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Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

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Stacyhs said:
My situation is that I never claimed any Native American ancestry until I started doing genealogy. Lo and behold, I do have a 5X great grandmother (like Warren) who was Cherokee and I have the paper work trail that shows it, including birth certificates, censuses, and newspaper clippings of her death. She also ended up in Oklahoma on a reservation where she died.
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BobTheCoward said:
Hold up
The 5x grandmother, if my understanding of the generic test, is part of a range from 5x to 9x. It is not accurate to treat the 5x as likely while ignoring the 9x scenario.

Further, I'm going to guess that you are younger than 70 and your parents were not in their mid thirties when you were born. Her parents were born in 1911 and 1912. Then we are talking about more complicated scenarios of when her European ancestors had a relationship with her indigenous ancestors in relation to the trail of tears.
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Warren has always said her family lore said her 5X great grandmother was Cherokee which has been affirmed by her cousins. That makes the 5X more likely than the 9X.

What has my age (which is much closer to 70 than I'd like) or my parents' age when I was born have to do with anything? As I said, I have the (several) censuses and some birth certificates plus newspaper reports that positively trace back to my 5X great grandmother. In those, she is listed as Indian. I didn't mention it, but I also have references to this gr. grandmother by name in a local history book of the county discussing who she was and who her father, a Cherokee, was.
 
Ziggurat said:
Then your previous response was incoherent. Let's trace this back:


d4m10n is basically referring to the one drop rule here. He's being sarcastic about implausibility, since that was in fact a common viewpoint.
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That is merely your interpretation, however. I interpreted "default" to mean "more common" and "significant" to mean "out of the ordinary (less common)".

In other words, Warren was doing exactly that: claiming to be Native American based on a tiny fraction of her ethnic heritage.
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Again, your interpretation. Mine: Warren felt some form of sentimental attachment to the family story that she had Native American blood. That attachment (and it's less common-ness) led her to declare her race that way.

The issue is not simply whether or not "majority" constitutes a rational "default". The more important question is whether "any deviation therefrom should be considered significant". Without that part, d4m10n's post and my response holds little significance to the thread. And if you don't agree that "any deviation therefrom should be considered significant", then it's not the correct position. But again, it's the position that Warren herself chose to adopt.
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It's not a matter of whether I agree that "any deviation therefrom should be considered significant". It's simply a matter of how I interpreted it. Period.
 
Cabbage said:
That is merely your interpretation, however. I interpreted "default" to mean "more common" and "significant" to mean "out of the ordinary (less common)".
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Again: the key part is not the default, it's the significance of deviation. If you don't recognize that, then you don't understand anything he or I are saying, and your contributions are irrelevant.
 
JoeMorgue said:
You're arguing in circles. That was 3 paragraphs of textbook "No True Scotsman" followed with a non-sequitor.
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Nope, nope, and nope.

Add 'Scotsman' to the list of identities you could substitute in though if 'Cherokee' or 'Jews' are both too charged for you to address.

Either you need "Ancestry X" to be part of "Culture X" or you don't. It can't be "You need Ancestry X to be part of Culture X only when I feel like it."

If "Cultural X" and "Ancestry X" aren't linked why link them?
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Historically different groups have placed different values on different elements of various identities. Even the same groups have changed that over time. Even the same groups have held multiple different ideas under the same general label.

Acknowledging this reality (and because I know you're just glossing over the arguments here and will latch onto the word 'reality' incorrectly, the reality is that people have used the same labels in different ways over time/location/group), is not circular, it is not 'SJW' craziness, it's just understanding how language and ideas can be 'messy'.

Some times/groups DID link culture and ancestry. Some people still do. That in absolutely no way means that they are REQUIRED to be linked, nor should they hold the same value to every person and group. For some, what they mean when they say, 'a person is x', genetics is only one element of it. For others it is the entirety of it. For others, it isn't even a factor at all. It can even change with context. Communication isn't always that exact. This should not in any way be new information.

I'm sure the Cherokee will take your criticism very seriously.

So, am I an Italian?
 
tyr_13 said:
So, am I an Italian?
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I don't know and don't care. That's a "Now many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?" question. It's meaningless.

"Cultures" aren't things to me. It's not a valid clustering of people.
 
That doesn't answer the question of identity being entirely generated by ancestry, which was the claim you made. My ancestors ****** and that's why I have the ancestry I do, but I decide my identity by focusing on what interests me.
 
Ziggurat said:
Again: the key part is not the default, it's the significance of deviation. If you don't recognize that, then you don't understand anything he or I are saying, and your contributions are irrelevant.
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I told you how I interpreted it: Significance of Deviation simply means a difference from normal that is of note for whatever reason. Warren herself considered it a significant deviation simply because 1) She had always been told she had NA blood, and 2) She was attached to that personally because, for one thing, NA ancestry is often romanticized in American culture to be something to be proud of. Therefore, she wanted to call it her own.

Having different interpretations does not mean either interpretation is wrong. Even if I DID misunderstand, my misunderstanding implies I did not say what you accuse me of saying according to YOUR interpretation. QED.
 
