If Kamehameha Schools has been reluctant to wade into the sovereignty debate, the decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals now immerses the school in it.

With the court's rejection of the school's argument that its admissions policy constitutes a race-based affirmative action program, the only way to preserve Kamehameha's autonomy is to abandon the canard of race and frame its case in terms of sovereignty, where it has belonged all along.

Race, historian Barbara Fields argues, is an ideology, not a fact. The ideology of race assumes that innate differences exist among groups of human beings and that society should be organized hierarchically, with "superior" groups of people ruling over "inferior" ones.

Beginning with the American Revolution, the ideology of race allowed its adherents to claim liberty for themselves while enslaving others. African-Americans, of course, had no say in their designation as a race, nor did Hawaiians, after the arrival of James Cook, ever name themselves a race. "Race" was a label assigned to both by those who coveted their labor and land. Yet long after the Civil War ended slavery, we remain attached to an ideology that defies biology and logic.

Next time you give blood, insist that your blood type is "Hawaiian" or "white" or "Chinese" and see the reaction you get. Or consider the absurdity of the "one-drop rule" that holds that a white woman can give birth to a black child, but a black woman cannot give birth to a white child.

By claiming that its admissions policy is a race-based affirmative action program for Hawaiians, Kamehameha Schools places itself in the ironic position of defending the very ideology that branded them as inferior people in their own land. Once Kamehameha's lawyers agreed with their accusers that Hawaiians are indeed a race, the court then placed the burden of proof on the school to prove that the policy was not racist.

Claiming race thus carried the unintended consequence of inviting measurement of Kamehameha's policy against the segregation laws that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 struck down. Its stance had the effect of conjuring the ghosts of Govs. Ross Barnett of Mississippi, Orville Faubus of Arkansas and George Wallace of Alabama, all of whom defied federal law requiring them to admit black students to their public schools and universities, standing shoulder to shoulder with the trustees at the doors of Kamehameha Schools.

The point of such ridiculous imagery is not to link Kamehameha with the arch villains of the civil rights movement, but to illustrate the limits of racial ideology in defining and defending Kamehameha's policy. Indeed, affirmative action programs generally, underwritten as they are by the ideology of race, have become increasingly difficult to defend, as recent Supreme Court decisions indicate.

In fact, Kamehameha's admissions policy has nothing at all to do with affirmative action. At its core, Kamehameha's claim is political, not racial, and it is best to eliminate the word race from the discussion altogether. Hawaiians are not a race but a nation, and this case is about defending the right of a sovereign nation to define itself, govern its institutions and to educate its children as it sees fit. Without an act of Congress that recognizes Hawaiians as a nation, as Judge Jay S. Bybee pointed out in his majority opinion, there is little hope that Kamehameha can prevail.

The court left the door open, however, if Congress recognizes Hawaiian sovereignty and Kamehameha abandons its affirmative action defense. In Morton v. Mancari, the court ruled in favor of hiring preferences for Native Americans because the preference was for Indians "not as a discrete racial group, but, rather, as members of quasi-sovereign tribal entities."

Unlike Kamehameha Schools, Native Americans refused the designation of race and claimed that of nation, which the court recognized. The "classification issue" in Mancari, Bybee concluded, "was not racial, but, rather, political in nature."

The court recognized the difficulties and "far-reaching consequences" of the unresolved question of a defined relationship between Hawaiians and the federal government. It also maintained that Kamehameha could not claim Hawaiians as a race and simultaneously claim a special exemption from civil rights laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of race.

What really matters is not whether one has Hawaiian "blood," but that Hawaiians constituted themselves as a nation before American businessmen and their supporters overthrew the Hawaiian government.

Kamehameha's admissions policy can and should only be defended as an expression of sovereignty. As long as Kamehameha Schools defends its policy using the ideology of race, justice will remain out of reach.

Russell D. Motter is a Honolulu history teacher. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.