…you get covered with mud.
This is a well know adage and know doubt Senator Warren and her advisors understand that, but decided they had no other option but to wrestle with Donald Trump on his home turf. And it is no surprise that her DNA test has been mocked by Trump and his echo machines.
So what did Warren accomplish? Like Obama producing his birth certificate, she let the bully win. And if there is one thing we know about all bullies, when they see weakness (in their eyes) that just pounce more.
In six weeks or so, the race for the Democratic nomination for President in 2020 will start in earnest. I understand there are plenty of theories about what type of candidate Dems need to beat Trump…ranging from a “when they go low, we kick them” to a Jimmy “I will never lie to you” Carter type candidate.
I’m certainly tired of all the drama and I have to suspect that many “regular” Americans are as well. While I certainly don’t want a milquetoast candidate, I also don’t want one that takes the bait. I don’t want a candidate who wants to get in the mud and fight with the pig. I want a candidate that ignores his antics and reminds Americans how a President is supposed to act. I want a candidate that responds to Trump’s insults by reminding Americans of the real issues we face. Sure there is a Trump base that can’t be helped. But there are a significant amount of voters who are tired of all the nonsense and will be drawn to a candidate that personifies the opposite of his antics, not a candidate that acknowledges his antics and responds to his antics (like a DNA test).
For the good of our fragile democracy, I want to avoid a replay of 2016–to the extent we can with Trump in the race. That means nominating a candidate that not only contrasts the issues that Trump and the GOP advocate, but that means nominating a candidate whose personality traits also contrast Trump. Having two candidates in the general election trading insults (does anyone thing a Warren / Trump election contest will be anything BUT trading insults?) gives Trump the home pigpen advantage. That is not how we’re going to win the White House back. And winning back the White House is paramount.
If Warren worked with McConnell to pass some anti-ms13 act you guys would be ripping her to shreds. Although that’s what Hillary would have done.
Besides getting things done which she hasn’t, the alternative is to be in the resistance. And I don’t understand why black people should allow white people to maker money and gain attention off fighting white supremacy and fascism.
I don’t even understand what the other commenter is trying to say, or what it has to do with the post.
As to the ancestry test, I am stunned that they would feed this particular issue. I sure doesn’t help, and can only hurt? Why do this?
To stay relevant. To have Trump call her Pocahontas again. And to build a defense for the upcoming primaries. If her (actual minority) opponents attack her over her NA claims then they are siding with Trump.
This exemplifies why I am so opposed to Ms. Warren running for President.
There is no way for her to win this little battle, and a gazillion ways to lose. The voters of Massachusetts long since discounted these racist attacks, and the attacks only further shame the attackers here in Massachusetts. The voters in red-land who pay attention to these attacks will NEVER be swayed by anything she does — their racism, sexism, and bigotry run far too deep.
As a result, instead of talking about GOP corruption, the failed GOP tax plan, the devastating GOP attempts to destroy health care, etc., etc., etc. we are instead talking about Ms. Warren’s DNA.
I’m going to resist the temptation to comment further on the reaction of the Cherokee Nation.
Yes, anything that distracts from the GOP failures is a win for Trump.
Is there something wrong with using her actual title?
It is not Ms. Warren. It is Senator Warren.
I’m glad she did this, and I’m glad Obama released his birth certificate too. Yeah, it’s stupid and the diehards will never be satisfied, but I still prefer to have the evidence out there to point to. EW has shown how to stand up to a bully, by calling his bluff and giving as good as she gets. The difference is she insults one person who richly deserves it while Trump often insults a whole demographic.
I’ll preface my criticism of Senator Warren by reminding us that President Trump has been one of the most vile and racist presidents in recent history and has a particular mean streak when it comes to Native Americans. He uses the racist term of “Indian” rather than the proper terminology of Native American or American Indian. This is would be the equivalent of him calling the last president a Negro, which he allegedly has done as well. He was incredibly disrespectful to the surviving Navajo code talkers he met with in the White House. Confusing their tribe with the unrelated Cherokee and making jokes at Warren’s expense during what should have been a solemn ceremony. He always laces these sexist attacks with racism.
Pocahontas-a Powhatan from Virginia who was a real historical, and frankly, tragic figure should not be used as a derogatory epithet. It’s the equivalent of calling the Senator a sweetheart or princess and conjures up destructive narratives of white men “rescuing” “savage” women from their tribal patriarchs.
Getting all of that out of the way, I find this action to be disappointing. She clearly did not claim the heritage in a serious way before to score political or economic points in the past, so why do so now? In contrast to her respectful speech in the summer when she went out of her way to disavow membership in the tribal nation, she has muddied the waters with a DNA test that cannot ever confer tribal citizenship on an individual. It seems like cultural appropriation now and it is not a good look.
I respect the sovereignty of the Cherokee nation, and I would hope our federal representatives at all levels acknowledge the painful history of the Trail of Tears, the Indian Territory given has compensation and then taken away and unconstitutionally turned into the state of Oklahoma, and the long battle the tribe made to ensure its own laws and customs could be upheld and recognized in our laws. I respect their stance that she cannot be a member of the tribe and do not ascribe political motives to that stance. Until today’s action, so did she.
Let’s be very clear. She is NOT claiming tribal membership, but merely confirming that she has a Native bloodline. The former is a political status; the latter is science. I don’t think she’s trying to be more Native now than before the test, but just trying to stick it to the neo-birthers.
I’ve got to disagree with the group here. The comments I read remind me of the weeks and weeks of comments each morning when I watched “Morning Joe” during the Republican Primary and the general election. Each and every commentator told me that Trump would eventually lose, that common decency would win out.
I think Senator Warren won on this one and I think she has more tricks up her sleeve. This is what the American people want to see. If you have not seen her at a Town Hall, you don’t know what you are missing. She’s entertaining, funny, engaging with the audience and not afraid to come across as the daughter of a carpet salesman from Montgomery Ward.
Trump’s winning hand is that he is entertaining, know how to play the crowd, and picks enemies for the crowd to rally against.
Senator Warren can do the same thing, and does, but her enemies list is not blacks and Mexicans and women, it’s big banks, big corporations, big money….and that’s (in my opinion) what scares many Democrats who are pretty happy with their connections to those three.
I’ve been against her running for reasons given by many here, but after this showdown with Trump and winning, I’m leaning to wanting her to run.
