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Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

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Marcus said:
I agree it's rather weak, but let me put it this way: If you were filling out a form, and it asked for your race, would you check "Caucasian", or "Native American" , because you had heard that your great great grandfather had a bit of the blood?



Let me be clear, I will vote for her if she is running against Trump, I just don't think we should discount this as possible ammunition to be used against her.
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The point is it's just not very good ammunition. If this is the only single shell they have to fire at her, and it's not a very heavy one, then Warren's defenses are extremely safe.

Unlike Biden, whose blood tried to flee his body through his eyeball out of shame when he tried to weasel out of admitting he's a running dog for the oil industry.
 
She has narrowed the lead, Biden is leading Warren by just 4 points now.
 
Trump's use of "Pocahontas" against Warren will only serve him with his base who will vote for him no matter what. However, imo, his use of the slur will not go over well with a lot of independents and even moderate conservatives who are questioning voting for Trump again having become disillusioned with his childish antics,etc.
 
TragicMonkey said:
The point is it's just not very good ammunition.
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I disagree. I think it has already proven effective, because it has goaded her into responding badly. And I think she remains vulnerable to it because it’s a tangible example of what’s wrong with identity politics. But Warren can not afford to distance herself from identity politics. Her base demands adherence to it.
 
TragicMonkey said:
The point is it's just not very good ammunition. If this is the only single shell they have to fire at her, and it's not a very heavy one, then Warren's defenses are extremely safe.

Unlike Biden, whose blood tried to flee his body through his eyeball out of shame when he tried to weasel out of admitting he's a running dog for the oil industry.
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I think part of what makes it a particularly bad attack is that it's a criticism of something (claiming Native ancestry) that's incredibly common among white Americans. Especially in the south, where it even became a stand-in for southern pride . I've even met a few Trump supporters that have told me with pride about their Native heritage (to be clear, none of these people were among those I brought up in my earlier post; here I'm talking about individuals I've known who told me stories much like Warren's and had no existing connection with any tribe), including two that had no idea what supposed tribe they were supposed to belong to. More publicly, the MAGAbomber lied about being Seminole.

If "Pocahontas" becomes a major attack, many Americans are going to have to work through a lot of cognitive dissonance to defend Trump attacking Warren for something they do, too. I have no doubt some Trump supports will be okay with it no matter what, but it still seems like bad strategy to me. Especially considering what a weak criticism of Warren it actually is, and how alienating it is to voters who aren't comfortable with explicit racism.
 
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Is it racist though? The whole point of the attack is to criticize Warren for claiming to be NA when she is not. It implies that being NA is a good thing.


The Cherokee Nation, in their response to Warrens apology, seemed to imply that just using the word "Pocahontas " was racist. I'm not sure they understand the situation though.
 
Marcus said:
Is it racist though? The whole point of the attack is to criticize Warren for claiming to be NA when she is not. It implies that being NA is a good thing.


The Cherokee Nation, in their response to Warrens apology, seemed to imply that just using the word "Pocahontas " was racist. I'm not sure they understand the situation though.
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Better than you do, I think.
 
ArchSas said:
I think part of what makes it a particularly bad attack is that it's a criticism of something (claiming Native ancestry) that's incredibly common among white Americans. Especially in the south, where it even became a stand-in for southern pride . I've even met a few Trump supporters that have told me with pride about their Native heritage (to be clear, none of these people were among those I brought up in my earlier post; here I'm talking about individuals I've known who told me stories much like Warren's and had no existing connection with any tribe), including two that had no idea what supposed tribe they were supposed to belong to. More publicly, the MAGAbomber lied about being Seminole.

If "Pocahontas" becomes a major attack, many Americans are going to have to work through a lot of cognitive dissonance to defend Trump attacking Warren for something they do, too. I have no doubt some Trump supports will be okay with it no matter what, but it still seems like bad strategy to me. Especially considering what a weak criticism of Warren it actually is, and how alienating it is to voters who aren't comfortable with explicit racism.
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Well said.
 
ArchSas said:
I think part of what makes it a particularly bad attack is that it's a criticism of something (claiming Native ancestry) that's incredibly common among white Americans. Especially in the south, where it even became a stand-in for southern pride . I've even met a few Trump supporters that have told me with pride about their Native heritage (to be clear, none of these people were among those I brought up in my earlier post; here I'm talking about individuals I've known who told me stories much like Warren's and had no existing connection with any tribe), including two that had no idea what supposed tribe they were supposed to belong to. More publicly, the MAGAbomber lied about being Seminole.
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Yup. My maternal grandfather was one of the millions of Southerners who claimed "an Indian princess" as an unspecified ancestor. (Which is complete nonsense, the closest his ancestors came to Indians was to massacre them in the Yemassee War.) That side of the family is from South Carolina. My father's side of the family is from Oklahoma, and when talking genealogy my grandmother would get mad as hell when anyone suggested any of her ancestors weren't entirely lily white. So the side that most assuredly isn't Indian claimed it, and the side that quite possibly could have been denied it up and down. People are very odd.
 
Marcus said:
Is it racist though? The whole point of the attack is to criticize Warren for claiming to be NA when she is not. It implies that being NA is a good thing.


The Cherokee Nation, in their response to Warrens apology, seemed to imply that just using the word "Pocahontas " was racist. I'm not sure they understand the situation though.
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Oh, I think they understand it perfectly. While they may disapprove of Warren having claimed to 'be' Cherokee (she's never claimed to belong to the Cherokee Nation/tribe), they most heartily disapprove of Trump using "Pocahontas" as a slur. Then there's his whole Native American "casino/they don't look Indian" debacle.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Yup. My maternal grandfather was one of the millions of Southerners who claimed "an Indian princess" as an unspecified ancestor. (Which is complete nonsense, the closest his ancestors came to Indians was to massacre them in the Yemassee War.) That side of the family is from South Carolina. My father's side of the family is from Oklahoma, and when talking genealogy my grandmother would get mad as hell when anyone suggested any of her ancestors weren't entirely lily white. So the side that most assuredly isn't Indian claimed it, and the side that quite possibly could have been denied it up and down. People are very odd.
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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.
 
Marcus said:
If you were filling out a form, and it asked for your race, would you check "Caucasian", or "Native American" , because you had heard that your great great grandfather had a bit of the blood?
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I suppose that depends upon whether I had been raised to believe European-American is the default "race" and any deviation therefrom should be considered significant. Surely such a scenario isn't implausible?
 
ArchSas said:
If "Pocahontas" becomes a major attack, many Americans are going to have to work through a lot of cognitive dissonance to defend Trump attacking Warren for something they do, too.
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But they don't do what Warren did. Most Americans who believe they have trace amounts of native American ancestry don't identify as native American when applying for jobs.

The cognitive dissonance is with those who simultaneously believe that Warren didn't benefit from identifying as native American and that people should benefit from identifying as such.
 
d4m10n said:
I suppose that depends upon whether I had been raised to believe European-American is the default "race" and any deviation therefrom should be considered significant. Surely such a scenario isn't implausible?
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The funny think is that this is the position that Warren and her supporters are implicitly backing.
 
Ziggurat said:
But they don't do what Warren did. Most Americans who believe they have trace amounts of native American ancestry don't identify as native American when applying for jobs.
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Neither did Warren, as people have pointed out here previously.
 
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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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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