Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

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theprestige said:
I'd say that people could tell that it was inauthentic from the start. See my preceding posts for my arguments as to why.
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I've seen the posts. I don't see how it's "clear". Plenty of people have some ethnic heritage that you can't see or that doesn't have any impact in their everyday lives.

And as I said before, the issue is so unimportant that only very petty people would make such a huge deal out of it.
 
Belz... said:
I've seen the posts. I don't see how it's "clear". Plenty of people have some ethnic heritage that you can't see or that doesn't have any impact in their everyday lives.

And as I said before, the issue is so unimportant that only very petty people would make such a huge deal out of it.
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I'd say the issues of institutional discrimination and diversity should a lot more important than a lot of people - including Elizabeth Warren and Harvard University - are making them out to be. I'd say that a lot of petty people are downplaying their importance in this particular case because... Reasons, I guess.

And I'd say that the only way you can argue that Warren's claim is unimportant is if you are also arguing that ethnic diversity itself is unimportant and petty.

And of course I'd say that one big reason the issue of Warren's claim is actually very important, is because after decades of progressives insisting that diversity is super important, these same folks are now trying to tell us that Warren's fake diversity isn't very important at all.
 
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Belz... said:
How does any of that negate the family lore?

Oh, you meant that people assumed that it was inauthentic from the start.
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You're missing the point entirely. It doesn't matter if the family lore had been correct. Even if she had been, say, 1/16th native American, identifying as native American as her primary identity would have been a fraud.

I've got a touch of Scottish in me, but I don't identify as Scottish because I've got no lived connection to it.

Belz... said:
I've seen the posts. I don't see how it's "clear". Plenty of people have some ethnic heritage that you can't see or that doesn't have any impact in their everyday lives.
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THAT'S THE POINT! It didn't have any impact on her everyday life. So claiming it as her identity was a fraud. It wasn't her identity, at all.

And as I said before, the issue is so unimportant that only very petty people would make such a huge deal out of it.
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Except it is important, because identity politics have made it so. I agree that it's petty, but again, that's rather the point: identity politics is inherently petty. And that's the problem.
 
Ziggurat said:
You're missing the point entirely. It doesn't matter if the family lore had been correct. Even if she had been, say, 1/16th native American, identifying as native American as her primary identity would have been a fraud.

I've got a touch of Scottish in me, but I don't identify as Scottish because I've got no lived connection to it.
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No, you're missing the point. People have identified themselves based on such lore for a long time. It doesn't matter if you think it's irrational; that's how humans have behaved since forever. You're arbitrarily excluding Warren from being able to claim NA ancestry even if she had NA ancestry. That's nonsense.

THAT'S THE POINT! It didn't have any impact on her everyday life. So claiming it as her identity was a fraud.
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That doesn't follow.
 
Belz... said:
No, you're missing the point. People have identified themselves based on such lore for a long time. It doesn't matter if you think it's irrational; that's how humans have behaved since forever. You're arbitrarily excluding Warren from being able to claim NA ancestry even if she had NA ancestry. That's nonsense.
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Ancestry and identity are not the same thing. There's a massive difference between saying "I'm native American" and saying "I've got a bit of native American ancestry" which your response conflates. I never tried to exclude Warren from claiming any ancestry.

And if people want to use racial identity as a basis for preferential treatment, which many do, then whether or not someone's claimed identity is irrational absolutely matters.

That doesn't follow.
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Yes, actually, it does. Because that's the entire basis for affirmative action and diversity initiatives: the claim that your racial identity makes a difference.
 
Belz... said:
To you.

To me.

Not necessarily to others. That's where your argument fails. You only see your own point of view on this.
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That's... not actually an argument.

Only if you think identity only stems from everyday impact. It doesn't. Again you're projecting your own POV onto others.
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I don't care if you want to claim the impact is daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly. But the entire premise of identity politics is that there's a significant and external impact. Without that, affirmative action has no justification. Without that, diversity is pointless.

And there was no such impact for Warren.

Even if you believe that she honestly thought that she was really native American and not that she simply had some native American ancestry (which, really, isn't a remotely credible claim), this whole episode still hits identity politics below the water line.
 
Belz... said:
Only if you think identity only stems from everyday impact. It doesn't. Again you're projecting your own POV onto others.
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Maybe Harvard should make an argument along those lines: "Elizabeth Warren is an upper-class white person in her everyday impact, but she's a Native American when it matters most."

The defense of Elizabeth Warren is turning out to be a strong argument in favor of getting rid of Affirmative Action altogether.
 
theprestige said:
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.
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Never mind that actual recognized Native Americans have BEGGED people to not use that insult, because it's insulting towards them. They're just Indians, they don't matter to you.

Believe it or not, but it's very common for Americans to claim ancestry as identity. Kiss me, I'm Irish! will be coming up very soon. It will remain common as long as newly immigrant groups are classified according to the country of their ancestry. Irish, Italian, Mexican, Pollack. These categorizations are all in current living memory. My own memory of (REEEEEE) family lore is that I had an ancestor on the Trail of Tears, who abandoned the tribe and his mother's race partway through to pass the rest of his life as white. How can this EVER possibly be corroborated or refuted? I listed Native American among my ethnicities just as Warren and thousands of others have, I only stopped when forms started asking for tribe and I didn't have membership in any current tribes.
 
