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Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

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Mumbles said:
As someone who knows quite a few activists, it's just not something that many people care about. It's like the howling over "trigger warnings" - aside from PTSD and others who've been through truly traumatic things, it's just not a thing.
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You have inadvertently picked one of the least convincing analogies possible, given your current interlocutor. I happen to hold an admin role in a large private atheist group. We periodically have giant blow-ups about whether and when to include trigger warnings on our posts. The most recent of these was just last July, resulting in a few hundred comments and not a few rage-quits. (Feel free to PM me if you're an atheist and you'd like to see all the intranecine drama for yourself.)

wareyin said:
What could anyone possibly gain by anonymously answering a question about race?
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A sense of subjective personal identity, perhaps?
 
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Dr. Keith said:
Where she was told it would not be shared with anyone.

That makes me wonder about how seriously I should take the State Bar of Texas when they make promises of confidentiality, but it hardly makes me think "what was she trying to gain by anonymously noting her race as NA?"
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I thought she said she did it for networking purposes.
 
mgidm86 said:
Hillary was never liberal. She may have worn a mask at times (can't think of when) but I see nothing about her that is liberal, now or ever.

Bill Clinton was in office decades ago. He was pretty liberal with his wedding vows ;) but other than that? Not so much.
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Thank you for supporting my point.

Although what you say about Hillary and Bill is true, this did not prevent certain people and groups from describing them as "liberal" or "very liberal".

This is why the use of such terms carries little real content unless put in perspective by knowing exactly just what the speaker actually intends by them.

In the cases mentioned it is reasonably clear that the only intent was pejorative.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Are you seriously asking how a person can think a thought?
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No. If I were asking that question, I would have typed "how can a person think a thought?"

Actually, that question seems about as useful as "how can someone invested in wrongly interpreting something fail to understand their error?" For examples, see conservatives attempting to claim some sort of gain from answering a question described as "The following information is for statistical purposes only and will not be disclosed to any person or organization without the express written consent of the attorney".
 
wareyin said:
No. If I were asking that question, I would have typed "how can a person think a thought?"

Actually, that question seems about as useful as "how can someone invested in wrongly interpreting something fail to understand their error?" For examples, see conservatives attempting to claim some sort of gain from answering a question described as "The following information is for statistical purposes only and will not be disclosed to any person or organization without the express written consent of the attorney".
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You asked the question 'what does that mean?' in response to someone answering 'what did she gain?' with 'a subjective sense of personal identity'. The proposal, which I agree with, is that Warren simply felt a little special to have a (precarious) claim to exotic ancestry. A thoroughly human peculiarity shared by millions.

Her mistake was in a) believing it so strongly, in the face of excellent reasons not to, and b) defending the belief so strongly, in the face of even more excellent reasons not to. The result is that she now appears not only silly, a fault which could be forgiven, but incapable of admitting error and terrible at managing controversy. The latter two are rather important skills for would be leaders, in my opinion.
 
I rather think this particular 'controversy' was manufactured to be impossible to manage. Tar Baby and all. The more she struggles to push away the Tar Baby, the more it will stick to her and those who shoved it on her can slither away.
 
TragicMonkey said:
You asked the question 'what does that mean?' in response to someone answering 'what did she gain?' with 'a subjective sense of personal identity'. The proposal, which I agree with, is that Warren simply felt a little special to have a (precarious) claim to exotic ancestry. A thoroughly human peculiarity shared by millions.
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Thank you for answering with an explanation of what "subjective sense of personal identity" means. It comes across as a group of buzzwords, which when spouted off together like that doesn't actually mean anything.

As for whether or not Warren or millions of others feel special by answering a statistical question that will not be (or rather is not supposed to be) ever disclosed to anyone else? I rather doubt that. It seems the opposite of special when done in an anonymous manner for statistical purposes only.
 
Belz... said:
How can you identify yourself to someone if no one can ever see it?
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I fail to see how that has anything to do with SELF identification.

If I'm in private and I write (in sincerity) "I'm a surly clown", and nobody sees it, and I toss the paper in the trash, I have self identified. Sharing my self identification has no bearing on the price of bread.
 
wareyin said:
Thank you for answering with an explanation of what "subjective sense of personal identity" means. It comes across as a group of buzzwords, which when spouted off together like that doesn't actually mean anything.

As for whether or not Warren or millions of others feel special by answering a statistical question that will not be (or rather is not supposed to be) ever disclosed to anyone else? I rather doubt that. It seems the opposite of special when done in an anonymous manner for statistical purposes only.
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It does confirm however, that Warren (just as I did) felt that her Native American heritage was an important part of her ethnic makeup. The dominant culture can seem invisible to those raised in it, which makes the more exotic parts (Irish and Italian and NA for me) stand out more strongly.
 
Belz... said:
Nor I but that wasn't the question you were directly responding to.
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Oh, sorry about that. I revise my answer thusly: You can't, obviously.

Add: OK, I'm back at a computer where I can type away. Inane questions that have one, obvious answer are rather obnoxious -- I prefer not to be addressed like I'm a trained monkey. If you have a point, make it. Said point doesn't depend on an inane question that didn't need to be asked/answered.

(That said, I did misread you initially.)
 
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Silly Green Monkey said:
It does confirm however, that Warren (just as I did) felt that her Native American heritage was an important part of her ethnic makeup. The dominant culture can seem invisible to those raised in it, which makes the more exotic parts (Irish and Italian and NA for me) stand out more strongly.
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Agreed. I know that when I first started exploring my family history, I identified more strongly with certain ethnic groups that I was able to trace. And I've seen it in others, for instance during a trip to Ireland virtually every American I was with either bragged about Irish ancestry, or was struggling to find some link. From the look on the locals' faces, that attitude is so common as to be tiresome. Yet oddly enough, some here would have us believe that they've never heard of it, nor can they conceive of it.
 
d4m10n said:
You have inadvertently picked one of the least convincing analogies possible, given your current interlocutor. I happen to hold an admin role in a large private atheist group. We periodically have giant blow-ups about whether and when to include trigger warnings on our posts. The most recent of these was just last July, resulting in a few hundred comments and not a few rage-quits. (Feel free to PM me if you're an atheist and you'd like to see all the intranecine drama for yourself.)
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No, I've seen more than enough of that already. And the thing is almost nobody who works the phones, or goes door to door, is going to be on that group.

Or here, for that matter. (and despite doing some mentoring work in the past, I don't consider myself to be any sort of activist or political volunteer, so yes, I'm including myself.) Groups like these are a gross distortion of how the overwhelming majority of atheists act in real life, never mind any actual voters or campaign volunteers. As much as online people spent years shrieking about Atheism+, the truth is that nobody cared outside of the specialty forums and youtubers looking for ad revenue.

Same thing on college campuses. Professors worried about "triggers" are concerned about detailed descriptions of rape being used as a weapon of war, graphic descriptions of battles, and the like. Yes, you'll be able to find a few videos of students acting a fool among the roughly 20 million students attending colleges and universities in the US. And what of it? I think you'll agree that the students who are actual veterans, or who had been sexually assaulted, likely swamp even those videos.
 
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