There was something about the guy I liked from the beginning. No, it was not that nerdy picture. Maybe it was the straightforward yet humble way he writes. Like local people talk. But staff writer Dennis Wilken’s “Haole-go-home” column (TGI,
There was something about the guy I liked from the beginning. No, it was not
that nerdy picture. Maybe it was the straightforward yet humble way he writes.
Like local people talk. But staff writer Dennis Wilken’s “Haole-go-home” column
(TGI, Oct. 4) cleared it all up.
I think this haole boy’s got a sense of
the minority. And I’d like him to know that I recently said essentially what he
wrote: “We’re more able to see the individuality of folks who look like
us.”
Last week I was invited to Honolulu, along with Sondra Grace and Kanoe
Medeiros, to attend a fact-finding meeting conducted by the Hawai’i Advisory
Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. We were asked to comment
regarding the impact on Native Hawaiian entitlement programs of the Supreme
Court decision in Rice vs. Cayetano. In the first part of my statement, I said
we need the Akaka bill to protect current entitlement programs, preserve our
options for self-determination and give us the opportunity to work with the
federal government on reparations and restitution for acknowledged wrongs.
I said also that it’s been open season on native Hawaiians since Rice vs.
Cayetano, as we’ve been attacked from every direction nearly every day. Now if
you don’t mind, I’ll run most of the second part of my statement as I gave
it:
“While I am confident that our American system—in particular the
constitutional sense of justice that shapes our national conscience—may
ultimately guide us toward a fair and moral policy response to our current
situation, I’m concerned that the prejudices of the average American are still
obstacles that need to be overcome. As much as we like to pretend we do,
America has yet to accept cultural diversity despite having the most
heterogeneous society in history.
“We beckon to the world: Give me your
tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, as the
inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty begins. Then we expect every
American will shed old cultures in exchange for the promise of this country. In
other words, Americans are expected to become cookie-cutter models of Barbie
and Ken.
“I would argue that the concept of homogenizing people of
different cultures as a process of Americanization is racist; that our country
thrives under God precisely because freedom in America means we can live
comfortably with people of other cultures, even if we don’t look and talk
alike. After all, isn’t that what the Spirit of America is all about; what the
diverse people who have come to this country were invited to embrace?
“Here
in Hawai’i, the problem gets complicated because a distinctly different
dimension applies in the case of its native people. Like the aboriginal people
of North America, the Native Hawaiian people are not Americans today because
our ancestors happened to respond to Lady Liberty’s invitation. As we all know,
the aboriginal people of this country were living on their homelands thousands
of years before the concept of America was even conceived.
“So the
challenge we face today is this: How do we quell the racist emotions of our
fellow Americans while we try to win their understanding and acceptance of the
unique status of the Native Hawaiian people?”
Hang in there,
brah.
DAVID HELELA
Kapa’a
