[BRIEF NOTE] Who belongs to the ethnie?
Sep. 3rd, 2005 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldRecently, in a discussion over at the Head Heeb on the subject of Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka's controversial Native Hawaiian Recognition Bill (PDF format), the question of how to determine who does or does not belong to an ethnic group when state-supported communal institutions are concerned came up.
Ethnic Hawaiians have, since the establishment of regular contact with the outside world in the mid-19th century, been decidedly endogamous. As a result, the eighty thousand people who claim to be of purely ethnic Hawaiian ancestry are outnumbered five-to-one by people claim some degree of ethnic Hawaiian ancestry. For the purposes of the Bill, which would establish self-governing communal institutions for the Hawaiian community, how should Hawaiian numbers be counted?
I lean towards a broad definition. Since the only way to determine the degree to which these four hundred thousand people of part-Hawaiian ancestry is to find out whether or not they want to interact with this body, and since preventing people who may identify fully and legitimately with Hawaiian culture from participating in a Hawaiian cultural state because they don't have enough Hawaiian ancestors borders on racism, I favour a broad opening. Let anyone who wants to be Hawaiian be Hawaiian? In the comments, Douglas Muir makes the good counterpoint that an overly large membership not necessarily interested in the concerns of the ethnic Hawaiian poor will distract the Hawaiian cultural state from some of its most urgent goals. Perhaps, I think Douglas is arguing, Akaka's bill is the wrong way to go about it?
Ethnic Hawaiians have, since the establishment of regular contact with the outside world in the mid-19th century, been decidedly endogamous. As a result, the eighty thousand people who claim to be of purely ethnic Hawaiian ancestry are outnumbered five-to-one by people claim some degree of ethnic Hawaiian ancestry. For the purposes of the Bill, which would establish self-governing communal institutions for the Hawaiian community, how should Hawaiian numbers be counted?
I lean towards a broad definition. Since the only way to determine the degree to which these four hundred thousand people of part-Hawaiian ancestry is to find out whether or not they want to interact with this body, and since preventing people who may identify fully and legitimately with Hawaiian culture from participating in a Hawaiian cultural state because they don't have enough Hawaiian ancestors borders on racism, I favour a broad opening. Let anyone who wants to be Hawaiian be Hawaiian? In the comments, Douglas Muir makes the good counterpoint that an overly large membership not necessarily interested in the concerns of the ethnic Hawaiian poor will distract the Hawaiian cultural state from some of its most urgent goals. Perhaps, I think Douglas is arguing, Akaka's bill is the wrong way to go about it?
