More than 400 supporters of Hawai‘i’s Kamehameha Schools rallied in UN Plaza on Saturday to protest the recent 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling against the schools’ Native Hawaiian-preferred admissions policy.
The crowd, a diverse mix of ages and races and including many alumni, marched past the federal courthouse, waving Hawaiian flags and wearing red shirts reading “Ku I Ka Pono,” or Justice for Hawaiians.
On Aug. 2, the federal court ruled that the schools’ admissions policy of giving preference to historically underserved Native Hawaiian children was unlawful race discrimination.
The admissions policy requires students to prove that at least one ancestor lived on the islands in 1778, when Captain James Cook became the first Westerner to land on Hawai‘i’s shores. Non-Native Hawaiians are admitted as space comes available, but that is rare.
The schools were established in 1887 by the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct descendant of Kamehameha I, the 18th-century monarch who unified the Hawaiian Islands. While the princess’s will does not mention race as an admissions criterion, supporters say the princess envisioned a group of schools to educate children of Native Hawaiian heritage as a way to rectify the increasing marginalization of the native population, which had been decimated by diseases brought by white settlers. At the time of the princess’s death in 1884, the Native Hawaiian population had plummeted from 300,000 at the time of Captain Cook’s arrival to a scant 46,000.
“If Kamehameha Schools don’t [educate Native Hawaiian children], who will do it?” said School Trustee Nainoa Thompson.
Native Hawaiians also face the possibility of extinction as a race –– according to the 2000 Census, only 14 percent (169,000 residents) of Hawai‘i’s population self-identified as full- or part-Native Hawaiian, and their numbers continue to decline. There were 475,579 full- or part-Native Hawaiians throughout the United States in 2000.
As a group, Native Hawaiians today are socioeconomically underprivileged, with among the lowest incomes and highest poverty rates in Hawai‘i. They also have higher teen pregnancy and incarceration rates.
Due to a poor state public schools system, Hawai‘i educates more students in independent secondary education institutions like Kamehameha Schools than any other state. Tuition at Kamehameha Schools is around $1,700, and the schools reflect the racial diversity of the state. In 2002, The New York Times reported that in a recent school year, 78 percent of students were part white, 74 percent were part Chinese, 28 percent part Japanese and 24 percent were of other ancestries. In the past, the schools have dropped federally funded programs to avoid challenges to its admissions policy.
The ruling has implications for all people of color, according to former Sunnyvale mayor and Kamehameha alumnus William Fernandez. “It affects any private person, trust, or organization that gives educational scholarships or financial aid to a disadvantaged ethnic group,” Fernandez said. “People of color stand to lose the generous educational support of private individuals that seek to rectify past social injustices.”