We can’t win using last year’s playbook.
To rearrange one of your sentences…I think Trump wins when common decency is lost.
Yes, I’ve seen Warren in action at a TH and she is ” entertaining, funny, engaging with the audience”, but it’s her audience, her base. Sadly the very same thing can be said about Trump’s appearances before his base.
Some election cycles (often off-year election) is about base turn-out. But others are more impacted by that 10-20 percent that swing (like the people who voted for both Obama and Trump). The BEST winning strategy is to play off the fatigue many ordinary Americans have for Trump. Let’s give them a candidate that not only stands opposite him on the issues but on temperament. If she hasn’t already, Warren is quickly being positioned (by both her camp and Trump) as having the same temperament as Trump. It will drag the 2020 race into the same toilet bowl as 2016 and swing voters will once again flip a coin and hold their noise and vote for the “lesser of the two evils”.
I want a candidate that gives such a stark contrast to Trump that there will never be a “lesser of the two evils” calculation among the Obama/Trump voter. I want to give them a clear choice between a Statesperson and the moron we have in office.
The people want to be entertained. For what it’s worth, Obama knew that. He was a showman, He was new and different. If Democrats nominate a Statesperson, that’s just trying to do what the long list of Republicans tried in the primary and what Hillary tried in the general. Senator Warren is entertaining. Hillary Clinton was not. Bill Clinton was entertaining.
Warren is not in the mud. She’s not attacking him as “orange man” or mocking his ridiculous hair, or taking any of the cheap shots that he’s famous for, She is standing up to him, egging him on and making him look like the jerk that he is. No, not to the 35% of Americans who support him, only to the rest of us, and that’s enough.
Once again, you’re both right. You are absolutely correct that she’s not taking the crude cheapshots like the entire Trumpist mob.
If this exchange was happening a month from now, I wouldn’t care nearly so much. As you observe, it is entertaining — though I must say I’m weary of Trump-hate. I find myself turning off Rachel Maddow and Steven Colbert, not because I disagree with them but because I’ve heard the song so many times that I’m sick of it.
In the meantime, Saudi’s have just murdered an American journalist and we’re doing nothing. The majority party in our government has just declared that will now gut Medicare and Social Security, after quietly destroying the ACA, our environmental regulations, our consumer protection laws, and so on.
We should be getting this dangerously corrupt and incompetent mob of thugs out of power. Instead, we’re arguing about how many DNA molecules can fit on the head of a pin.
No matter who’s playbook we’re in, it’s a losing strategy.
Did you sleep through the election of ’16?? That is Clinton v Trump in a nutshell.
From Vanity Fair:
Such a good piece Pogo. I particularly liked this excerpt:
That’s an absolutely awful quote. We’ve already laid to rest the idea that she ever sought or received any type of affirmative action on the basis of her Native bloodline. The above quote comes awfully close to just using more words to deliver the same line Scott Brown tried in 2012 – “as you can see, she’s not”.
Oh for crying out loud Warren is not trying to out-Trump Trump! I was at a DTC meeting tonight and could not believe the negativity I was hearing about this. THAT is how Democrats lose – by engaging the proverbial circular firing squad every time one of our own people handles a situation a bit differently than we would have.
Look, I think we all wish Kerry had said “I served with distinction in Vietnam while you crushed Brewskis on a base stateside thanks to daddy” during a debate with Georgie boy in 2004, but he did not. This is different.. I see this as Trump saying “you’re a fake Indian” and Warren saying “Nuh huh, I’m a real Indian” while the actual Native American tribes are saying “please stop debasing our tribal nationhood and citizenship with this petty political fight”. I think we should listen to their voices instead of belittling them like white people always do.
Every major tribal civil rights organization has come out against Warren. This is because she did zero advance work clearing this move with them and she has caused major offense to a community that is constantly marginalized by both parties and has been marginalized and attacked by the federal government for centuries. Is Trump worse? Absolutely. Let us be clear. His entire attack is a racist attack. He is attacking her for her native ancestry and arguing that her non-whiteness makes her ineligible for the presidency. This is the exact argument he made against Obama through the birther feud. Trump’s attacks are the 21st century equivalent of the one drop rule. The way to fight them is to attack the President for being racist rather than playing by his racist rules to prove you adhere to them.
The major distinction is that Obama could not pass for white in American society while Elizabeth Warren and her family clearly has. The only example of discrimination faced by a family member goes back two generations to the start of the century. She has every right to do what she did in July and say her ancestry is minor and the real issue is how racist Trump is against actual Native Americans. That was a presidential speech.
Now she is arguing she is an actual Native American, which is a weird thing to do and the opposite of what she has been saying since 2012.. Warren is engaging in a weird form of denial regarding her whiteness that I find very troubling. I hope she meets with tribal leaders and is crystal clear, as she was in July, that her ancestry is minor and insignificant but something to be proud of unlike the racist President.
She seems to be violating the promise she made at that speech
I do not see the slick video or DNA test which is highly controversial within the native community as keeping faith with that promise. Nor using the Native American Indigenous Women’s Research Center as a prop with the petty bet she made with Trump. It reeks of tokenism. So, not the way I would launch a presidential campaign. She has my support as the nominee, she will not earn my primary vote.
In my view, this entire exchange here misses at least three stinking dead elephant carcasses in the room.
1. Arguing about whether anybody is 1/10 or 1/100 or 1/1000 ANYTHING is fundamentally racist. It EXACTLY (no Godwin’s law invocation here, please) echoes what Nazi Germany did to Jews and what the apartheid regime in South Africa did to blacks. The discussion itself is racist. I expect such shameful hate from the GOP. I don’t expect it from Ms. Warren and I don’t expect it from tribal leaders. A pox on ALL their houses.
2. This racist, meaningless, and absurd argument sucks away air time from crucially important issues in the crucial final weeks of a crucial mid-term election. Ms. Warren has done enormous damage to America and our cause by making this egregious unforced error.
3. If this is indeed the launch of a presidential campaign, then it is an even worse blunder. The timing, in particular, reeks of self-serving arrogance. I see absolutely NOTHING in any of this that needed to happen now rather than in the first weeks of December. Ms. Warren has done great damage to her own agenda, an agenda that ought to have been front-and-center in this campaign.
