In His Words

In July 2000, Ken Conklin joined a descendant of the leader of the 1893 illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, Lorrin A. Thurston, in a lawsuit that targeted Hawaiians. This descendant is Thurston Twigg-Smith, former owner of The Honolulu Advertiser.


In the Honolulu Advertiser, Conklin was quoted as saying,

"[he] has "great respect" for Hawaiians but believes that OHA should be disbanded. He said he wants to be a trustee to oversee how OHA spends its money.

I’m the anti-OHA candidate," he said. "However, I am not the anti-Hawaiian candidate."

See http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/2000/Jul/26/localnews13.html

However at his website at
www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/ohacandidacy.html he contradicts himself making statements that are anti-Hawaiian in nature:


"OHA's whole reason for existing is to provide benefits to so-called Native Hawaiians -- people who have at least one drop of the blood of someone who lived in Hawai'i before Captain Cook arrived in 1778. Some of OHA's programs are further restricted to beneficiaries with at least 50% native blood quantum. But such racial restrictions are not constitutionally permitted for a branch of the government. OHA will be ruled unconstitutional sooner or later. In the meantime it is important to find ways to spend OHA's money on programs that focus on Hawaiian people and their culture but are not racially exclusionary.

Over 160 federal and state programs provide racially exclusionary benefits to ethnic Hawaiians. Advocates of such programs routinely make the same arguments about why the programs are legitimate. That's why it is helpful to take one such program and analyze all of the reasons given for supporting it. Such an analysis has been done regarding a piece of healthcare legislation: s1929. There were 29 false and twisted historical, legal, and moral arguments offered in defense of that bill, and all are analyzed and refuted."


On December 2, 2004, he was at it again in a letter to the editor of the Honolulu Advertiser:

"OHA is wrong in its defense of Akaka bill Cliff Slater cited Thomas Sowell that race-based programs are bad for everyone. "Far worse, the politicizing of ethnic group disparities exacerbates interracial dissension," Slater wrote Nov. 22.

Clyde Namu'o responded with Office of Hawaiian Affairs propaganda.

Namu'o stressed that the Akaka bill would establish a political relationship, not a racial one. But the political entity "Hawaiian kingdom" gave fully equal citizenship to all persons born or naturalized here. The Akaka bill clearly says "Hawaiians only."

Namu'o says "we are the only indigenous group in the United States without federal recognition." Nonsense! The New York Times reported March 29 that there are "291 groups seeking federal recognition as tribes." Most Indians are neither tribal members nor eligible to join. The United States does not recognize "indigenous people" nor the racial group of all Indians, but only tribal governments that have exercised substantial authority continuously from original European contact until now.

One thing Namu'o got right: "The future of our state is very much at stake." Shall we carve it up into racially separate governments?

Pleadingly, Namu'o ends with: "What would Hawai'i be without Native Hawaiians?" Rest assured, Native Hawaiians have multiplied tenfold during the first century of American sovereignty here: fewer than 40,000 in 1900; more than 400,000 in 2000.

Ken Conklin
Kane'ohe"

See http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Dec/02/op/op10pletters.html

Thus, while claiming that he is not anti-Hawaiian his other words speak for themselves. He actions are anti-Hawaiian and he ONLY targets Hawaiians. Unfortunately, his ally with the former owner of the Honolulu Advertiser who in turn may have a close relationship with the present owner of the Honolulu Advertiser may allow a vehicle for him to carry out his hate crime against Hawaiians. We need to stop them. We need to stop him.