Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread Part 2

[Giordano]

Double irony in regard to this thread: for most of their existence DAR actively prohibited African Americans/Blacks from joining. I am not certain what percent was required to invalidate one's application. However for many years in the South "one drop" black blood" (any black ancestry) was considered enough to define one as black legally and socially. Of course Warren would be considered without question Native American if this type of standard was applied to her!

This also illustrates how slippery, complex, and often erroneous definitions of race are. The central problem of course is that "race" is a meaningless term in genetics. The classical definitions of race do not match up with the actual science. Some alleles tend to be more common in some groups than others and this can be used as an approximation of ancestry. But there is enormous variation within each group, people outside that group may nonetheless share some of the same alleles as those inside, and the boundaries are very vague. Most people are a complicated mix of different ancestries. To try to say that having 1/4 some "race-related" alleles qualifies you as that race, but 1/8 or 1/16 etc. doesn't is meaningless as well as arbitrary; it simply doesn't work like that. The genetic data cannot be interpreted that way.

 

[varwoche]

Maybe you forgot your complaint that she lied. You just said that her ancestry is a matter of fact, which means that it wasn't a lie on her part.

I've made it as clear as can be that I don't consider her ancestry sufficient to claim her race as American Indian. I've never once denied her fractional makeup or even inferred it. Pay just a whit of attention please.

 

[Cabbage]

I've made it as clear as can be that I don't consider her ancestry sufficient to claim her race as American Indian.

(.................sigh....................)


HOW MANY TIMES NEED YOU BE TOLD THAT'S IRRELEVANT AND INSUFFICIENT TO WHETHER OR NOT WARREN LIED?

I'm quite satisfied with the fact.....yes, I know it to be a FACT.....that you don't think she has sufficient ancestry to be Native American. It astounds me that you continue to remain ignorant of the fact that what you think is absolutely irrelevant to what she thinks, which is really the determining factor of whether she lied or not.

It really is that simple!

You are wrong. Just man up and admit it. It'll be OK.

 

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs
I don't see where we disagree on this.

Weren't you saying it would have been better for her not to have done the test? That was the part I disagreed with. I think it was handled poorly but ultimately successful in delegitimizing the complaints.

No. I said just the opposite. I think you misread this part:

"While, imo, that makes her claim completely credible, her detractors naturally jumped on the "10" generations detail and then on her claim of being NA on paperwork over 30 years ago. As I said, that was her mistake. If she had not done so, this whole ludicrous thing would have disappeared long ago. "

The DNA test was not a mistake; putting "Native American" down on her professional paperwork was her mistake.

I think the best thing she can do is get ahead of it with tribal endorsements. She's clearly the best option for native american interests, but she needs to get them to say so and that'll take the wind out of all the Pocahontas talk. **** yeah she's Pocahontas, so what?

I agree.

 

[Upchurch]

I've made it as clear as can be that I don't consider her ancestry sufficient to claim her race as American Indian.

So, what?

This has been pointed out multiple times now, but disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean they are lying.

 

[varwoche]

So, what?

This has been pointed out multiple times now, but disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean they are lying.

This doesn't follow in the conversation. Your opaque communication style grows tedious. I've made my position clear. You don't agree. I get it.

 

[Upchurch]

This doesn't follow in the conversation.

Of course, it does. That's what people have been telling you for pages now.

Your opaque communication style grows tedious.

Opaque? You appear to be the only one who hasn't understood what I've been saying.

 

[acbytesla]

People are stll talking about this? Who cares? I sure as hell don't.

 

[varwoche]

Opaque? You appear to be the only one who hasn't understood what I've been saying.

OK then. In this sentence...

disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean they are lying​

Who is the someone and what is the point of disagreement?

Add: Opaque isn't quite right. More like muddled.

 

[varwoche]

I was away enjoying not reading his thread and I missed this post. Pardon me!

[1] There are no members who do not meet the minimum requirement, because it is a minimum requirement for membership.

[2] Again, that is an odd way of putting it. The name is just a descriptive name. They take pride in their ancestral connection and identify with it.

[3] Not even a little bit. Even if they were named the GGGGGDAR, the situation would still be analogous. They would still be an organization that identifies and takes pride in their "fractional" ancestral connection to a particular group.

[4] That is a matter of opinion.


I'd say the parallels are obvious. As I have said many times now, both identify, in part, with an ancestor roughly the same generations removed. (I'd argue that DAR members do even more so than Warren, in my experience, but that's neither here nor there.) If you label Warren's identification with Native Americans a lie, should you not similarly label the DAR's identification with people involved in the Revolutionary War?