Essentially the question is, (OUTSIDE of whether or not you think they are a good thing) why we have things like affirmative action and similar concepts.

We have them to help people who have been disadvantaged by the system.

Organization Y tries to have a certain amount of group X to counter that.

And that only works if people who are generally perceived as group X in general society when we're talking arbitrary thing. You can't be a social perception on a technicality.

To the average "person on the street" Elizabeth Warren is not Native American. Someone who is racist against Native Americans is not going to be racist against Elizabeth Warren unless they carry around a 23&Me test on them at all times.

If I do a DNA test tommorow and find out I'm 5% Kenyan, I don't magically retro-actively have experienced all the racism a "black" person experiences, so you don't need to apply, say, an African American scholarship to me to offset some systematic discrimination I never experienced because I'm whiter then a snowman with a bukakke fetish. I can't be "technically" black in anyway that matters.

So it's... off in some manner for her to use a system designed to help Native Americans because she's "technically" this or that "percent" correct "by the book."

Basically she's a white woman in every way that matters claiming the identity where it benefits here without having to live with it in all the ways it doesn't.
 
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Belz... said:
How does any of that negate the family lore?

Oh, you meant that people assumed that it was inauthentic from the start.
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Family lore? You can claim membership to an aggrieved race, because of family lore?


Despite the documentary about a white skinned- black child from the 70's, starring Steve Martin, Navin R. Johnson was not actually a poor black child.

https://youtu.be/rfAvQp-Uk5I
 
Worth pointing out that her claims were highly plausible and consistent with her DNA evidence.



smartcooky said:
I find it remarkable that Trumpsters like Vixen, TBD, BrooklynBaby etc, are still trying to perpetuate and regurgitate the lies and misrepresentations that have already been so thoroughly debunked.

- "Warren has no more NA DNA that anyone else" - a lie, she has over 10 times the amount she should have!

- "Warren claimed to be a Cherokee" - a lie, she never made any such claim.

- "DNA evidence can't tell if you are a Cherokee" - a misrepresentation. No-one ever claimed that it could.

- "Warren used her claims of NA ancestry to land a plum job at Harvard" - a lie. She was hired BEFORE she ever indicated NA ancestry.

The facts have been proven over, and over, and over; the lies have been debunked over, and over, and over; but the Trumpsters tell lie, after lie, after lie about them. When called on this, they still lie. When taken to task on it, they double down on the lies.
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Dr. Keith said:
I assume the people calling her a liar and racist for repeating and relying on these family stories. Which turned out to be true.

But you are right, they probably don't actually care about what she said. They keep making up odd interpretations of what she said and then burning down those straw men.
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Dr. Keith said:
TBD: part Cherokee and part Delaware = 100% Native American

EW: Have you seen me or my mother? Clearly she is mostly something else you ******* moron. But the racists pricks in my father's family, and really in a large part of the US at that time, only cared about that one drop of native American blood to treat her like less than human.

Unless you have some other statement by Warren that you would like to point out as a lie.
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JoeMorgue said:
Basically she's a white woman in every way that matters claiming the identity where it benefits here without having to live with it in all the ways it doesn't.
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Keep in mind there is no evidence the she ever benefited from this or that she ever tried to gain affirmative action benefits as far as I can tell.

The "benefit" she appeared to be trying to gain is just to make her life colorful. It's akin to putting "my favorite color is mauve" in a personals ad.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Keep in mind there is no evidence the she ever benefited from this or that she ever tried to gain affirmative action benefits as far as I can tell.


The "benefit" she appeared to be trying to gain is just to make her life colorful. It's akin to putting "my favorite color is mauve" in a personals ad.
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And again I agree 100% in the abstract.

But this is also a world where a white person wearing dreadlocks makes the public discourse about "cultural appropriation" so...

Stripped of everything else there's no "neutral" reason to claim... membership (not the exact term but close) in a disenfranchised minority in this sort of scenario.

You don't tell a school you are applying to you're 1/Xth percent minority just to be "colorful" here let's not kid ourselves.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
You don't tell a school you are applying to you're 1/Xth percent minority just to be "colorful" here let's not kid ourselves.
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Just be clear here, you realize there is no evidence she did that, right? The evidence is that she already had the job when she identified as Native American and was just doing it for networking purposes.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Just be clear here, you realize there is no evidence she did that, right? The evidence is that she already had the job when she identified as Native American and was just doing it for networking purposes.
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"Networking purposes" meets my definition of "using the heritage" the a way meant to benefit the person.

Again there's "neutral" reason to go "Oh I'm X percent of Y" in any business or academic setting in the way we're talking here.

You don't tell a school or a business or a potential client or a potential partner or any other variation there of "Oh I have some X percent of Y in me" unless you want that to take that fact into consideration.

If we as a culture just have to pitch a fit about Johnny Depp playing Tonto, we get to at least talk about this.
 
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