Genetic testing is literally in its infancy. My wife is a human geneticist. She and I have been having dinner-table conversations about such matters for twenty years. Test results like this are literally impossible for lay people to understand. They are often meaningless. There are a handful of perfectly valid reasons to use genetic testing to identify heritage — there are specific disorders that can be carried and unexpressed in individuals, and certain ethnic groups are more likely to be carriers of those disorders (Tay-Sachs, Cystic fibrosis, and sickle-cell anemia come to mind). That said, such testing is for appropriate for specific individuals in order to address specific medical questions. It is not something to be done for entertainment value — and certainly not something to be done for perceived political gain.
This entire exchange illustrates why my wife and I feel that recreational DNA testing is such a stupendously bad idea.
Ms. Warren has made an enormous blunder here. I am frankly revisiting my assumption that I’ll vote to re-elect her on November 6. The next two years are absolutely crucial for every American, and I do not want my senior senator to be distracted by a presidential campaign (especially a campaign kicked off with an unforced blunder like this).
I encourage Ms. Warren to do the following:
1. Publicly announce — NOW — that she is not running for President in 2020.
2. Refocus her activity on getting re-elected on November 6
3. Put her and our progressive agenda back at the top of her priority list.
The point about the reaction of Native American tribes is key. Surely they are the ones who, in some sense, get to say who is in and who is out? I would, though, offer some caveats and observations:
1. This one has been discussed elsewhere on this thread. Warren was trying to defuse Trump’s claim that she had lied about her ancestry. Maybe she should have risen above the fray, but it’s hard to see how to rebut Trump’s false claim without doing something like what she did.
2. The issue of gatekeeping is not just a Native American issue. Something similar happened earlier this year in Brooklyn, when a Democratic Socialist candidate for the New York Senate, Julia Salazar, ran as a pro-BDS Sephardic Jew of Latin American ancestry, except that it turned out the Jewish part wasn’t true. A debate ensued about who gets to decide whether such claims are true or false, and there were strong political overtones—those on the relative right (this is Brooklyn) accusing Salazar of illegitimate cultural appropriation and those on the relative left accusing the accusers of seeking to police Jewish status in an illegitimate way. The Rachel Dolezal case provides another example, though different in its detail and context.
3. Having Native American ancestry may not be sufficient to make one a Native American (because the quantity of the ancestry required requires some definition), but as far as I can tell it is necessary. The situation is a little bit more complicated than with the Jewish example, because of the possibility of conversion in Judaism and because it’s not just the quantity of Jewish ancestry but the quality (maternal descent, depending on how you roll). But still, it’s probably wrong to put all of the power to decide in the hands of the group vis-a-vis the claimant to group membership, or to put all of the power to decide in the claimant to group membership vis-a-vis the group. Think back to the stories about tribal disenrollment in the last few years. At least some of the disenrolled members would seem to have claims that they were treated unjustly, no?
4. It’s foolish to say that ancestry has nothing to do with membership in ethnic or national groups. I don’t think anyone is saying that, but point (1) in SomervilleTom’s comment, below, seems to me to edge in that direction. Of course what the Nazis did was racist. But when, for example, the Cherokee Nation defines Cherokee status by descent, presumably that’s not racist, right?
@”… presumably that’s not racist, right?: I have problems with the entire concept.
To me, the very notion of objective measurements to evaluate membership in a tribe (I mean “tribe” in its political sense) is fundamentally racist. I don’t care whether we’re talking about “Cherokee Nation”, “Israel”, or South Africa.
Try turning the argument around.
Suppose I posited a new political organization, called “White Americans for Progress”. Suppose I stipulated a criteria that each application must submit a DNA test showing no more than 0.01% (the threshold is arbitrary) of non-white content.
Is this group racist? I argue yes, on the face of it.
Now relax the DNA requirement, so that the new organization demands proof that ancestors were white, for at least four (again, arbitrary) generations.
Does this make the group not racist?
No, absolutely not. The group is racist by construction. I have a similar view towards the various Native American organizations. I know this is a difficult topic, and I don’t want to go too far afield. Let me just say that I seek non-racist solutions.
Membership in ethic or national groups is fine with me so long as it is viewed as a social activity — I’m fine with “Masons”, “Rotary Club”, and “Irish-American Club”. I’m MUCH more uncomfortable when it is tied to government and politics.
I’m fine with Elizabeth Warren saying that she is of Cherokee heritage (she has explicitly never claimed to even want to be part of any formal tribe). I have an enormous difficulty with supporting that claim with DNA evidence in the midst of an unrelated campaign season.
I have a real aversion to identity politics as it is now being practiced. I despise the notion that I should vote for or against a given candidate because of that candidate’s religious affiliation, age, race, color, creed, national origin, gender identification, or any other “tribal” identity.
Well, your view is respectable, though I think the inability to see the difference between your hypothetical and a true nation or ethnicity that formed through history, shared language and culture, etc. leads to wrong conclusions.
What “wrong conclusions”?
What’s wrong here is the outpouring of attacks against Ms. Warren for defending herself (and all Native Americans) while keeping silent about the racist tomahawk chops and war whoops from Mr. Trump and the right-wing thugs.
I’m not sure what “true nation or ethnicity” is supposed to mean — it sounds to me as though last sentence assumes the outcome it is attempt assert. Is there something false about an organization comprised of whites only?
This entire line of reasoning is fundamentally racist.
Well, for example, I don’t see how someone with your view can make sense of the right of self-determination of peoples in the UN Charter. I mean, if the Catalans are just like the Rotary Club of Northeastern Spain, then it’s hard to see why they have a claim to their own nation-state. Also, your view has implications not just for nationality but for citizenship, since in many states including our own citizenship turns on descent.
But on a more practical level, the view that there is no difference between a bunch of white guys making a “whites-only” club and, say, Native Americans or Native Hawaiians seeking a measure of self governance seems so blind to history and so naive about people’s motivations (do you really think that your group of white guys have a praiseworthy motivation?) that I don’t believe you really mean your example too seriously.
Let me take your points in random order.
A rule that says “A child of a citizen is a citizen” is fine with me. A rule that says “any person born in the country is a citizen” is also fine. A rule for citizenship that says “A prospective citizen must have least x% of fill-in-the-blank (DNA, blood, etc) is not.
I have issues with any rule that sets a criteria based on things completely out of the control of the applicant. Blood line, DNA, eye color, weight, or identity of some great-great-grandparent. I don’t know where the Catalans fit in that spectrum.
