KPD Blue- Chapter 26: What Boddah You?

KPD Blue

By Anthony Sommer

(Note: Today’s post marks the last regular chapter in our serialization of KPD Blue.

Over the next three weeks we will post three addenda from the book-
1) Regarding Sources,
2) About the Author and
3) An extensive Index

We’d like to thank author Anthony Sommer for allowing us to serialize his tome and for writing the book in the first place.

We ask those who have read the book here to also buy a copy through Amazon.com and support the author’s efforts to open the eyes of the people of Kaua`i with the “real” story regarding events- as opposed to the “spin” put on them by the local press and county officials at the time

We serialized KPD Blue in hopes that the disinfectant of sunshine would cause some changes in the way the political powers that be conduct the people’s business.

Although some have decided to instead blame the messenger we would do it again any time- and we’re sure Sommer feels the same way.

We’d like to thank the many people who lived the nightmares described in the book and hope that in the long run their battles- whether winning or losing- were not fought in vain.

The book has been a bombshell in the community and an eye-opener for all who read it. Its factual content is, overall, irrefutably accurate. Its characterizations and opinions have spurred island-wide dialogue regarding racism and other biases in both the Kaua`i Police Department and county government- especially in employment.

We also hope the book serves as a vindication of Chief’s KC Lum and George Freitas.

We will continue to follow the story of the current FBI investigation into matters raised by Sommer as more facts become available.

Andy Parx,
Publisher/Editor;
Parx News Net)


Chapter 26: What Boddah You?

“What boddah you?” is a Hawaii Pidgin expression meaning, literally, “What is bothering you?” or “What is your problem?” or “What are you upset about?”

“It’s the United States, but it’s not America,” a former newspaper editor on Kauai is fond of saying.

Another veteran Kauai journalist puts it this way: “Kauai is like the Wild, Wild West. The Constitution and the laws only apply here when it’s convenient. Otherwise, they make it up as they go along.”

Kauai lies 100 miles to the northwest of and 100 years behind the rest of the 50th state. Kauai is the most remote and the least developed (in every way) of the main Hawaiian Islands.

Look up the word “insular” in the dictionary and there is Kauai: 1) Suggestive of the isolated life of an island. 2) Circumscribed and detached in outlook and experience; narrow or provincial (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).

Tourists like to pretend they “discover” Kauai: Rural and quaint and, of course, stunningly beautiful. They take home pretty pictures.

Visiting Kauai is like dining at a fine restaurant. The ambience is superb. The food tastes delicious.

But, unless the yelling is especially loud that evening, tourists never would guess at the mayhem going on back in the kitchen.

Bigotry and racism, of course, exist throughout the United States and the world. What makes Kauai particularly unique is that racism, sexism and bigotry are ignored, indeed applauded, both officially and as a cultural norm.

Discrimination on Kauai is exactly the opposite of the racism found on the mainland. On Kauai, brown-skinned people are the majority and (for now, but not for much longer) whites are the minority.

Racism in any form is just as ugly.

Discrimination never is discussed on Kauai. It never is written about. No one wants to admit it exists.

In the recorded history of Kauai, no county employee ever has been disciplined for making racist comments or showing favoritism to locals with brown skin while discriminating against haoles with white skin.

To the contrary, discrimination and bigotry are rewarded in Kauai County government. Racism is what keeps Kauai’s politicians in office.

Consider this:

The overall labor force on Kauai is 40 percent white but only 8 percent of the employees in Kauai County government are Caucasian.

A visitor can walk around the Kauai County Building all day without seeing a white face.

Much more important: It is equally true that 60 percent of Kauai voters are local (meaning native Hawaiians and descendants of sugar workers, almost all with brown skin), not white.

And local—not white—approval is what Kauai’s politicians seek because, after all, the majority rules. So the government jobs all go to locals, and they and their families and friends and neighbors all remember that on Election Day.

What politics really is all about, always and everywhere, is power. The key to winning an election—and thus power— on Kauai is pandering to local voters and their dislike and distrust of outsiders.

That is the context in which the KPD exists. The police—a club that on Kauai is almost exclusively local and almost exclusively male—are both a creation and a reflection of both the government and the island’s society.

The KPD is run by and for locals. A haole police chief attempting to diversify the department is almost certain to run afoul of the local majority, and thus be opposed by politicians.

The inevitable result is a racist police department with a stamp of approval from Kauai County.

Government sponsored and approved racial discrimination is particularly hideous when it exists in the police department.

The KPD is the only county agency with the power to use deadly force, the power to incarcerate, and, especially, the power to intimidate.

The police also have the power to “look the other way” when a friend or relative is breaking the law. And, on Kauai, they often do.

Kauai County government operates outside the normal checks and balances designed into American democracy.

There is no friction and no separation of powers between the executive and legislative and judicial branches of government. Everything is agreed on in illegal secret meetings. And the court on Kauai approves.

