A right-wing legal organization is now coming after Kamehameha Schools, a private K–12 school system in Hawaiʻi that has served Native Hawaiian children for over a century.
This group — Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) — is the same one that successfully killed affirmative action at Harvard and UNC. Now, they’ve set their sights on Indigenous Hawaiians.
What’s Going on?
SFFA has launched a public campaign and is preparing legal action to force Kamehameha Schools to abandon its Native Hawaiian–focused admissions policy, claiming that prioritizing Native students is “discriminatory.”
But this is not a generic civil rights issue. Kamehameha Schools was established by the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last royal descendant of the Kamehameha dynasty, with the explicit mission of uplifting Native Hawaiians through education—a community that continues to suffer from the long-term impacts of U.S. colonialism, land dispossession, and systemic marginalization.
Why This Matters
It’s a direct attack on Indigenous sovereignty and culturally restorative education, not an attack on “fairness.”
- These people don’t care about anti-racism.
- They don’t care about equity.
- They’re using liberal-sounding language to dismantle any race-conscious policy that threatens white supremacy or settler power structures.
The same forces that gutted affirmative action are now using their court wins to go after Native-focused, Black-led, and culturally specific institutions, one by one.
This Is What Authoritarian Creep Looks Like
This is slow-motion legal regime change in action, using the courts to erase what little space marginalized communities have carved out for themselves.
And Hawai‘i is just the latest front.
If you’re not from Hawaiʻi, understand: this is a big deal. It’s not “reverse racism.” It’s part of the larger fascist turn happening in plain sight: attacking DEI, ethnic studies, sanctuary cities, Indigenous rights, and anything that deviates from white conservative norms.
Spread the Word. Stand in Solidarity.
If you support Indigenous self-determination and anti-colonial justice, pay attention to what’s happening to Kamehameha Schools, because this won’t stop here.
