe in America. The fact that nearly half its members live outside Hawaii would mean that Hawaii taxpayers end up giving away land, money, and a lot of decision-making power to nearly a quarter million people outside our state. In Hawaii the average age of Native Hawaiians is only 26 while the average age of everyone else is 41. That says a lot about why activists complain that Native Hawaiians have low income, drug abuse, incarceration, etc. -- it's because they're young, not because they're either bad people or discriminated against. Also, anyone with a single drop of Hawaiian blood is counted as "Native Hawaiian" when it comes to bad things, but someone with a single drop of Caucasian blood is not counted as Caucasian. So of course the skewed statistics make things look bad for Native Hawaiians.
This lengthy essay is far from the whole story. For many more statistical details, analysis, and internet links to corresponding Census data, see the extended version at
http://tinyurl.com/d5a7po5
WHY SINGLE OUT NATIVE HAWAIIANS FOR SCRUTINY?
Sometimes people say to me "Conklin, why are you always picking on Native Hawaiians and not other ethnic groups?" My answer is simple. I'm trying to protect unity, equality, and aloha for all. Those principles are explained at
http://tinyurl.com/2c49g
and the Aloha Spirit is further discussed at
http://tinyurl.com/66w4m2
There is no other ethnic group in Hawaii that has some of its leaders pursuing racial separatism, demanding to create a race-based government empowered with land, money, and jurisdictional authority. The major vehicles for doing that are the proposed federally recognized tribe under the Akaka bill,
http://tinyurl.com/ypops
and the state-recognized tribe put in motion under Hawaii Act 195 of 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/3rzjdrf
Native Hawaiians hold many high-ranking government positions as members of the state legislature and county councils, department heads, judges, etc. Every one of them has a clear conflict of interest when making decisions about handing over government land, money, or jurisdictional authority to a race-based tribe whose membership roster they have already signed or are easily eligible to sign. Government officials should make a pledge to recuse themselves from participating in any decision that would benefit exclusively or primarily their own ethnic group or their spouse's or children's ethnic group. For example Filipino legislators should not vote on making a grant to the Filipino Cultural Center, while Native Hawaiian legislators should not vote on any bill to turn over $200 Million of land in Kakaako to OHA, or to give preferential fishing rights or UH tuition waivers to Native Hawaiians. See analysis of the problem of race-based conflict of interest at
http://tinyurl.com/24ohwpw
Extensive research has uncovered more than 850 race-based government grants to benefit Native Hawaiians exclusively, totaling more than $322 Million. The webpage compiling information about them is worth looking at. It has not been updated for a long time. It's hard to keep up with these burgeoning racial entitlement programs; so by now the totals have undoubtedly grown.
http://4hawaiiansonly.com
Native Hawaiians are 21.3% of the population of Hawaii. If they think of themselves as primarily Native Hawaiian rather than as citizens of Hawaii and of the United States, then they will vote as a bloc for Native Hawaiian candidates or for non-natives who pledge to deliver money, land, and political power to Native Hawaiians. Thank goodness most ethnic Hawaiians aren't like that. If it comes right down to it, the rest of us can outvote them 4-to-1. But a zealous racial minority can overcome an apathetic majority. Dear reader, are you offended by the racial divisiveness of this paragraph? Then you should be troubled when you see signs like "We're Hawaiians and we vote" or T-shirts or TV commercials with slogans like "Get out the Hawaiian vote; no vote, no grumble." Ballot boxes should not be used as pillboxes in a race war. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement is even sponsoring the "Hawaiian Way Fund" racial separatist version of the Aloha United Way charity. Should United Way now stop sending money to service agencies that help Native Hawaiians, and let each ethnic group serve "its own kind"?
Some Hawaiian leaders demand secession from the U.S., whereby all of Hawaii would become an independent nation with racial supremacy guaranteed for ethnic Hawaiians in a new Constitution based on a theory that "indigenous people" are entitled to special rights under "international law." Links are provided to three such Constitutions in the endnotes. The Akaka bill is seen by its supporters, including Senator Akaka himself, as a conduit to secession.
http://tinyurl.com/4cho6
There's an astonishing level of anti-military and anti-American feeling among many supporters of the Akaka bill and especially among most supporters of independence, being played out in lawsuits and political activity in Hawaii, elsewhere in the U.S., and at the international level.
http://tinyurl.com/buenymk
80,337 "PURE HAWAIIANS" IN HAWAII, AND 156,146 NATIONWIDE. REALLY?
