FIVE REASONS FOR CHANGING THE NAME OF MCKINLEY HIGH SCHOOL
By Leon Siu
Right Our History Hawaii (ROHH), a group of thoughtful and concerned citizens living in Hawaii, is urging the Hawaii State Board of Education to change the name of McKinley High School. ROHH says that having a prominent Hawaii school named for the U.S. President who, as it turns out, was responsible for the illegal annexation and the resulting 123-year prolonged foreign occupation of the Hawaiian Islands, is reprehensible and offensive to the Hawaian people and to the integrity of Hawaii’s education system.
1. William McKinley was a model of White Supremacy and Racism The U.S. press at the time was full of fake news and bigotry. They said the primary reason for overthrowing and annexing the Hawaiian Kingdom government was because Hawaiians were primitive and incapable of governing themselves… Thus, superior white leaders needed to take over for the sake of civilization and progress. This masked the real motive — sheer greed — more money, for the local white business elites… and power and domination for the U.S. and its military. It is greed, coupled with white superiority complex, that motivated the taking of the Hawaiian Islands.
President William McKinley said, “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more, than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.”
Manifest Destiny is the idea that the United States is destined by God, to expand its dominion beyond its continental borders. Thus, McKinley sought to extend America’s Manifest Destiny across the Pacific Ocean, even if it meant trampling the identity, language, culture, health, lands and everything else that belonged to the Hawaiian people.
2. McKinley Pushed for Annexation Even Though Hawaiians Strongly Opposed It No vote for Annexation was ever conducted in Hawaii. In fact, just the opposite happened. In 1897, when Hawaiians learned that the U.S. Senate was set to ratify a “treaty of annexation,” 39,000 Hawaiian nationals signed petitions categorically opposing annexation. This represented the will of over 80% of the adult population of the Hawaiian Islands. The petition was delivered to Congress and it stopped the treaty ratification in its tracks. But President McKinley and his cohorts in Congress simply devised a way to skirt the law.
3. McKinley Faked Hawaii’s Annexation (1898) After two failed attempts (1893 and 1897) to annex Hawaii by treaty, McKinley took a different (illegal) approach. On July 6,1898, McKinley signed a Joint Resolution of Congress (the Newlands Resolution) to annex Hawaii, knowing that a joint resolution did not have any power to annex a foreign country. Thus, white McKinley and white Congress deliberately collaborated with the white oligarchy in Hawaii to commit fraud to usurp the Hawaiian Islands, but calling it an “annexation” to make it appear legitimate.
The result of the usurpation/annexation displaced Hawaiians and robbed them of their identity, their homes and their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It turned the Hawaiian Islands into an overseas colony, completely dependent on the U.S. for everything.
4. Schools Turned into Centers for American Indoctrination In order for the widely despised and obviously illegal annexation to succeed, Hawaiian children (whose parents a few years before had signed the anti-annexation petitions) had to be re-programmed into thinking of themselves as Americans, not Hawaiians. School curricula were tailored to brainwash and indoctrinate children that Hawaii had become a part of the United States; and to reject being Hawaiians and embrace being Americans. The American indoctrination program has been in Hawaii’s schools for over six generations. It was so pervasive that until about 20 years ago, no student emerging from Hawaii’s schools had an inkling of the illegal overthrow, the illegal annexation and the illegal statehood. Today, 123 years after the U.S. takeover, the false, pro-America narrative is still being taught in most of Hawaii’s schools.
5. Honolulu High School renamed President William McKinley High School (1907) A key component of the political indoctrination strategy was to change the name of the flagship, Honolulu High School, to President William McKinley High School. This was done to cast the one most responsible for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States as a hero, not the criminal that he actually was. Being named for the icon of American fraud stands today as a shameful contradiction to the noteworthy accomplishments of the school and its generations of illustrious students. To continue honoring the McKinley name overlooks and condones the travesties he committed against the people and nation of Hawaii. For these reasons and more, the name of President William McKinley High School should be changed.
NOTE: Hawaii is not an isolated case of McKinley’s White Supremacy and Manifest Destiny policies. In fact, what happened in Hawaii was mild compared to the atrocities he unleashed against the American Indians and the Filipinos… Just ask them… or Google.
