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Connections between Hawaii and Oregon are strong and have been for generations. Many Hawaiians went to the mainland to work in the fur trade in Oregon in the early 1800s. Some stayed permanently, and today, many graduates of Hawaii high schools attend college in Oregon.

So we on these islands might have a greater interest than most in the dangerous, criminal idiocy unfolding at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in tiny Burns, Oregon, and the reaction to it by law enforcement and news consumers around the country.

As most know by now, loyalists to the same awful Bundy family that has been breaking the law for nearly 23 years in Nevada — grazing their cattle on public land without a permit, refusing to pay more than $1 million in grazing fees and last year going wholly unpunished after their armed standoff with federal and local law enforcement officials — are behind the events in Oregon.

Family patriarch and Cliven Bundy met last fall with convicted arsonist, Dwight Hammond Jr., who along with his son, Steven, was sentenced to five years in prison for setting fire to federally owned lands in Oregon.

Sympathetic to the Hammonds’ position, Bundy’s gang of angry white guys with guns seized control of the headquarters building of the Malheur Refuge and threatened violence if the Hammonds were sent to jail or if the occupiers were pushed by law enforcement. Ryan Bundy, one of Cliven’s sons, told The Oregonian that participants were “”

Law enforcement authorities continue to seek a peaceful, non-violent end to the conflict, an end we all ought to support.

But the more that sort of phrasing is repeated, the more it sounds like nails on a chalkboard: a grating reminder of the white privilege and sense of entitlement that differentiates what is essentially being accommodated in Burns from how a similar response by Native Hawaiians or other people of color to real, legitimate beefs with the U.S. government would almost certainly be handled, were they to manifest here or anywhere else.

What if, for instance, Native Hawaiian activists Water Ritte and George Helm had shown up on the shores of Kahoolawe 40 years ago, armed and ready to fire on the U.S. Coast Guard boats and personnel guarding the island, which was being used as a U.S. Navy bombing range?

More recently, what might have happened if Mauna Kea protesters had camped out with semi-automatic weapons and made public threats of violence against state Department of Land and Natural Resources officials for desecrating a sacred mountain top?

Ritte, Helm and dozens of others at Kahoolawe and Mauna Kea were summarily arrested for their activism against federal policies and state laws they opposed; some served time — as much as six months — for genuine acts of peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience.

It’s a tribute to the aloha aina exhibited by protesters in both matters that their actions gave rise to dialogue, resolution and/or progress that overall has served Native Hawaiian interests well. But it’s easy to envision the sort of tragedy that might have unfolded in both locations had armed Native Hawaiians adopted the Bundy approach of full-throated menacing contempt for authority.

Why the difference? Why, as I write this sentence, has the Washington Post just reported, for instance, that the in the Oregon matter and “will work with local and state authorities to seek ‘a peaceful resolution to the situation’”?

Meanwhile, area schools have been closed for the week and the Malheur Refuge, which remains under control of Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon and co-conspirators, is “closed until further notice,” and there are no apparent immediate plans to take it back.

Does anyone really believe that race and culture have nothing to do with it?

An Undeserved Veneer Of Patriotism

Too many media are infuriatingly referring to the Bundy group as “militia men,” phrasing connected to the U.S. Constitution and colonial times, conferring upon these lawbreakers an entirely undeserved veneer of patriotism. Too many are describing their general enmity toward the federal government as though it is somewhat understandable, that people who at the very least are guilty of sedition against the United States ought to be heard sympathetically and treated respectfully.

In truth, each and every one ought to be behind bars awaiting a first appearance in court and anticipating a hitch in a federal pen.

We just completed a year sadly in cities across the country, cities in which exactly zero African-American “militia” groups seized control of federal buildings in protest.

Surely African-Americans have historical and current issues with the U.S. government more legitimate than the Bundys and their cohorts. But how many elected officials rose to the defense of Black Lives Matter protesters when they had the unmitigated temerity in recent months to simply interrupt speeches by candidates for public office? How many conservatives instead for exercising First Amendment rights?

Leading GOP presidential contender Donald Trump spent the past six months building a strong base of support, in part by relentlessly slurring Mexican-Americans and advocating for a wall separating our southern border from Mexico. But watching Trump’s support grow to near 40 percent in recent GOP polls, have Mexican-Americans assembled, posse style, and taken over federal facilities in protest?

Many Latinos or their families or friends from the U.S. government than the Bundy clan. Where are those leaders seeking a “peaceful resolution” to their concerns?

The Hammonds Monday afternoon in California. But the Bundy scofflaws, , say they have no plans to leave the Malheur Refuge and are demanding that federally owned land first be “returned” to local ranchers and loggers.

The way that law enforcement, the government in general and the nation more broadly react to this outrageous criminal occupation is laden with racial and cultural symbology that our increasingly diverse nation is watching and absorbing more so than any of us may fully realize. Old lessons that have proven time and again that America is governed by one set of laws for white people and a different set for black and brown people are being taught and retaught again.

A tweet from posted on Sunday compressed the meaning of the Bundy-led Malheur occupation into 140 characters so potent, they had been retweeted 17,000 times by the next morning. They richly deserve repeating here:

“Today I learned:
plural of armed black people is thugs
plural of armed brown people is terrorists
plural of armed white people is militia.”