You were unaware of the DAR before this conversation, correct? What about the Daughters of the Confederacy, a similar but a few generations less distant from the ancestors in question? Warren's identification with a distant ancestry is neither unique or even uncommon. I suggest that you're thinking it is has more to do with your unfamiliarity with these kinds of people than it says anything about Warren.

Now I understand. And I also understand why I didn't understand. You're equating celebration of fractional identity with answering a specific question on an official form?!? Wow. We're back to apples and meatloaf here. Swear to Odin this didn't occur to me.

 

[varwoche]

People are stll talking about this? Who cares? I sure as hell don't.

Nobody really, myself included. It's a conversation about the nature of a lie and political tribalism.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

This doesn't follow in the conversation. Your opaque communication style grows tedious. I've made my position clear. You don't agree. I get it.

Your position that Warren specifically lied on a form my lifetime ago is clear yes, and with many repetitions. Any evidence supporting it, a reason for it to be a lie, you have failed to even address.

 

[smartcooky]

This doesn't follow in the conversation. Your opaque communication style grows tedious. I've made my position clear. You don't agree. I get it.

Posters here have given you reason after reason after reason, with plenty of supporting evidence as to why your position, that Warren lied, cannot be proved to be correct. Unless you know what was in her mind when she filled out that form, you can never know for sure.

But like a conspracy theorist, you hand-wave away everything that everyone says for no other reason than it doesn't match YOUR personal view. Its seems to be a hill that you are prepared to die in no matter what.

 

[Belz...]

I've made it as clear as can be that I don't consider her ancestry sufficient to claim her race as American Indian.

And we've told you over and over that this is irrelevant to the question of whether she lied.

 

[Upchurch]

OK then. In this sentence...

disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean they are lying​

Who is the someone and what is the point of disagreement?

Add: Opaque isn't quite right. More like muddled.

You disagree with Warren about what constitutes race. That doesn’t mean she was lying about hers.

 

[Upchurch]

Now I understand. And I also understand why I didn't understand. You're equating celebration of fractional identity with answering a specific question on an official form?!? Wow. We're back to apples and meatloaf here. Swear to Odin this didn't occur to me.

Again, I think you are being disingenuous. If your only defense of your position is sarcasm, you have no argument. Is “it’s common sense!” coming along soon?

ETA:
What I’m actually doing is pointing out that the underlying assumption, namely:

I don't fault her for that aspect. The problem is, even per the family story, she was fractional. Self-identifying based on a small fraction is dishonest.

is false. Lots of people do it and it is a socially acceptable practice and neither considered dishonest nor even that unusual.

Can we all agree that the DAR is not being dishonest in their self-identification with their fractional ancestry?

 

[theprestige]

You disagree with Warren about what constitutes race. That doesn’t mean she was lying about hers.

Does he disagree, though?

Does Warren claim to be Native American these days?

 

[varwoche]

Posters here have given you reason after reason after reason...

I'm highly unimpressed by certain of the arguments that some of the more active posters have put forward. Your blatantly tribal approach to things, not just in this thread, serves as a prime example.

 

[varwoche]

Does he disagree, though?

Does Warren claim to be Native American these days?

Indeed.

The only evidence we have of Warren's contemporary stance on this is her apology. Seeing as I have expressed precisely zero disagreements with Warren, here or anywhere else on the forum, funny enough it's apparently Upchurch who has a disagreement with her.

@Upchurch -- that's why your post made no sense to me. You jumped into an exchange that Belz and I were having. Because I've expressed no differences with Warren, I wasn't clear who you were referring to. Sharpen your pencil, stop knee-jerking to false conclusions, and we'll be fine.

Add: Actually, as theprestige infers, we also have the evidence that she no longer self-identifies this way.

 

[varwoche]

Your position that Warren specifically lied on a form my lifetime ago is clear yes, and with many repetitions. Any evidence supporting it, a reason for it to be a lie, you have failed to even address.

Help me out here. Are you in the camp that she wasn't truthful, but that doesn't necessarily make it a lie? Or are you in the camp that she was truthful? That's the magical thinking camp. That's where if you're passionate about something, and you click your heels three times, that makes it so.

(I would enjoy it if camp1 would hash things out with camp2 and let me be a reader for a while.)

Camp is a figure of speech by the way. Gotta be careful around here.