I have, of course, chosen a hyperbolic example for clarity. There is a profound difference between a group of Native Americans and a group of Native Hawaiians regarding “a measure of self-governance” — surely the existence of the state of Hawaii meets the “measure of self-governance” threshold.
I would be more receptive to carving out some region and declaring it to be “the state of Cherokee” or whatever. I’m well aware of the horrific things we’ve done to our indigenous peoples. We don’t solve that problem by perpetuating racism for or against them.
There were praiseworthy motivations for creating Boy Scouts of America, and that organization nevertheless dropped its gender requirement. I think that’s a good thing.
I think it’s worth mentioning that the residents of Puerto Rico and Washington DC have a strong claim in favor of their statehood. I would absolutely oppose any proposal to tie such a move to any sort of DNA testing. The residents of both of those territories have also been abused by America for a very long time. We still don’t even admit the death toll in PR from Maria, for crying out loud.
So while Native Americans have legitimate complaints, so does a relatively long list of other groups.
The idea that we’re arguing about THIS during the final weeks before this election is preposterous.
My bottom line is actually consistent with what I think I’m hearing from the Native American opposition to Ms. Warren’s move — I think DNA should have nothing at all to do with membership in a tribe.
She’s said that, they’ve said that, and that’s the correct answer. It is because all parties are in violent agreement that this whole thing is so stupid.
Perhaps I am missing something, but these are contradictory thoughts, since the first thought is the equivalent to a rule requiring at least 50% of the right “blood.” Indeed, the rule of law involved is called the jus sanguinis.
It’s interesting. Again, I see a contradiction or at least a tension. If you look to the Cherokee nation, for example, you see that they say: “There is no minimum blood quantum required for citizenship.” On the other hand, they say: “Tribal citizenship requires that you have at least one direct ancestor listed on the Dawes Final Rolls.” There’s just no getting around the fact that lots of communities and nations are defined principally by descent.
The view that all that stuff is basically bad has a very long pedigree, and in fact, there are even more radical versions of it, e.g., Plato’s criticism of the natural family. If ties of blood shouldn’t play a role in how we define larger communities, why should they play a role in how we define smaller communities?
I agree with you that it’s absurd that the Sen. Warren story is getting any attention in the press. I’m not that interested in the story, for many of the reasons you give. But I am interested in your views on nations and ethnic groups.
@ my views on nations and groups:
Let’s take that to another thread. It’s too complex to address here, and I think it’s veering off-topic.
BTW, regarding “A child of a citizen is a citizen” … Germany and Austria work this way. It is straightforward to gain citizenship through naturalization, and this is why there is no relationship to blood percentage.
It should be noted that both Germany and Austria are exquisitely sensitive to tying bloodlines into citizenship, for obvious reasons.
… except it looks to me like there is no way to become a naturalized Cherokee tribal member. In that sense, the Cherokee system is more radical than others. I believe the Samaritans similarly do not allow conversion in.
So you agree that the Cherokee system is racist, in a way that the German and Austrian citizenship rules are not.
That was my point.
No, I’m not criticizing it, I’m just describing it.
@ tedf:
Here’s where you started: “I think the inability to see the difference between your hypothetical and a true nation or ethnicity … leads to wrong conclusions.”
Then came this:”Perhaps I am missing something, but these are contradictory thoughts, since the first thought is the equivalent to a rule requiring at least 50% of the right ‘blood.’ ”
Then this: ” it looks to me like there is no way to become a naturalized Cherokee tribal member. In that sense, the Cherokee system is more radical than others.”
And then this: “No, I’m not criticizing it, I’m just describing it.”
I started with ” Arguing about whether anybody is 1/10 or 1/100 or 1/1000 ANYTHING is fundamentally racist.”
Whether it’s a criticism or not, my point is that you started by characterizing this premise as a “wrong conclusion”.
When I showed how major nations determine membership without a racist component, then you shift to “I’m just describing it.”
Finally, just to reiterate, the people speaking for the Cherokee tribe(s) are clear that they too reject the premise that membership is in any way related to DNA. Ms. Warren explicitly said multiple times that does not claim to be a member of any tribe.
Hmm, I think we are now talking past each other. The “wrong conclusions” are the kind of conclusions I mentioned, e.g., difficulty in conceptualizing national rights of self-determination, a naive blindness to “what’s really going on” when a bunch of white guys want to make a “whites-only club,” etc.
Tom I agree with you wholeheartedly about points #2 and #3. I also share your desire to avoid getting in the weeds on #1.
In my view, racism can only ever be directed by whites against non-whites. I reject the notion of ‘reverse’ racism. Racism is the systematic and personal oppression of non-whites by whites. Thus, a non-white tribe defining membership to exclude whites or mixed race people is not an act of racism, but a marginalized group creating a safe space for its members. A white group defining membership to exclude non-whites is an act of racism.
The classic example of this would be that it would be racist for a White Students Union to a) exist and b) only admit white students as a campus organization. It is not similarly racist for a Black Students Union to only admit black students and use its own criteria for doing so such an organization is needed to foster safe spaces and solidarity among a marginalized group. Affirmative action, even if it hurts whites, cannot be racist since it is meant to elevate marginalized people who were previously discarded by a white system.
Tribes are even more complicated. We are talking about sovereign nations determining their criteria for citizenship. Sovereign nations whose nationhood was only recently duly protected by the federal government. Sovereign nations that are still dependent on federal remediation and reparation for the irreplaceable destruction of their people and homeland by that same government.
So this is layered. For Trump, the attack is clearly part of his wholesale assault on non-white Americans including Native Americans. It is a racist attack. Full stop. Warren, perhaps unintentionally, is leaning into that racism by arguing that she is in fact non-white and deserving of sympathy for marginalization. This is despite the fact that she has always passed and presented herself as white throughout her career.
Trump attacks it to discredit her whiteness, but also to attack programs like affirmative action that help the truly marginalized. Its an implication she cheated the system, which makes the system itself and the remedy itself suspect in his eyes. White male victim hood is literally his only political platform at this point. I do not see how we beat false victim hood that by feigning victim hood of our own.
@ [Ms. Warren] is arguing that she is non-white: No no no, a thousand times no.
Ms. Warren is expressing solidarity with Native Americans and making a statement about her family’s origin story. That’s all.