That's how many people checked ONLY the race box for "Native Hawaiian" even though the instructions were clear that people could check multiple boxes reflecting multiple ancestries. In reality there are probably fewer than 5,000 people with 100% Hawaiian native blood. That means 75,000 people in Hawaii and 151,000 people nationwide are so zealous about Hawaiian activism that they chose to ignore and disrespect their non-native ancestors, even when those non-natives comprise most of their heritage. Anecdotal evidence is clear that OHA, Kamehameha Schools, and other Hawaiian institutions often encouraged their beneficiaries to report only their Native Hawaiian ancestry, in hopes of increasing government handouts and strengthening public perception of Hawaiians as "a people" who are unique, distinct, and separate.
The tearjerker book and docudrama "Then There Were None" bemoans the tragedy of the declining number of "pure Hawaiians"
http://tinyurl.com/2z9dy
while some self-proclaimed cultural leaders publicly bemoan the admixture of non-native blood running through their own veins and the presence in Hawaii of so many people with no native blood, even referring to them as "weeds."
http://tinyurl.com/9nswkbu
527,077 "NATIVE HAWAIIANS" NATIONWIDE INCLUDING 289,970 IN HAWAII
That's how many people checked the race box for "Native Hawaiian" with or without also checking additional race boxes. In Hawaii that's an increase of 21% above year 2000, while nationwide it's an increase of 31%. Clearly Hawaiians are flourishing, even more on the continent than in Hawaii. Some of that increase is probably due to all the publicity about the Akaka bill throughout the decade, and outreach for the Kau Inoa racial registry. The number might well explode by hundreds of thousands if a Native Hawaiian government begins distributing land and annual payments to people who have the magic blood.
In Census 2000 there were roughly 240,000 ethnic Hawaiians living in Hawaii, 60,000 living in California, and 100,000 living in the other 48 states. A spreadsheet was created to show the number of ethnic Hawaiians, and several other Polynesian types, and Micronesians, and Melanesians, in each state.
http://tinyurl.com/5vlp6
For Census 2010 such a spreadsheet has not been created. But there is a chart in the Hawaii state databook released in August 2012 (Table 1.42, page 81) showing the number of ethnic Hawaiians (both "pure" and total) in the top 18 states. California continues to lead the pack with 74,932, an increase of 24.8% since 2000. If the Akaka bill passes, then the California branch of the Akaka tribe would be the largest federally recognized tribe in California. Other states have shown startling increases: Nevada, with 16,339 is up by 97.7%; Arizona with 9,549 is up by 94.6%; Georgia, with 3,976, is up by 82.1%. In some states the population jump might be due to Hawaii sending them prisoners; but quite a few states show 40-80% increases with no easy explanation.
The fake Hawaiian tribe of 527,077 would be far larger than any of the genuine tribes in America. The largest tribe is Navajo, with 332,129. There are 819,105 Cherokees, but they are divided among several different tribal governments. Both the Akaka bill and Act 195 specify that there shall be only one Native Hawaiian tribe. Although the Akaka bill says the Hawaiian tribe cannot have gambling casinos and cannot benefit automatically from government handouts given to all tribes, those restrictions might be ruled unconstitutional, or can easily be changed by future legislation. The genuine tribes should be very afraid that a Hawaiian tribe would overwhelm all of them in competing for a shrinking pot of federal handouts and for casino customers in every state.
Shortly after Barack Obama became President, a letter was sent to him raising racial and demographic issues in relation to the Akaka bill, and appealing to the civil rights experience of African-Americans who chose the integrationist dream of Dr. Martin Luther King rather than the racial separatist nightmare of (the early) Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. The letter pointed out that (in Census 2000) 240,000 ethnic Hawaiians comprised 20% of Hawaii's population, while 40 million blacks comprised 13% of America's population. Just imagine how divisive and racially incendiary it would be to gather all America's black people and create a race-based government for them, authorized to negotiate for huge areas of land and jurisdictional authority. The impact of the Akaka bill [or Act 195] on Hawaii would be 50% more severe than that, because the percentage of ethnic Hawaiians in Hawaii's population was half again larger than the percentage of blacks in America's population. [In Census 2010, 50 million Hispanics comprise 16% of America's population while Native Hawaiians are 21% of Hawaii's population, so the Akaka bill would be 30% more traumatic for Hawaii than creating a "Nation of Aztlan" would be for all of America.] See the Obama letter at
http://tinyurl.com/bl9rvv
SHOULD HAWAII TAXPAYERS GIVE BENEFITS TO A QUARTER MILLION OUTSIDERS?
