Cite as: 528 U. S. 495 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
an interest in trust property, or to a shared interest in a proud heritage. There would be nothing demeaning in a law that established a trust to manage Monticello and provided that the descendants of Thomas Jefferson should elect the trustees. Such a law would be equally benign, regardless of whether those descendants happened to be members of the same race.16
In this light, it is easy to understand why the classification here is not "demeaning" at all, ante, at 523, for it is simply not based on the "premise that citizens of a particular race are somehow more qualified than others to vote on certain matters," ibid. It is based on the permissible assumption in this context that families with "any" ancestor who lived in Hawaii in 1778, and whose ancestors thereafter continued to live in Hawaii, have a claim to compensation and self-determination that others do not. For the multiracial majority of the citizens of the State of Hawaii to recognize that deep reality is not to demean their own interests but to honor those of others.
It thus becomes clear why the majority is likewise wrong to conclude that the OHA voting scheme is likely to "become the instrument for generating the prejudice and hostility all too often directed against persons whose particular ancestry
16 Indeed, "[i]n one form or another, the right to pass on property—to one's family in particular—has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since feudal times." Hodel v. Irving, 481 U. S. 704, 716 (1987). Even the most minute fractional interests that can be identified after allotted lands are passed through several generations can receive legal recognition and protection. Thus, we held not long ago that inherited shares of parcels allotted to the Sioux in 1889 could not be taken without compensation even though their value was nominal and it was necessary to use a common denominator of 3,394,923,840,000 to identify the size of the smallest interest. Id., at 713-717. Whether it is wise to provide recompense for all of the descendants of an injured class after several generations have come and gone is a matter of policy, but the fact that their interests were acquired by inheritance rather than by assignment surely has no constitutional significance.
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