Sixty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. touched down in the islands to salute Hawaii’s fledgling statehood and speak about racial injustice confronting the nation.
Addressing an assembly of state lawmakers on behalf of that era’s civil rights movement supporters, King said: “We look to you for inspiration and as a noble example, where you have already accomplished in the area of racial harmony and racial justice, what we are struggling to accomplish in other sections of the country.”
Hawaii’s 1959 statehood was secured two years after strife-filled school desegregation in Little Rock, Ark., and a few years before the 1960s sit-ins and marches that helped pave the path to President Lyndon Johnson’s ushering in of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the War on Poverty.
In some circles, Hawaii’s admission to the Union was opposed because of its racial diversity; only about one-quarter of residents here were “white.” So it was, in 1959, that King pointed to Hawaii as “a place where we see the glowing daybreak of freedom and dignity.”
Even so, the state still falls short of melting-pot perfection. And so it is that King’s legacy informs both long-standing and emerging civil rights and economic justice issues we contend with today, here and on the mainland.
Some of the most pressing economics-related matters now before Hawaii’s Legislature — homelessness, affordable housing and access to higher education opportunity — are chained to cost-of-living issues. Hawaii has among the highest housing costs nationwide. It also has among the lowest wages when accounting for cost of living.
A recent report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition said a full-time worker in Hawaii must earn $36.13 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent of $1,879. That hourly wage amounts to $75,158 a year. A worker earning Hawaii’s minimum wage of $10.10 per hour would need to work 3.6 full-time jobs to afford that apartment.
Responding to such imbalance, last year, the Legislature rightly appropriated $200 million to help finance new affordable rental housing. A few months later, a state-led panel advised that an additional $1 billion should follow over the next decade to further address Hawaii’s shortage of affordable apartments.
Given that access to higher education is key to equity-related gains, it’s encouraging that last year Gov. David Ige signed off on legislation to make permanent Hawaii Promise — a scholarship program aiming to remove cost as a barrier to attending community college.
Launched in 2017, Hawaii Promise, which assists students still in need of funds after tapping financial aid options, helped 1,500 students at a cost of $2.2 million in the 2017-18 academic year and is projected to benefit another 500 this year. Ige is now pitching an expansion into the University of Hawaii’s four-year colleges, and legislators should stay open-minded to the rationale.
While Hawaii has made progress toward realizing King’s broader civil rights vision, which focuses on equality and deserved dignity of all people — regardless of poverty and social status — the state has stumbled in some areas. A recent example involves glaring disparities in the handling of girls and boys sports at some public high schools.
The Title IX amendment of the 1972 Higher Education Act — now known as the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act” in honor of the late Hawaii congresswoman — prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity that receives federal funding. Stalled or slow movement toward reasonable equity under that law is unacceptable.
Today, as the Hawaii Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition stages its annual “People’s Parade” from Ala Moana Beach Park, followed by a unity rally in Kapiolani Park, the event will be — and rightly so — a mix of celebration, remembrance and a call to action: to push forward King’s vision in Hawaii’s sixth decade of statehood.
