Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 3, 1 March 2005 — Hawaiian DNA testing [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

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Hawaiian DNA testing

Kudos to Keoni May for applying the language of gay liberation and good old hardcore American racism to state identity politics. I agree: the people of these islands should "eome out of the closef " about "being Hawaiian," whatever this pregnant phrase might mean to whomever. Why live in a closet, especially in delicious, honey-sweet weather like ours? And why live in agony over the exact percentage of "Hawaiian heritage" in one's blood? Mainland racists, particularly in the south, are infamous for their many ancient and amazingly accurate "blood tests" used to ferret out and spotlight a single drop of nonEuropean blood lurking in a citizen's veins. Or, if the thinking, method and history of our southern brethren is just too off-island for loeal tastes, then why not adapt the more modern, exact and wickedly successful Nazi techniques for determining who had - and who had not - "Jewish blood" or "Gypsy blood" or "Slavic blood" or any of a dozen "bloods" or ethnicities or conditions or persuasions they efficiently identified and rooted out for slaughter in the name of a purified nahon? Why re-invent the wheel? Racism based on "blood" is practically an industry worldwide, and a growth industry at that. Just look around you. Try the phone book. I hear the Fuhrer is hiding in Hilo. With professional help, Keoni May's racial blood-testing program ean be implemented in a Onolono Sheerin Puna

Ka Leo Kaiāulu

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