Stacyhs said:
Warren has always said her family lore said her 5X great grandmother was Cherokee which has been affirmed by her cousins. That makes the 5X more likely than the 9X.

What has my age (which is much closer to 70 than I'd like) or my parents' age when I was born have to do with anything? As I said, I have the (several) censuses and some birth certificates plus newspaper reports that positively trace back to my 5X great grandmother. In those, she is listed as Indian. I didn't mention it, but I also have references to this gr. grandmother by name in a local history book of the county discussing who she was and who her father, a Cherokee, was.
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At her and her parent's age, 5 generations earlier adds some complicating variables around the trail of tears that would not be present if the relationship occurred in Oklahoma..

If we do 20 years for each generation, 5 generations back from 1911, we end up in 1811 as the birth date of the indigenous ancestors. Then the mixed ancestor would be around 1831. That ancestor would have then migrated to Oklahoma, and then formed purely European relations from there. We are dealing with a ton of questions about life for the Cherokee in the early 1800s.
 
Belz... said:
First, that is not the claim you made and that I was responding to.

Second, I don't tend to notice things that are not true.
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One wonders who you think the voters who support affirmative action are.
 
Ziggurat said:
And under that interpretation, the entire exchange is pointless and irrelevant.
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You were the one initially claiming it was funny. Sure, given your interpretation. I'm pointing out there's another natural interpretation where's it's simple matter of fact, not funny at all.

You're just obsessively desperate to find a reason to point the finger at Dems, as usual. I merely wished to point this out to you, and I find that motivation of yours to be quite relevant to every discussion I have ever had with you.
 
BobTheCoward said:
At her and her parent's age, 5 generations earlier adds some complicating variables around the trail of tears that would not be present if the relationship occurred in Oklahoma..

If we do 20 years for each generation, 5 generations back from 1911, we end up in 1811 as the birth date of the indigenous ancestors. Then the mixed ancestor would be around 1831. That ancestor would have then migrated to Oklahoma, and then formed purely European relations from there. We are dealing with a ton of questions about life for the Cherokee in the early 1800s.
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As I said, I have the paperwork to prove my 5X gr. grandmother was Creek (apologies, she was Creek not Cherokee). Millie was born in 1809 in Alabama and died in 1890 in OK. So I don't see what your problem is with Warren's ancestor.
 
Stacyhs said:
As I said, I have the paperwork to prove my 5X gr. grandmother was Creek (apologies, she was Creek not Cherokee). Millie was born in 1809 in Alabama and died in 1890 in OK. So I don't see what your problem is with Warren's ancestor.
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And when did she have the next generation? And they were exclusively in 100% white relationships from then on out?

If you are substantially younger, and Elizabeth Warren's mother was much older than your parent, and the age of generations are similar, we are looking at possibly 25% or less native ancestry participating in the trail of tears.

Because we start getting into demographics around the trail of tears that we would want to know.

ETA: and I'm still finding the expert who reviewed her test saying 6-10 generations.
 
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BobTheCoward said:
And when did she have the next generation? And they were exclusively in 100% white relationships from then on out?
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Census says she had her first child in 1830, so aged 20/21. As far as we know, all her children and other descendants were involved in all white generations as all are listed as white.

BobTheCoward said:
If you are substantially younger, and Elizabeth Warren's mother was much older than your parent, we are looking and the age of generations are similar, we are looking at possibly 25% or less native ancestry participating in the trail of tears.

Because we start getting into demographics around the trail of tears that we would want to know.
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Can you please explain what the Trail of Tears has to do with Warren's claim? Did she claim her ancestor participated in it?
 
Not sure what is so confusing about this for some folks. Here's a 10-point timeline:

1. Warren's family lore included some distant Native American ancestry in her ostensibly white family. This is really common among white people in Oklahoma.
2. At some point in her career, she had the option to select "Native American" as a component of her ancestry on some forms. She did.
3. She never claimed to have benefited in her career from this, and the people who hired her confirm this.
4. In her MA senate campaign, she was roundly criticized by her opponent who accused her of lying about her ancestry to get ahead. Both candidate and president Trump doubled down on bigoted mocking of her.
5. Native American leaders were also pissed off at her for insinuating (or at least allowing the confusion to linger) that she was Native instead of the more accurate (and to them irrelevant) had some Native ancestry.
6. She further bungled this issue by taking the DNA test. This backfired because she showed herself to be solidly tone-deaf to the needs and concerns of Native Americans and because Trump and his cult are immune to facts. She was, however, vindicated in the claim she had been making all along, i.e., that she had some Native ancestry. The amount revealed in her DNA is even congruent with that expected given her family lore.
7. She. Was. Right. (About her ancestry, but she was wrong about what that meant.)
8. It is beyond laughable to think that Trump's criticism of her is that she didn't meet the cultural requirements of tribal membership. He was solely thinking of her genetic ancestry and he still is. On that score he was wrong; she was right.
9. Warren has finally listened to Cherokee elders and has publicly apologized for her bungling of this issue. The Cherokee have evidently accepted her apology.
10. TL/DR: She is NOT Cherokee, but she DOES have some Native American ancestry consistent with her family lore.

So which part doesn't make sense?
 
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