The fact that we’re talking about “whiteness” is flagrantly racist on its face.
I grew up near Washington DC at a time when whites who made the mistake of entering certain neighborhoods could expect to be beaten, robbed, and or killed because they were white. You argue that these events (which most certainly did happen) were not racist.
It is precisely analogous to arguing that only Muslims can commit terrorist acts — by your argument, the Oklahoma City bombing was not a “terrorist” attack because it was perpetrated by white men.
I reject this entire line of reasoning.
If the groups she is expressing solidarity with are angry at her, I think their voices should be heard. I think she should reach out to them and smooth this over. She also has not, could, and should do a tremendous amount of good on behalf of Native Americans in the Senate.
100% agree with Tom that this entire argument is stupid, coarsens our politics, and distracts us from progressive politics. The full blame is squarely at the feet of Scott Brown and Donald Trump. I do not see Sen Warren doing herself any favors by engaging with them on their crude level.
I don’t know what it means to hear the voices of the groups that are angry with her. Bill Clinton was marvelously effective at saying — and meaning — “I feel your pain” in his many town hall campaign events. Is that enough? If “hearing” requires putting Native American issues front and center in Ms. Warren’s Senate agenda, is that the best use of her political capital?
When you say that Ms. Warren “has not, could, and should do a tremendous amount of good on behalf of Native Americans in the Senate”, what are you saying she should differently? Should she, for example, have been fighting for Native American issues rather than leading the charge to protect the ACA from the GOP onslaught for ALL Americans (including Native Americans)?
It is BECAUSE the full blame is squarely at the feet of Scott Brown and Donald Trump (together with their despicable supporters) that I think the anger of the Native American groups is misplaced.
I do not see how those issues could possibly be mutually exclusive. The current SCOTUS has eviscerated native voting rights in the Dakotas which could cost Heidi Heitkamp her re-election. That is a candidate that would benefit from her warchest and an issue that could benefit from her starpower. She apparently had time to film over multiple weeks in Oklahoma to highlight her Cherokee and Republican roots. She had time to stand with standing rock.
I can’t agree that a non-white can’t be racist – have you ever heard Louis Farrakhan? Racism is extreme hate or feelings of superiority on the basis of race. Just because one group is better able to turn that into policy and practice doesn’t make the other less racist. Also, you keep going back to tribal membership, which is never what this has been about for Senator Warren.
Not only have I heard of him, I used to walk by his Moorish style Hyde Park home with the peacocks roaming the grounds. Farrakhan is a virulent anti Semite and that is probably the oldest form of racism. His deplorable prejudice against white people is itself a symptom of white racism against blacks, His “racism” against whites does not exist in a vacuum and is a direct reaction to white supremacy.
The Nation of Islam was created in Detroit and Chicago at the height of northern segregation and Klan power. It spread through prisons and was aided by mass incarceration, segregation, and racial violence against blacks. Malcolm X’s father was tied alive to a train track and left to die. His entire schooling was an indoctrination in black inferiority from white teachers who recognized his intellect and encouraged him to suppress it. Hatred that comes from a place of being oppressed is distinct from hatred that comes from being an oppressor. They are equally bad, but it is unlikely black hatred against whites would exist without the system of white supremacy to begin with.
A rose is a rose. I don’t see the value of using a different name for black hatred against whites — it most certainly exists and is just as toxic as white hatred against blacks. This redefinition of words to suit a specific political agenda troubles me greatly. Racism is racism. It’s meaning is perfectly well understood, as are its toxic effects.
I also want to mention that bigotry — racism’s first cousin or even twin — against women is far more ancient than anti-Semitism and is rampant among whites, blacks, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and the rest of us. Mr. Farrakhan’s virulence against Jews is exceeded by his misogyny.
America has certainly treated its indigenous peoples as badly or worse than it has treated its blacks. Those who’ve spent time in the northwest know that racism against Native Americans (the Indians I’ve know much prefer “Indian” to “Native American”, so I’m a bit conflicted about using the term) is alive and well in that region.
This whole sorry episode began with flagrantly offensive behavior towards Native Americans from Scott Brown, Donald Trump, and their GOP supporters. Ms. Warren was explicit and clear that she never claimed or desired membership in any tribe.
While I hear the suffering of Native Americans — especially towards the crude and boorish behavior of pretty much the entire GOP — I don’t see how attacking Ms. Warren does anything but worsen their own situation.
“Just as toxic” how many whites have been lynched in our history? How many civil wars were fought over keeping whites down? This is ignorance about racism I expect from Christopher, not from you.
I’m fully aware of the history of white violence against blacks (and Native Americans). That’s not what I mean by “toxicity”.
I’m not talking about a scorecard of historical wrongs. I’m talking about how the here and now unfolds for all of us.
I’m talking about candidates being elected or defeated based on their race. I’m talking about vital programs being destroyed based on incorrect perceptions about the race of their beneficiaries.
White racism today eviscerated the Barack Obama administration. Black racism and sexism today (well, two years ago) helped ensure that Donald Trump became our next President.
The black-vs-white dynamic in our national politics is one of several factors that leave the current political system quivering in death spasms on the ground.
For God’s sake, we have a President who is again siding with violent Saudi Arabian royalty in the murder of an American journalist. We have a political system that is utterly unwilling to remove a President who is clearly unable to perform his duties.
Whether it’s black-vs-white, men-vs-women, straight-vs-LGBTQ, identity politics are destroying us.
I want our president to be the very best president we can find — not the best man, best woman, best white, or whatever the rest of the criteria is becoming.
How did racism from blacks elect Trump? If anything it was racism against non whites that helped elect him.
We’ve discussed this before.
I’m referring to the urban minority neighborhoods in WI, MI, and PA (places like Milwaukee) that turned out in record numbers for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and stayed home in 2016.
I get that some participants here have blamed that on “poor outreach” from the Hillary Clinton campaign.
My read of the available data is much simpler — the same black voters who jumped at an opportunity to put a black man in the white house had no such enthusiasm for a white woman.
Those three states were key battleground states. In 2008 and 2012, those states went for Barack Obama because the vote totals from the inner city — supporting Barack Obama — overwhelmed the relatively lackluster turnout from mostly white suburban and ex-urban areas. In 2016, it was just the opposite — suburban white turnout for Donald Trump was well above 2008 and 2012 levels, and urban black turnout for Hillary Clinton was well below 2008 and 2012.
