My father, Daniel de Gracia, got no breaks in life. When my paternal grandmother carried him in her early 40s, doctors initially mistook her pregnancy as a cancerous growth, though time and a second opinion quickly revealed otherwise.

Not long after he was born, his own father, Pablito, died of a heart attack. This immediately cast my father’s family into poverty. As the youngest of three children, he didn’t get to enjoy the same benefits that his older sister and brother knew. 

Moving from a small house on Pensacola Street in Honolulu to San Francisco, my father would grow up being looked down on, wearing repurposed burlap bags as underwear and living in garages of multigenerational households eating donated food well until his teens.

When he graduated from high school, he knew he had to get a college degree if he was ever to get out from under the stigma of his past. He couldn’t afford to go to a four-year university, so he got a job at United Airlines as a shopkeeper working the night shift to help pay for classes at a community college.

Whatever money he made that didn’t go to his tuition went to his mother to help buy food. He spent his first two years living like a zombie, taking classes by day, working by night, sleeping in his car, and eventually got his associate’s degree in physical education.

The son of Filipino immigrants who had come to Hawaii in the 1900s, my father was the first in the family to get a degree. He later applied for a bachelor’s program at San Francisco State University and notched his second degree.

With the Vietnam War at its peak, he joined an Air Force ROTC program for his master’s degree at Stanford University. He would be commissioned a lieutenant and then married my mother, Isabellita Santa Elena, in 1972, but his first dependent was his elderly mother, who he would take to the commissary to buy her food or the exchange to buy her clothes.

By the time that my father retired as a colonel in 2002, that once-poor, fatherless boy from Pensacola Street would be awarded the Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster (meaning he got the award twice) having contributed to the national security of our country. He organized special operations medical support, helped evacuate the Philippines in 1991, brought wounded home from Desert Storm, and was part of Tactical Air Command’s operations center during the invasion of Panama, to name a few.

And yet, despite my father’s talents, expertise, and accomplishments, he would always tell me with a palpable agony in his voice that he was a firm supporter of affirmative action. “No one ever gave me anything,” he would say to me when I was growing up. “Our job, once we succeed, is to open and hold the door open for others so they can go through.”

He was one of the toughest, sharpest, most disciplined men I’ve ever known, the epitome of meritocracy, and yet, he wanted to give people for free the things — respect, honor, validation, a better life — that he himself had to fight for. And as a Christian, my father would always remind me, “To whom much is given, much shall be required.”

Changing The Rules To Change Hawaiʻi’s Future

I share this story because as someone who frequents libertarian and conservative circles, I have a controversial thought for Hawaiʻi: The more “meritocratic” and “qualified” you really are, the more grace, mercy and unmerited favor you should show to others.

Why is this the case? Because everyone who has truly subjected themselves to a “meritocracy” realizes that the majority of the rules and norms of our society are arbitrary, often created not to bring out the best, but to create ceilings that exclude others.

Yes, anyone who truly has applied themselves to being the best at anything will ultimately discover once you reach the top, most of the people who created the standards of merit are, themselves, unworthy of the standards they place on others.

Sacrifice as a way of life, and you’ll soon come to the point that you realize others shouldn’t have to sacrifice in the same way you did.

This both frustrates and humbles a true person of merit and honor, because you realize — if you are honest with yourself — that at the end of the day, you could have accomplished so much more, so much sooner if you didn’t waste so much time trying to meet standards that the people at the top don’t even meet themselves. Sacrifice as a way of life, and you’ll soon come to the point that you realize others shouldn’t have to sacrifice in the same way you did.

Yes, we are all born equal in the sense that we are all human and all mortal, but as a society we place rules, disadvantages, and point the bone at people before they’re even born and expect them to pull themselves up despite knowing we’ve rigged the game against them.

“Equity” is different from “equality” in that we recognize that making things fair also means making things right. This means we don’t ruin people’s lives for decades and then expect them to make it in a world we stacked against them without giving them a little extra grace or help to overcome their vulnerability. You shouldn’t have to be like my dad to get the respect, honor and due you are worthy of just for being a human made in the image of the divine.

In Hawaiʻi, advancing equity is going to be essential to our future in 2025 and beyond, especially as the economy gets worse, as options for staying rooted in the islands get thin, and as our increasing population forces us to compete with each other in more dire ways.

Overcoming The Palace Economy

In Hawaiʻi, we like to say things like “practice aloha” or “let’s ensure all voices are heard.” But then we turn around and pick only those who say what we want to hear, or stack our circles with people who do not come from or believe in the same things as the populations they’re supposed to represent. Look up the “Halo and Horn Effect” if you want to understand why the same people in Hawaii keep leading while others keep losing.

Hawaii’s vulnerable, marginalized and underserved populations are never going to get ahead merely by playing by the traditional rules of work hard, study hard, save money and maybe you’ll live happily ever after.

How do I know this? Because those of us of who have done that ran face-first into the wall of the palace economy. In Hawaiʻi, you do your best, play by the rules, give above and beyond, and then get told it’s not good enough, try again, come back later. In Hawaiʻi, you get told your voice matters, but then people don’t do what you ask or make amends for your grievances. 

For too long, Hawaii has been ruled by people who have no stake in the outcome of those who suffer.

Can you imagine how Native Hawaiians feel? Every year they get to see foreign corporations and wealthy mainlanders come in, buy privilege, exert influence on our government, and get praised and honored, while Native Hawaiians are struggling just to hold on to the little they still have from generational transfer. 

To even up the score, we need to get rid of the harsh rules and the structures and the princes, barons, and lords of the palace economy. Equity means we pick more people from the most marginalized groups and change the mechanisms that bottleneck power in the hands of elites. It means we rebuke people who have double standards that hold others back and reward people who go out of their way to do the greatest good for the greatest number.

Each generation should strive to make the way for the one that follows us a little easier and to right historic injustices. Those of us who have privilege and wield power dynamics over others need to think about equity rather than domination. 

For too long, Hawaii has been ruled by people who have no stake in the outcome of those who suffer. In 2025, we need to break paradigms and promote equity.