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Realclearpolitics.com is a conservative site that collects political opinions from across the United States. In “The Disconnect Between Hawai‘i and America,” Peter Brown questions whether American principles guide Hawai‘i state laws.
| Three developments raise the question of whether the people and politicians in the nation’s 50th state have much in common with the traditions and Constitution of the nation of which they are part.
The state’s political establishment is backing a school that wants to continue discriminating on the basis of race in its admissions practices. Hawai‘i’s government, until rebuked by a federal court, banned the hiring of Americans who are not Hawai‘i residents from state jobs. Because Congress refused efforts to create self-rule for Native Hawaiians, there is a growing movement to set up a Native Hawaiian government that would seek billions of dollars in state assets. Hawai‘i’s demographics — more than two-thirds of residents are of Asian descent — lead to the cultural differences with the Mainland. Its physical isolation exacerbates a sense of Hawai‘i exceptionalism. This is best exemplified by the manager of one Marriott hotel, who explained the chain’s properties in the Islands operate under policies that govern its Asian, not U.S., facilities. Nothing illustrates the Islands’ political mindset better than a long-running school admissions case that would likely be laughed out of court elsewhere in America. The arguments made for it sound eerily familiar to those of 1960s Southern segregationists. |