Racist and bigoted suburban whites who stayed home for John McCain and Mitt Romney turned out for Donald Trump. Racist and misogynist urban blacks who turned out for Barack Obama stayed home for Hillary Clinton.
I’m moving about two thirds towards your direction on both points. There is definitely growing evidence for your second point, that the bigger bump for Trump came from suburban white collar whites who were activated on white identity issues as well as upper income tax cuts.
It’s becoming pretty obvious that economic appeals are not going to cut it with that crowd, since they are not voting against their class, and less likely that working class whites who defected over cultural issues are coming back over classs. Their cultural grievances outweigh their economic concerns. Their “class identity” is increasingly cultural in nature. I am getting closer and closer to conceding that point.
As for your first point, Hillary was far more aggressive on racial justice issues than Obama was. It would be unthinkable for any 2020 Democrat to give the kind of “let’s get past race” speech he had to give in 2008 after the Wright controversy. If you recall, I had no patience for the “vote for Stein” option in 2016 or the activists who insisted Hillary still stood for mass incarceration. I have no patience with anyone unwilling to work within the Democratic Party today.
That said, change can’t wait and we have to stop taking voters of color for granted. Solid liberals like Capuano and Crowley paid a price in blue state primaries for that and those voters are also the tipping point in purple states.
A lot of this stuff is not even Hillary’s fault, but a broader failure on the part of the party. Sanders is certainly guilty of the same ignorance and tokenism. I do think her campaign was hurt by a failure to activate black women who make up the corps of the Democratic Party in those states. Doug Jones did it under far more difficult circumstances in a far more conservative state. It’s well documented black women in Detroit were discouraged from campaigning by the Hillary campaign.
Her deficit with black men has a lot more to do with Republican legislatures suspending voting rights for former felons than latent sexism, though it no doubt played a role with they subgroup as it did overall. A friend who consults with the Senate Dems said the GOP will have no chance in Florida in 2020 if felon voting rights are restored at the ballot this year.
Beto O Rourke will likely lose despite a significant financial advantage due to two factors. The first is that the GOP still has better GOTV in Texas due to their evangelical outreach. The second is that the Dems have no comparable infrastructure to activate Latino voters. Hillary lost Texas by single digits, had she put Castro on the ticket instead of Kaine and activated his family network to move Southeastern TX Latinos she may have won the presidency. Otherwise it’s unfair to hold her campaign or Betos responsible for an outreach failure that goes back a generation.
So a very long and nuanced response from me. I hope you see I’m learning and adapting to new information. Teaching in minority majority communities, having a black niece and nephew, and my wife’s increasingly confrontational approach to calling out racism and sexism directed toward her (even implicit examples from yours truly) are all part of my own evolution. Suffice to say her reaction to Warren’s mistake as well as that of my half Native American friend are informing my stance. It is unlikely 2016 James would have been as offended by this move.
That swipe at me was completely uncalled for (history degree and teaching license, remember?)! Racism is an attitude, but I never denied that whites were the ones that have been able to make it stick in terms of policy and practice. Why so bitter about this?
Those credentials do not make you immune to the temptation to view the country through an arc of progress narrative where the Civil Rights movement solved the problem of racism and we can now lead color blind lives.
Color blindness is an end that is not yet realized in our society. I am not bitter, I just stress these points because of your credentials as both an educator and state committeeman and your otherwise decent and thoughtful approach to politics and history on this blog. I am trying to educate you on these issues and help you and other white people on this blog become more woke to this reality.
I will not concede an inch on this issue. Until American society is color blind, which data demonstrably prove it is most certainly not, progressives cannot prop up an ideal that marginalized people do not yet experience.
Society is not color blind to my wife or my niece and nephews. It immediately sees them and marks them as non white and subjects them to scrutiny I am not subjected to. That is what white privilege is. It’s the privilege of not thinking about your race on a daily basis. On having your race be the default in the American narrative.
White privilege is real. Male privilege is real. Cisgender privilege and heterosexual privilege is real. I’ve always been treated better by cops, by retail workers, and by employers and co-workers. Asian Americans have had just two blockbuster films depicting their experience in the last three decades, and both of those films were about Chinese Americans who are the most dominant and assimilated Asian American minority group. It’s pretty obvious Harvard discriminated against them systematically. My valedictorian wife perfect ACT score captain of two teams and yearbook committee did not get in, but I know legacy whites who did nothing in high school who did.
My father was Irish Catholic and grew up in a WASPy part of town with a dad who worked paycheck to paycheck to feed six kids. There’s no class privilege there. Yet my wife’s grandfather who endured torture and mistreatment as an American POW had to wait until 1994 to get the GI benefits my own grandfather automatically got in 1946. Despite the fact that he did not see a single day of combat in that war.
So racism is real and a day to day reality for people of color. Saying you are color blind is denying that reality, even if you view it as an ideal you aspire to. You also aren’t actually color blind just because you think you are. We all are guilty of implicit bias.
So I say these things as a helpful guide, hopefully not as a scold. It does feel like you ignore everything I say on this subject and continue to make generalizations that I have disproved with data and evidence. I do find that frustrating, especially since educators should adapt and update their curriculum with new scholarship. It also is personally frustrating since I would hope you would listen and learn from someone asking you to do better. I certainly hope I have done that when you educate me on misconceptions I have about how the state party works. Knowledge is always a two way street.
While I have been surprised (and outraged) about how pervasive racism still is, I don’t believe I have claimed at least since Obama’s election that we are a colorblind society. I have said that we must in all of our own dealings be colorblind. After all these years am I really still having difficulty making this distinction clear?
Maybe because you continue to say things like this:
I don’t see the slightest contradiction between the quote above indicating how I think things should be and knowing how things are.
@ jconway & tedf:
To me, this is a case study in why identity politics is a disaster for democracy. The hostility towards Ms. Warren from the Native American organizations is a symptom of our culture’s total dysfunction.
Whatever it was that Ms. Warren was trying to do, she was explicitly NOT claiming to be a member of today’s Cherokee nation. No competent official can be elected under this set of absurd constraints.
The analogous reaction to JFK’s 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” address would have been to attack him for claiming to be German.
