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Hawaiians,
Pacific Islanders
tallied

Census Bureau counts nearly
400,000 across the nation and will
release more data on the new
category in June

---

By Pat Omandam
Star-Bulletin

There are nearly 400,000 people in the United States who classify themselves as native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islander races, a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau says.

Race data for the state of Hawaii are expected to be released this week.

The bureau, which released the first of a series of briefs yesterday from Census 2000, said those who reported themselves of the native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander race made up about 0.1 percent of the country's population, or about 399,000 of the 281,421,906 people counted in the census.

Moreover, an additional 476,000 people say they are part of the Hawaiian/Pacific Island category and one other race. The most prevalent was a combination of Hawaiian and Asian races, which comprised 29 percent, or 138,802, of the 476,000 nationwide.

Elizabeth Grieco, the bureau's spokeswoman for data for the native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders category, said yesterday that a breakdown for the Hawaiian category will be released in June, while information on other race groups will be available next month.

The delay in crunching data on native Hawaiians is because there is much more information to work with, especially since it is a new race classification for the census bureau, she said.

"It's been fun data to play with so far," Grieco said.

What the Census Bureau releases on Hawaiians is serious business, said Haunani Apoliona, chairwoman of a native Hawaiian and other Pacific Island advisory committee to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs chairwoman left yesterday for Washington, D.C., to meet with census officials to share the Hawaiian community's concerns about the data being prepared by the bureau.

Apoliona said she wants to know what methods the bureau is using to analyze the data and how it will compile and report it to the public. She said the problem is because people for the first time could check off more than one racial category in the census. But if the bureau says native Hawaiians are only those who checked off only one race box, what happens to those who claim Hawaiian and one or two other races?

And she wonders what impact it will have for Hawaiian programs and entitlements. Hawaiians fear the federal government may be trying to make Hawaiians "disappear."

"Choose only one, and of course, no doubt, you're going to show up in the Hawaiian number," Apoliona said.

"But if you choose Hawaiian and Asian, because this is the first census where they're allowing you to mark more than one, this throws off the statisticians. It is driving the statisticians nuts," said Apoliona, who plans to return to Hawaii this weekend.

Overall, the census results show 2.4 percent nationally took advantage of a first-ever option for respondents to identify themselves as belonging to more than one race.

Results show 75.1 percent of the population regarded themselves as white or Caucasian, while 12.3 percent were black or African American. Asians made up 3.6 percent of the population, while American Indian or Alaska Natives made up 0.9 percent.

About 5.5 percent of census respondents listed themselves as some other race.

Grieco said race data on the state of Hawaii expected soon will break down the race groups in Hawaii but won't have much else. Still, the information will include figures for those living on Hawaiian homesteads, she said.

"It's the first time we've enumerated Hawaiian homelands. You'll be able to look at that," Grieco said.