I haven’t been paying close attention to the Akaka bill in the House because I didn’t think that something so stupid could pass. However, I often underestimate the stupidity of the Democratic Party. In 1959, 94.3% of Hawaiian voters cast ballots in favor of statehood. Now, 50 years later, this bill basically creates two states based on race. The governor of Hawaii is opposed to the bill that basically adds up to a 1.4 million-acre land grab. Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that explains how dangerous the bill is for the rest of the United States.
First, the Akaka bill privileges what is in fact a race, not a tribe. The very act of transforming a racial group into a tribal group confers a privilege on one race and not others and is thus unconstitutional. Second, while the Constitution implicitly gives the federal government the power to recognize tribes with a long and continuous history of separate self-governance, it does not give the power to confer sovereignty on new tribes, or to reconstitute a tribe whose members have long since become part of the mainstream culture.
The ideas behind the bill could end up in a slippery slope where new tribes are declared all over the country. What’s to stop this from happening? People always follow the money. What I don’t understand is why the Democrats are supporting this bill.
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