There are more than 237,000 "Native Hawaiians" living outside Hawaii among the other 49 states, which is about 45% of the entire racial group. A major policy decision for the Hawaii legislature will be whether to transfer State of Hawaii land and money to the control of a future federally recognized Akaka tribe, or to the Act 195 tribe which the legislature is in the process of creating.
Both Act 195 and the Akaka bill make it clear that Hawaii residence is not a requirement for tribal membership. The only requirements for membership are to have at least one drop of the magic blood and to have some sort of easy-to-obtain affiliation with some sort of Hawaiian cultural group (perhaps a hula halau, canoe club, or civic club).
Thus state government land, money and jurisdictional authority, which now belong to all the people of Hawaii, will be transferred to a tribe which has nearly half its people who are not citizens of Hawaii. Those outsiders will receive benefits from the tribe (given to the tribe by Hawaii citizens), and those outsiders will also participate as equals in making decisions about the allocation of tribal resources.
Should Hawaii taxpayers be forced by our legislators to pay huge subsidies, and to turn over control of land-use policy, to people who are not citizens of Hawaii?
IN 2010 THE MEDIAN AGE OF NATIVE HAWAIIANS IN HAWAII WAS ONLY 26, COMPARED TO A MEDIAN AGE OF 42 FOR THE REST OF HAWAII'S PEOPLE
The 2010 age gap of 16 years has widened significantly from 2000, when the median age of Native Hawaiians was 25 and the median age of everyone else was 39 (a gap of 14 years). The actual numbers in Census 2010 say Native Hawaiians (at least one drop of native blood) living in Hawaii have a median age of 26.3 and are 21.3% of the population, while Hawaii's total population (including Native Hawaiians) has a median age of 38.6. Doing some arithmetic (see endnotes) to remove Native Hawaiians from the total population shows that the median age is 41.9 for the 78.7% who lack Hawaiian native blood.
The age gap of 16 years has huge consequences for interpreting data portraying Native Hawaiians as having lower income, greater drug abuse, and higher incarceration rates than the rest of Hawaii's population. Someone who is only 26 years old is obviously just getting started in a career and therefore not earning as much as someone well-established at age 42. Young people get drunk, do drugs, and commit crimes much more than middle-aged people(especially violent crimes meriting harsher penalties).
The victimhood statistics touted by the Hawaiian grievance industry are attributable to youth, not to race. The Census provides many data about income, housing, crime, etc. which are reported in 5-year age cohorts (i.e., 15-19, 20-24, etc.). The only way to discover whether Native Hawaiians truly have the worst statistics among Hawaii's ethnic groups is to compare people at the same age. But the tycoons of the Hawaiian grievance industry have no desire to do that.
FAILURE TO CONSIDER BLOOD QUANTUM CAUSES HUGE DISTORTIONS WHEN INTERPRETING DATA
How blood quantum is counted (or not counted) is another major factor in explaining the Hawaiian victimhood claims. The Census does not ask "What percentage of your ancestry is Native Hawaiian?" Neither do any of the hundreds of "studies" comparing Native Hawaiian victimhood against the victimhood of other races.
Who gets counted as "Native Hawaiian" seems to be everyone with a drop of Hawaiian native blood, even if he has 31/32 of his ancestry being Caucasian or Filipino or Japanese. But someone with only one drop of Caucasian blood would never be counted as Caucasian. So if low quantum Hawaiians are counted as Hawaiian while low-quantum Caucasians or Filipinos are not counted as Caucasians or Filipinos, then of course the tycoons of the Hawaiian grievance industry can scream that "Native Hawaiians have the worst statistics for drug abuse" or "Native Hawaiians are disproportionately impacted by incarceration and severity of sentencing."
Michelle Obama has 1/32 Caucasian ancestry (her great-great-great grandfather was a white slave-owner). [See endnotes] Judging by her appearance and cultural background she could never "pass for white." But she would be counted as Caucasian if the statistical techniques used by the Hawaiian grievance industry were applied to all racial groups.
If researchers feel compelled to put people into racial boxes, then a better way to do it would be to label someone as belonging to whatever race is the largest percentage of his ancestry. The best way would be to award fractional tally marks to each race according to the fraction that race has in someone's ancestry. Thus if someone incarcerated has 1/32 Hawaiian blood, 3/32 Chinese, 3/8 Caucasian, and 1/2 Filipino, those would be the fractional tally marks allocated to each of those races when studying allegations of disproportionate incarceration. Such fractional tallies would also us to see whether there is a correlation between being "more Hawaiian" and having worse social and medical outcomes.