Identity politics are inevitable. The aggressor is Republicans who have been covertly running in white identity politics since the days of Nixon’s southern strategy and Willie Horton and overtly running on them today. Ayanna Pressley eloquently put it that the people close to the pain need to be in power, and identity politics is inevitable when women of color are trying to take the reins at historically racist and patriarchal institutions of power.
Progressive politics does not and should not stop at identity, which modern conservatism most certainly does, but it should also acknowledge the reality of identity and the power imbalances it creates in order to rectify it. I’m with you and Christopher-I want that color blind society and I want race not to matter anymore. We do not reach that mountaintop without admitting that we are far from the peak and have many miles to go.
As interesting an academic discussion as this is, it also highlights all the reasons I get impatient about racial identity and sorting people by skin color. The fact that so many of us have so many contributing backgrounds is the key argument against being so conscious of it.
That society is itself conscious of it and scrutinizes non whites for their identity on a daily basis is exactly why we should be color conscious. Non whites do not want to be concious of their race, our society reminds them of their status and judges them inferior or less then on a daily basis. Until society becomes color blind it would be a disservice for whites to stop talking about or thinking about race. That is precisely a privilege we are afforded our comrades of color are not. All the more reason to stand in solidarity with them.
Not by hyping up connections to long lost ancestors of color, but by being responsible allies willing to listen. We certainly have never seen that from this Republican administration, but we should expect our side to do better and hold it accountable when it falls short Her single mistake was putting this down on a meaningless form thirty years ago. She should apologize to native groups for that mistake and move on. I thought this is what she eloquently did back in June.
Doubling down with dubious DNA tests is exactly the way to keep this controversy going and alienate her from white swing voters and minority primary voters alike.
That sounds like two wrongs trying to make a right. I say each of us commits to quitting racism and color consciousness cold turkey, and yes, those of us who are white have to make the first move since those with our skin color started it and are best equipped to end it.
Color consciousness is how we quit racism by being aware of our own biases and aware of how society treats others differently because of their race. You look at it as a switch that you can just turn on and become color blind. I like at it as a long process of self education and self reflection, one most white Americans never come close to doing.
It IS a switch, which each of us has to choose to use and urge others to do the same (and some of us really don’t have those biases, darn it! Such biases are just as stupid as if he had them on account of such things as eye or hair color).
There is absolutely nothing “dubious” about Ms. Warren’s DNA test. She made no mistake 30 years ago. If she made a mistake about releasing this test, it was a political blunder.
Ms. Warren has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to apologize to “native groups” for.
Any “white swing voter” or “minority primary voter” who chooses any Trumpist candidate (including Donald Trump himself) based on this is being completely irrational.
This is the same preposterous “logic” that led to the absurd 2016 interviews of Trump voters who oppose Ms. Clinton because of the “corrupt” Clinton foundation while ignoring the flagrantly corrupt Trump foundation.
If this controversy makes the ongoing discrimination against Native Americans a campaign topic, that’s good thing — that was one of the positive consequences of the analogous BLM protests against Mr. Sanders. If the ongoing discrimination against Native Americans is a campaign issue, then surely the disgusting whoops and tomahawk chops from the Trumpists are more revealing than anything from Ms. Warren.
Every voter and every group makes a choice on November 6. That’s how representative democracy works. That choice is among whatever is on the ballot.
The only ballot where Ms. Warren’s name appears is for the Massachusetts general election for the Senate seat. The choices are Ms. Warren and Mr. Diehl. Surely that choice is starkly clear.
Any voter or group who cares about addressing the pervasive discrimination against Native Americans and who chooses or promotes the Trumpists is just plain foolish.
Oh, and I think her best response to the crude and sophomoric attacks is a quiet shake of the head. No voter who is swayed by such attacks will ever vote for Ms. Warren. No voter who supports Ms. Warren will be driven away by such attacks (to the contrary!).
These attacks are fundamentally different from the Swift Boating of John Kerry. The Swift Boat attacks were outright lies about Mr. Kerry’s behavior. These crude attacks are racist taunts at Ms. Warren’s very identity.
The former need to be rebutted. The latter are best ignored.
I note that Mr. Obama never took the birther’s seriously.
President Obama took the birther’s seriously enough to release his birth certificate.
A key difference is that the birther attack was only ever “credible” because President Obama was a non-white American in the first place. Sen. Warren has never faced similar questions about her citizenship or place in this country due to her whiteness. At the height of the ugliest campaign in memory, nobody accused Hillary Clinton of not being a citizen.
They may have accused her of murder, treason, and corruption but her white privilege protected her from birther attacks. Sen. Warren has benefited from white privilege her entire life, it is hard to see what she gains from denying this other than a loss in her credibility with the non-white voters she needs to win a Democratic primary.
I wonder how many Massachusetts Trumpists realize that a key group feeling the brunt of their racist immigration furor is illegal Irish immigrants.
The ugliest attacks on Ms. Clinton were based on her gender, not her race. Those attacks were not limited to the right wing.
Ms. Warren is being attacked by the right wing because she is a powerful, articulate liberal woman. The “Pocahontas” meme is itself a racist lie originating in Scott Brown, who himself pandered to the worst aspects of Massachusetts voters.
Ms. Warren should have at least waited until after the 2018 election. I think she would have been better off to not take or release these tests at all.
I think the Native American community is cutting off its nose to spite its face. The effect of their action will be to strengthen the Trumpists.
I’m reminded of black and Hispanic voters who stayed home in 2016 because of their hostility to Hillary Clinton. I hope they’re enjoying urban life during the Trump administration.
Indeed. He did so in 2011, three years after his election. He accompanied that release with a statement:
The “Pocahontas” attacks on Ms. Warren are dirty, scurrilous, racist, and sexist. Her decision to release her DNA only added fuel to the shameful fire. It was a mistake.
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that certain representatives of an ethnic group should claim the right to veto someone’s releasing results of a DNA test. This is starting to sound like science denial or willful ignorance we see from Creationists or climate deniers. If I ever take an Ancestry DNA test and confirm my Scottish lineage I am not about to ask permission of Scotland’s powers that be to discuss it publicly.
For someone so involved in politics, I’m surprised you haven’t learned a basic adage: When your one the defensive explaining details (like splitting hairs about “tribal membership” or “native bloodlines”) you’re losing the race. Moving forward, every word uttered about this issue means that Warren (and the Democrats) are losing and past history indicates that a Warren presidential race will be filled with lots of losing talk.
