Cite as: 528 U. S. 495 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
istics, and by 1778 they had a common culture. Indeed, the drafters of the statutory definition in question emphasized the "unique culture of the ancient Hawaiians" in explaining their work. Hawaii Senate Journal, Standing Committee Rep. No. 784, at 1354; see ibid. ("Modern scholarship also identified such race of people as culturally distinguishable from other Polynesian peoples"). The provisions before us reflect the State's effort to preserve that commonality of people to the present day. In the interpretation of the Reconstruction era civil rights laws we have observed that "racial discrimination" is that which singles out "identifiable classes of persons . . . solely because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics." Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji, 481 U. S. 604, 613 (1987). The very object of the statutory definition in question and of its earlier congressional counterpart in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act is to treat the early Hawaiians as a distinct people, commanding their own recognition and respect. The State, in enacting the legislation before us, has used ancestry as a racial definition and for a racial purpose.
The history of the State's definition demonstrates the point. As we have noted, the statute defines "Hawaiian" as
"any descendant of the aboriginal peoples inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands which exercised sovereignty and subsisted in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and which peoples thereafter have continued to reside in Hawaii." Haw. Rev. Stat. § 10-2 (1993).
A different definition of "Hawaiian" was first promulgated in 1978 as one of the proposed amendments to the State Constitution. As proposed, "Hawaiian" was defined as "any descendant of the races inhabiting the Hawaiian Islands, previous to 1778." 1 Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of Hawaii of 1978, Committee of the Whole Rep. No. 13, at 1018. Rejected as not ratified in a valid manner, see Kahalekai v. Doi, 60 Haw. 324, 342, 590 P. 2d 543, 555 (1979),
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