Compromising Citizenship’s Rights

It is troubling how certain citizenship rights guaranteed under the US Constitution have been compromised as to grant greater rights to others while denying the same for the rest of citizenry.

For instance, the US Constitution plainly states that the right to vote cannot be “denied or abridged” on the basis of race. The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 (Rice V. Cayetano) that non-native Hawaiians couldn’t be barred from voting for trustees overseeing the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

Even liberal Supreme Court Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer ruled that Hawaii’s requirement that trustees be native Hawaiians and elected only by native Hawaiians was an obvious case of racial discrimination. Said Justice Antonin Scalia, “In the eyes of government, we are just one race, it is American”.

Despite such ruling, Hawaii’s all-Democratic Congressional delegation aren’t about to take no for an answer and Rep. Patsy Mink has pushed a bill that would allow the Aloha state to, in her words, “sustain an election process that is restrictive to only native Hawaiian people”, according to a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

It isn’t that I sympathize with Harold Rice, the Hawaiian cattle rancher who challenged the state law all the way to the Supreme Court, as much as the fact that his right to vote was denied based on race. This denial despite the fact that his entire family is Hawaiian-born going back to his great-grandparents. Such denial was solely based on the obvious: Mr. Rice has the wrong ancestry.

The more serious aspect in what would amount to “super rights” is the subsequent permanent notion that positive discrimination is in fact a right. It quietly wedges and ruins harmony between indigenous peoples and fellow citizens who also embrace the same principles of equality under a democratic form of government..

Perhaps now is just as appropriate a time to engage in deliberative discussions whether special or super rights is fair. If not, then it should be scrapped permanently for it would only reinforce a sense of inferiority complex against others similarly situated who hailed from the old country.

While the Hawaiian delegation may have all the politically correct arguments to push through set-asides and joint venture programs, it really is a case of discrimination no matter how it is dissected. I still won’t buy all the cultural arguments native Hawaiians have advanced to pad their case. Like Chamorros and Carolinians, their ancestors too have sailed into the Hawaiian Islands from somewhere long time ago in much the same way as others have done descending on the shores of the Aloha State. How do we resolve this obvious case of discrimination?

Ms. Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Constitution wrote that “the system of racial set-asides used by many American cities is under attack from many blacks worried about their inherent corruption and political favoritism.” Said Ms. Tucker: “Even the set-aside programs that are free of corruption are still open to criticism because they are unfair, closed to those without political connections. The only way to fix set-asides is to get rid of them”.

Strictly a personal view. John S. DelRosario Jr. is publisher of Saipan Tribune.