Kamehameha Schools' admissions policy is part of restorative justice for an indigenous people whose culture, property and self-governance were nearly destroyed by 19th and 20th century colonialism. There is a critical difference between an affirmative action or diversity program and the efforts of a private institution to help an indigenous people almost wiped out by Western influence. The civil rights of Americans are not threatened with a program by Native Hawaiians designed to uplift their own people.

Georgetown Law Professor on Merits of Kamehameha Schools Admissions Policy

Georgetown visiting law professor Martin S. Lederman debunks on his blog a legal argument posed by pro-Doe Mike Paulsen:

… to suggest that the case is Runyon Redux, or that Cooper v. Aaron is an apt analogy, is simply disingenuous, in that it quite deliberately elides substantial differences in the facts and contexts of the cases, and it ignores the dramatically different rationale for the race-conscious practice in the current Kamahemeha case.

Those infamous earlier cases such as Cooper and Runyon dealt with schools that viewed and treated African Americans as racially inferior, and that discriminated against African-American students as a means of effecting racial segregation throughout the public life of the American South.

Whatever one thinks of the particular legal issue in Kamehameha, the facts in that case are a far cry from Jim Crow or from the private race-segregation that followed in its wake in cases such as Runyon.

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