Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

[Belz...]

I take issue with the nature of the defense, as if 1/32 (or 1/16, or whatever fraction per family lore) justifies the self-identification.

Whereas It wasn't honest, but it was 35 years ago and not a big deal impresses me as a realistic defense.

You're not wrong, but people rarely think about their ancestry as a matter of percentages. For instance, historically people have identified their ancestry as paternal. So if your paternal great-great-grandfather was from Ireland, you considered yourself Irish. It might not be mathematically significant, but it is culturally and psychologically significant. I don't see a problem there.

I'm not discounting that Warren might have cynically tried to gain an advantage from this, but it's not the only, nor the most probable, explanation.

 

[lomiller]

I think it's actually quite meaningful, but not for many of the reasons put forward in this thread.

It does say a lot about the conservative pundits and politicians who think it’s an issue, none of it good.

 

[smartcooky]

I'm approximately 1/16 English. My last name is decidedly English. But I would never write "English" on a form asking me to identify my background. That would be a lie.

"English" is not a race or an ethnic minority.

 

[Brainster]

What is the rationale for racial preferences in hiring and admissions?

To counter the negative effects of discrimination.

I think the rationale has morphed over the last 40 years into a need for diversity. This is what most bugs me about the claims by Harvard that Warren's supposed Native American ancestry had no significance in the hiring decision. It should have had some positive impact.

The problem with Warren claiming native American ancestry isn't just about her being a craven opportunist. It exposes the whole enterprise of racial preferences as having feet of clay. As Hoffer said, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Fighting racism is a great cause, but racial preferences are the racket phase.

Well put and +1 for quoting Hoffer.

 

[Belz...]

I think the rationale has morphed over the last 40 years into a need for diversity. This is what most bugs me about the claims by Harvard that Warren's supposed Native American ancestry had no significance in the hiring decision. It should have had some positive impact.

Maybe the doctrine isn't as observed as some believe.

 

[Ziggurat]

Considering that her identification is right now leading to Warren being called named, even before the DNA test, I think it's quite plausible, actually.

Well, no. Warren isn't being called names because she's native American. She's being called names because she claimed she's native American and she isn't in any meaningful way. There were two actual native American women who just got elected to Congress last year, and neither of them gets called names like Warren does, because their identity as native Americans isn't in any doubt.

 

[varwoche]

"English" is not a race or an ethnic minority.

Semantic nitpick.

 

[Belz...]

Well, no. Warren isn't being called names because she's native American. She's being called names because she claimed she's native American and she isn't in any meaningful way.

I just said that she was being called that before the DNA tests were made. No one could tell whether she was NA in any meaningful way, so the last part of your reasoning above does not apply. For all they knew she was, and they still called her that.

 

[carlitos]

I think it's actually quite meaningful, but not for many of the reasons put forward in this thread.

Imagine a grown-up conversation on how race is a social construct. Or that ethnicity is essentially an arbitrary distinction. I have a dream!

 

[Belz...]

Imagine a grown-up conversation on how race is a social construct. Or that ethnicity is essentially an arbitrary distinction. I have a dream!

They are indeed arbitrary constructs, but they're not entirely based on fantasy. Black people are actually darker than white ones, for instance, and they have different physiological characteristics. It's when you stop looking at the clear cases and work towards the middle that you realise (presumably) that "race" doesn't really mean much, unless your goal is to perpetuate the meaning.

 

[varwoche]

You're not wrong, but people rarely think about their ancestry as a matter of percentages. For instance, historically people have identified their ancestry as paternal. So if your paternal great-great-grandfather was from Ireland, you considered yourself Irish. It might not be mathematically significant, but it is culturally and psychologically significant. I don't see a problem there.

I'm not discounting that Warren might have cynically tried to gain an advantage from this, but it's not the only, nor the most probable, explanation.

As you might glean from my personal anecdote, I don't think like that. That's because it doesn't make sense.

 

[Ziggurat]

I just said that she was being called that before the DNA tests were made. No one could tell whether she was NA in any meaningful way, so the last part of your reasoning above does not apply. For all they knew she was, and they still called her that.

You're wrong on this one. EVERYONE could tell she was a fake before the DNA tests were made. All she had to go on was "family lore". Regardless of what the DNA percentage might have been, she had no connection to actual native American life. She wasn't a member of any tribe, she didn't live with an native American culture. Nothing about her identity as native American was authentic, and all of this was obvious from the start. The DNA tests didn't change that. The DNA tests could not have changed that.

There's a reason actual native American tribes don't judge membership based on DNA.

 

[JoeMorgue]

1. Race doesn't exist in any meaningful sense of the term.
2. However as an arbitrary social perspective a lot of people still "believe" (in a dozen different ways in countless different levels) of it some degree and their actions are very real.
3. We cannot let 1 and 2 lock us into a binary declarative statement of race "does or doesn't exist" because... it's complicated. It doesn't exist, but people who believe in it do.
4. However we also can't let 1, 2, and 3 let us fall into a "race exists when it's convenient for me, doesn't when it isn't" mentality.

Everything about this actual event from Warren's initial actions to the Republican response to 90% of everything in response to that has been nothing piled on nothing.

