MESSAGE
FROM THE DIRECTOR OF EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT:
CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE AKAKA BILL
by Susan K. Serrano
Recent
public hearings by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) and its
Hawai‘i State Advisory Committee (HSAC) on the Native Hawaiian Government
Reorganization Act (also known as the Akaka Bill), have highlighted
ongoing battles over Native Hawaiian history and underscored the need
to examine the larger framework being used to define Native Hawaiian
and civil rights issues.
In
2006, a new majority of the USCCR issued a Briefing Report on the Akaka
Bill, recommending that Congress reject the bill. In a questionable
move, the Commission majority issued its report without any findings,
based on the testimonies of only a few individuals (mostly anti-Hawaiian
and anti-civil rights advocates), without consulting the Hawai‘i State
Advisory Committee, and with scant mention of decades of HSAC factfinding
and reports on Native Hawaiian issues. See United States Commission
on Civil Rights, The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act
of 2005, Briefing Report, Jan. 20, 2006.
The
USCCR is a 50-year-old agency charged with acting as a watchdog for
racism and discrimination in the United States. As the Boston Globe
recently reported, however, the Bush Administration has remade the USCCR
by creating a new majority of commissioners hostile to civil rights.
See Charlie Savage, Maneuver Gave Bush a Conservative Rights Panel,
Boston Globe, Nov. 6, 2007. In recent years, this new majority has harshly
criticized long-standing school desegregation efforts and other race-conscious
programs designed to promote inclusion and racial equality.
In
July of 2007, the USCCR appointed new members to the HSAC. At least
two new members are litigants in federal court actions challenging Native
Hawaiian programs. Soon thereafter, in August and September, the HSAC
quickly called for and held public meetings on the Akaka Bill at the
Commission staff’s urging, even though USCCR members stated that the
Commission would not reconsider its opposition to the bill. See David
Shapiro, Ideological Taint Mars Akaka Bill Hearings, Honolulu
Advertiser, Aug. 29, 2007.
A
number of individuals testified before the HSAC and USCCR. Some of the
testifiers omitted and altered key aspects of Native Hawaiian history.
Others offered a more full and accurate history. These HSAC and USCCR
hearings thus “initiated a fierce threshold battle over the collective
memory” of the United States’ injustice in its treatment of Hawaiians.
See Eric K. Yamamoto & Catherine Corpus Betts, The
Story of Rice v. Cayetano: Disfiguring Civil Rights to Deny Indigenous
Hawaiian Self-Determination (forthcoming 2007). The framing of
Native Hawaiians’ historical interactions with the U.S., and how those
past events are portrayed, can often “determine whether, and to what
extent, historical injustice occurred, and, concomitantly, the need
for rectification.” See id.
Those testifying at the
hearings also used the language of “civil rights” and “equality” to
argue against the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. Some
compared the Akaka Bill to the virulent white racism that led to pervasive
segregation of African Americans in the South, and equated the bill
to xenophobic discrimination against immigrants.
During
the Jim Crow era, severe disparities in education, employment, housing,
and other facets of public life meant superior treatment of whites and
wholesale subordination of African Americans. See generally
Derrick Bell, Race, Racism and American Law (4th Ed. 2000). By comparing
the Akaka Bill to a Jim Crow caste system, these testifiers twisted
this violent history of African American subordination into the equivalent
of the NHGRA’s aim to repair historical harms and restore a measure
of self-governance to Native Hawaiians.
Instead,
as others argued, Native Hawaiians are seeking restorative justice.
Hawaiians are not, as some claimed, seeking to justify “preferences”
by denigrating others as inferior. There are vast differences between
Indigenous peoples seeking to restore the loss of self-governance and
racial groups seeking to be treated equally. See Eric Yamamoto, Susan
Kiyomi Serrano & Eva Paterson, Kamehameha Admissions Don’t Offend
Our Civil Rights, Honolulu Advertiser, Nov. 1, 2004. As such –
and as Congress has already recognized – programs for Native Hawaiians,
like those for Native Americans and Alaska Natives, are based on their
status as Indigenous peoples, not upon race.
* This piece does not offer an opinion on the Akaka Bill itself.