Even the press, the Fourth Estate, doesn’t question. It serves as a lap dog rather than a watch dog. If there is a helicopter crash or a shark bite or a bursting dam, Honolulu reporters and photographers descend on Kauai in great herds. No expenses are spared to cover tragedy and
catastrophe.

But coverage of social issues is considered “boring.” It doesn’t sell newspapers (at least in the minds of publishers, none of whom ever have worked a day in a newsroom).

And that is where the Hawaii press abdicates its most important role in a democratic society.

Kauai is the extreme example of a part of Hawaii stuck in the plantation past. It deserves inquiry.

Racial and ethnic conflict between locals and haoles is the single most dominant theme of life on Kauai, which is the furthest away, both geographically and socially, from the mainland United States.

In Asian-Pacific Islander culture, which dominates Kauai, the blade of grass that sticks up is cut off; the nail that sticks out is pounded in. Public acknowledgement of good deeds is just as bad as accusing a person of an evil act.

Asians and Pacific Islanders are much more likely to embrace leaders who are despots (as long as they remain reasonably benign).

If the island’s political leaders (and its courts) can choose which laws to obey and which laws to ignore, there really is no cultural conflict in the minds of Kauai locals. It’s perfectly acceptable. It’s what’s expected of the royalty (or alii, as the ruling class is called in Hawaii): They are free to make their own rules, at least up to a point..

It’s democracy that’s the stranger on Kauai. It’s the haoles, the outsiders and activists and protestors who deviate from the Kauai norm.

“The haoles never stay very long,” former Kauai Mayor Maryanne Kusaka is fond of pointing out, as though it is a criticism of white people. She openly advises employers on Kauai not to hire haoles and choose locals instead.

In fact, she should be asking why so many haoles— especially those with school-age children—leave Kauai. Maybe the answer lies in the way Kauai’s locals treat the haoles.

“Kill Haole Day” has been outlawed in the public schools, officially at least, but the brown kids beat up the white kids on a regular basis and the KPD officers assigned to the schools conveniently look the other way. So the white parents pack up their children and move to the mainland where the schools are both better and safer.

Maybe the Kauai government should set the example for tolerance and sensitivity and inclusion—but it doesn’t.

Bad government, bad schools and no opportunities (beyond making hotel beds and cutting resort lawns) result in what is called throughout Hawaii “The Brain Drain”:

The best and the brightest of Kauai’s children flee the island for better opportunities in Honolulu or the mainland as soon as they can.

Those left behind suffer from a massive inferiority complex. Kauai locals feel disempowered when they deal with the ever-increasing number of whites buying property and developing subdivisions and condos for even more whites. There is an anger born of past injustices (mostly real and mostly by whites).

Locals on Kauai are terrified of change and the very traditional island rapidly is morphing into something they don’t want: Becoming another Maui, over-commercialized and controlled by outside interests.

But that’s the way the haole developers and their local token hirelings are pointing them. The local officials gladly cozy up to the developers in hopes of payoffs, much like the Hawaiian royalty sold their kingdom to outsiders two centuries ago.

Local culture becomes dysfunctional is when it is layered on democracy. It’s just not a good fit, largely because the democracy never operates with all of the checks and balances it’s supposed to have.

Locals show great deference to authority and never openly challenge it. It is not in their cultural heritage and in a place as isolated as Kauai, their assimilation into the American mainstream has been painfully slow.

Kauai is one of very few places in the United States where the citizens—with good reason—fear their government:

Retaliation is essential for the government to keep the peasants in line.

The vast majority of Kauai’s locals want to go through life unnoticed. Certainly they would never speak up to defy authority.

It’s called “humility” but, in reality, it’s an attempt at hiding, as anonymously as possible, within the herd, the flock or the pack.

The island is remote and ignored, especially by the Honolulu news media and state and federal prosecutors, which should be paying more attention because Kauai is unique in all the wrong ways and thus worthy of at least some minimal attention.

The overall culture in Kauai County government and at the KPD is racist and sexist and corrupt. And the local politicians keep it that way.

And the local voters keep returning the same politicians to office.

THEY CALL ME A DOG WHEN I’M DOWN:

THEY CALL ME A DOG WHEN I’M DOWN: While the patronage system in Chicago is making national headlines, the thought of similar news reports on Kaua`i is almost laughable. As one friend said this week the FBI could make a cottage industry out of investigating the hiring practices of Kaua`i county government.

And as if to underscore the way the personnel decisions are made here we were left shaking our head at something that happened while taking care of personal business at a Kaua`i county office this week.

We’re not going to name the person involved because their name isn’t really important and they are but a cog in the machine. But we were surprised to see this county employee emerge to meet us, not from the usual clerk’s desk but from an office with “Assistant Manager” on the door.

“Oh- a promotion, eh?” we asked.

“No I’m doing two jobs right now because of retirements and others who have left... and of course no one is being hired right now because of the change in administration so the new mayor can get whoever he wants in these jobs.”

It’s not often that something actually leaves us speechless but the matter-of-fact way we were told- with a tone of voice saying “are you dumb; doesn’t everyone know that” just added to the tongue tying.