I still stand by a bit of minor annoyance that the group that pitches the biggest hissy fits about "cultural appropriation" about white people just helping themselves to "cultures" they aren't "entitled to" are jumping through such hoops to find a technicality on which Warren was justified, but that's a minor side issue.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

You're wrong on this one. EVERYONE could tell she was a fake before the DNA tests were made. All she had to go on was "family lore". Regardless of what the DNA percentage might have been, she had no connection to actual native American life. She wasn't a member of any tribe, she didn't live with an native American culture. Nothing about her identity as native American was authentic, and all of this was obvious from the start. The DNA tests didn't change that. The DNA tests could not have changed that.

What do you think her "identity as a Native American" was besides family lore??

There's a reason actual native American tribes don't judge membership based on DNA.

When did she claim tribal membership??

 

[Ziggurat]

What do you think her "identity as a Native American" was besides family lore??

For her, nothing. And that's the whole point: it was a bull **** identification from the start. Family lore is meaningless.

When did she claim tribal membership??

I didn't say she did. Pay better attention. The reason that tribal membership doesn't use DNA applies more broadly.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

You're wrong on this one. EVERYONE could tell she was a fake before the DNA tests were made. All she had to go on was "family lore". Regardless of what the DNA percentage might have been, she had no connection to actual native American life. She wasn't a member of any tribe, she didn't live with an native American culture. Nothing about her identity as native American was authentic, and all of this was obvious from the start. The DNA tests didn't change that. The DNA tests could not have changed that.

What do you think her "identity as a Native American" was besides family lore? She practically never mentioned it.

There's a reason actual native American tribes don't judge membership based on DNA.

When did she claim tribal membership?

 

[theprestige]

No one could tell whether she was NA in any meaningful way

I'd say we all could tell exactly that.

Ethnic heritage isn't a checkbox on a government form. Diversity isn't a hoop that institutions jump through to score social justice brownie points.

The Texas State Bar didn't gain the benefit of a Native American viewpoint when Warren claimed Native American ancestry. They got yet another upper-class white person's viewpoint. Regardless of her family narrative and her actual DNA, Warren lied in a very real and important way, when she claimed to be Native American.

Similarly, Harvard didn't gain a Native American perspective when Warren joined their faculty. Adding yet another privileged white person to their staff didn't actually make Harvard any more "diverse". In a very real and important way, Harvard lied when they touted her as Native American.

And that's why this is important. Not so much because Warren told a porkie all those years ago. But because fighting discrimination is supposed to matter. Because increasing diversity is supposed to matter. Warren claimed to be Native American because that's supposed to matter. Harvard touted her as Native American because it's supposed to matter.

But when it turns out that she's really just another upper-class white person, with no experience of racial discrimination and absolutely nothing to say about the Native American experience, the best defense that can be made of her is basically, "so what, it's not like those tick-marks and brochure blurbs actually matter."

They should matter. They're supposed to matter. The whole point of having them in the first place is that it's important that our society pay attention and take these things seriously.

Warren didn't pay attention and take it seriously. Harvard didn't pay attention and take it seriously. Nobody excusing her is paying attention or taking it seriously. For that reason, the Diversity Agonistes in this country absolutely deserve a "Fauxcahontas" poster child for the absolute clown show that affirmative action has devolved into.

The absolute clown show into which affirmative action has devolved.

And through her own hubris, Elizabeth Warren has more than earned the privilege of being that poster child. For that hubris, Orange Man Bad is her rightful nemesis. You want to have a national conversation about race? Try starting with why anyone thought it was okay to claim that Warren is Native American, especially with the excuse that it doesn't really matter.

 

[theprestige]

I mean, I'm actually biracial. *And* bilingual. I've spent literally years living in each of my parent's home countries. I'm competent to navigate each culture on a day-to-day basis. But I'm still very reluctant to claim my father's heritage, simply because the majority of my social formation occurred in my mother's home country. I'm competent in both, but much more comfortable in one than the other.

I feel like it would be an insult to my father's compatriots, to claim their national identity and heritage. I feel like it would be a lie to anyone else, to claim standing to represent my father's people in any real sense. And I'm someone with a full 50% DNA from my father's people. I'm someone who speaks his language, who's studied his literature. I've been educated in his country's schools, and held jobs in his country's cities. Hell, I even cook his country's food! So when Elizabeth Warren claims to be Native American, that to me is an insult and a lie.

To me, "pocahontas" is a fitting epithet not because she's Native American, but because she *isn't* Native American. In the jargon of our times, checking that box for the Texas Bar Association was a grift. A race grift.

 

[Belz...]

You're wrong on this one. EVERYONE could tell she was a fake before the DNA tests were made. All she had to go on was "family lore". Regardless of what the DNA percentage might have been, she had no connection to actual native American life. She wasn't a member of any tribe, she didn't live with an native American culture. Nothing about her identity as native American was authentic, and all of this was obvious from the start.

How does any of that negate the family lore?

Oh, you meant that people assumed that it was inauthentic from the start.

 

[theprestige]

How does any of that negate the family lore?

Oh, you meant that people assumed that it was inauthentic from the start.

I'd say that people could tell that it was inauthentic from the start. See my preceding posts for my arguments as to why.

ETA: And it doesn't "negate" the "family lore". The point is, "family lore" is meaningless. Actual meaning would have come from a family practice of Native American heritage. Which everyone could tell from the start she didn't have.