It’s one of those things that you know must be true but still is staggering hear out loud. It’s so entrenched in our local personnel department that the mayor, not merit, determines who gets the civil service jobs on Kaua`i that no one seems to care if everyone knows

Although of course the department heads are the ones who officially manipulate the system they are political appointees whose jobs depend on the good graces of the mayor so it’s likely that when they are told to hire “so and so” they do it.

It’s so engrained that they didn’t even wait to see if the new mayor might want to clean up the way people get jobs but just presumed that the system would continue under Bernard Carvalho the way is did under Maryanne Kusaka and Bryan Baptiste.

Will it ever change? Well that depends on whether the new county council follows up on the exposure of the system that started last year during the budgeting sessions.

That’s when a couple of councilmembers who are gone now- Mel Rapozo and Shaylene Iseri- Carvalho- finally got fed up with funding or even creating a skilled position at the behest of a department head only to find that that job was never filled and the money for it was used to fill another less skilled personnel slot.

One of the things that Rapozo and Iseri put into last year’s budget ordinance was a measure that requires the Department of Personnel Services (DPS) to notify the council of all changes when jobs go though what they call “downward relocation to entry level”,

We described how it really works after an astounding council meeting took place on Sept. 10.

What apparently occurs is that handpicked, unskilled but connected people are given civil service jobs that were appropriated to accomplish tasks that require skilled experienced people..

The “merit system” calls for promoting qualified people already working for the county if they exist and if not going “outside” and taking applications and actually hiring someone to do the job that they told the council needed doing when they asked for the money.

But it is rare that these jobs are ever advertised at all. Instead DPS takes the newly appropriated job slot and changes it to an entry level position in order to hire whomever the department head wants... usually at the “request” of the mayor.

Mel and Shaylene were just beginning to uncover and expose the system last fall but it’s anyone’s guess how the new council will handle it.... but we’re not holding our breath.

Much has been said both here and on other local blogs as to the apparent racial aspects to the hiring and firing practices that are exposed in many ways in the book KPD Blue.

Many see the blatant race bias in the county’s hiring practices and call it racism. But others question whether the race bias in local hiring can be called racism in what is essentially the wider “white privilege” of American society.

As we’ve said before there is a difference between race bias and racism. Race bias happens when someone simply doesn’t like people of another race. Often it’s expressed when actions are taken to deny a person their rights. When it’s done in hiring or public accommodation or other select areas, it is illegal.

But there is also real racISM that is not as easy to regulate. It confers privilege to those having white skin and confers benefits in daily life that may not seem to exist for those who have the privilege but is overtly obvious to those who aren’t a member of that group.

It expresses itself in things from racial profiling to even less overtly obvious acts that suppress and oppress non-whites often forcing them into less advantageous socioeconomic groups.

It doesn’t take a group of people practicing race bias to create an institution that confers white privilege on the members. Protestations of “I am not a racist” from individual members a group of whites that systematically excludes non-whites -whether consciously or not- doesn’t change the effective racism of the institution they belong to and are therefore responsible for..

The question many ask is whether the hiring practices at the county amount to a form of “brown privilege” in the very limited circle of county government. (We use the term brown-privilege” as a contrivance to mean non-white and not to exclude any group that doesn’t present a skin pigment that isn’t of European descent, whether African, Asian Latino, Native American/Pacific Islander or any other).

We can’t forget that this local system serves a larger white privileged power structure imposed by generations of white missionaries, sugar growers, developers, the military and others who in a larger sense “run” this island and state no matter who serves them.

And it can be said that a system such as the one of patronage-in-the-extreme on Kaua`i -whether race based on not- can make for a severely incompetent work force, one which is easy to surpress and control and serves the white power structure very well in many ways.

But many who say it’s impossible to have any real “brown privilege” in a white privileged society- a prevalent line of reasoning in academia and intellectual circles when discussing race- say that the system on Kaua`i is but one of provincialism and geocentric discrimination that centers it benefits on those who are born and raised here, especially with multi-generational roots

And, they say, that population just happens to be primarily non-white on Kaua`i.

But isn’t that the same thing that’s been said for a century when mainland institutions oppress non-whites. “It not that they are (fill-in-the-blank)” they say ”it’s just that they aren’t “one of ‘us’ here in Podunk”.

And certainly if you take your nose out of the “trees” of downtown Lihu`e and look at the “forest” of the island as a whole, even though whites are technically a minority none are lacking for job or economic opportunity because they are white.

As a matter of fact they have much of the same privilege they have on the mainland because the whole financial and wider “plantation mentality” political system here is still white controlled.

We don’t pretend to know the answer as to whether this “brown privilege” that some- like KPD Blue author Tony Sommer- see is a valid concept.

While it probably depends on your definition of racism, in the context of the wider circle of our society both on the mainland and here the answer is seemingly no.

But tell that to someone who has been told they can’t have a government job because of a bias against their skin color and you might not get the agreement that we intellectuals and academics seek.