Amen
She’s on the defensive against DEMOCRATS this time. While there will be a great contest for the 2020 nomination which I don’t want to prejudge and for which I am a long way from making a firm commitment, it would be nice if we had our own version of Reagan’s 11th commandment sometimes.
LOL, you really buy into talking points…Reagan’s “11th Commandment” came AFTER he challenged a sitting President on his own party. It is just one more Reagan Myth. I don’t want to nominate someone who feels more comfortable going to Trump’s level of rhetoric…all it does is bring us down to his levels and voters will be back in the “least to two evils” and guess what–real the evilest will win. I’m not arguing to “turn the other cheek”…I’m arguing don’t even play his game. We need to nominate someone with real leadership skills…not someone to fight the neighborhood bully.
Warren has clumsily and simultaneously alienated herself from non white voters in the primary and white swing voters in the general. This move shows she is not yet ready for the scrutiny of a presidential campaign. She should stay in the Senate and focus on the consumer finance and economic justice issues that have been her historic strength.
“Reagan’s ’11th Commandment’ came AFTER he challenged a sitting President on his own party”
That’s not my understanding of its history. It was not “Reagan’s” 11th commandment, it was in fact the creation of California Republican Party chairman Gaylord Parkinson. It came in response to liberal Republican attacks on Ronald Reagan during his 1966 California gubernatorial campaign. The incumbent that Mr. Reagan was running against was California governor Pat Brown, a Democrat.
Mr. Parkinson says that a motivation of the rule was the perceived damage done to the party by liberal Republicans who attacked Barry Goldwater. The rule was articulated a decade before Mr. Reagan’s failed 1976 primary campaign against Gerald Ford.
The rule itself didn’t say anything about not competing in primaries. It said that a Republican should not attack a fellow Republican.
Finally, SOMEBODY has to fight the neighborhood bully.
I much prefer that the fight be brought to Mr. Trump and the Trumpists by somebody other than our 2020 presidential nominee, in part because I think that extremely un-presidential means are required to stop Mr. Trump and the Trumpists.
I really like what Mr. Avenatti is doing, for example. I don’t think he’s a credible presidential candidate — and I think he is an excellent example of someone who is well equipped to take down the neighborhood bully. Not just take him down, but crush him.
Donald Trump and Trumpism need to be completely, utterly, and mercilessly crushed. I want my 16 year old grand-daughter to read about the GOP in text books and say “Grampa, what is the ‘GOP’ I keep reading about. Were they like the Whigs or Tories or something?”
I totally disagree with the notion that Warren’s mistake was fighting fire with fire. She and every Democrat should do so when they are unfairly attacked. It is totally unfair to lie about Warren for taking advantage of affirmative action or orherwise pretending to be something she is not. Her speech in June brilliantly highlighted how this attack is a lie, a racist dog whistle, and a distraction from all the ways Donald Trump is failing every American, native or not.
Her move now undoes that by using DNA to prove that she is in fact, some percentage of Native American. Contrary to what she said in June, she is now insisting she did not make a mistake filling out that form. Not only does that now put her honestly and integrity on the line, but it also concedes that the Brown/Trump attack was correct to begin with. She really does think she is meaningfully part Native American, even though no tribal authority will take her or consider her one. That’s a real problem. It’s bigger than a campaign. It’s not an act of solidarity, but an act of appropriation.
I have not done one of these, but as someone with southern Italian ancestry I likely have a similarly small percentage of African DNA that Warren has with Native American DNA. Lactose intolerance and sickle cell runs in my family, albeit only the former afflicts me. Both are genetic markers of African ancestry.
I would never write or claim that anywhere on a form, because I respect that I am not an African American in any meaningful way. No DNA test changes my white privilege. The same is true for Sen Warren. It is particularly appalling that tribal governance is being ignored by progressives who should be defending it, or that actual records of discrimination like the Dawes list outweigh any family anecdotes for objective evidence of historic harm. She is helping Trump trivialize a very sacred form of identification for one of the most historically mistreated groups in our nations history.
Can we PLEASE stick to the realm of science rather than politics when discussing DNA? My understanding is that the Harvard form asked for the facts about one’s ethnicity and she answered to the best of her knowledge and belief. Again, though, this shows why I prefer not to ask or answer the question to begin with. If we truly believe that all are created equal and that we should judge by content of character then this whole discussion needs to be relegated to interesting academic exercise but otherwise irrelevant.
You should answer white. These surveys and statistics help us create the color blind society you seek. Just this week at PD we used MCAS data highlighting the high rates of minority achievement on that test in our district by contrasting it to the comparatively lower minority grade averages and higher drop out rates for the same populations. They show our largely white staff has an implicit bias problem.
It would be difficult to recognize this if everyone refused to list their race on a form or listed their race improperly. There are a lot of other pieces of data, say police stops by race or health care access by race, or whether native Americans are represented in academia, that we should want to continue to collect. This becomes harder to do so if people refuse to self identify or self identify incorrectly.
When I take a standardized test I want my answers scored for accuracy without worrying about a physical attribute that has nothing to do with my intelligence. I assume you do no subscribe to the Bell Curve theory.
Certainly not. I subscribe to the notion that whites and blacks are treated differently by society because of their race and maybe we should study that with data so we can determine how to solve it. We do not do that by pretending race or our race does not matter.
@ no bell curve: The forms in question have nothing to do with scoring. The purpose of the form is to discern possible correlations between ancestry and test results.
This most assuredly NOT about the Bell Curve theory — it is in fact just the opposite.
When a correlation is noted, it is taken as evidence of discrimination in the services provided to those students. An interpretation consistent with the Bell Curve theory would do just the opposite — it would assume color-blindness in the system, and take the results as evidence of ancestral inferiority.
The Massachusetts MCAS data has never been interpreted that way.
OTOH, the pronounced disparities that are observed in the performance of students with black or Hispanic ancestry is correctly seen as evidence that something in the public education system is causing those students to suffer in comparison to their white peers.
“They show our largely white staff has an implicit bias problem.”
You are making a circular argument. If your staff follows your advice, they will be recorded as “white” regardless of what they actually are.
If a form includes an item for “Native American”, and a staff member is Native American, then the staff member should check that box on the form — just as Ms. Warren did. If “Native American” is intended to be treated as “white” by those who use the data from the form, then the form should not include the “Native American” option.
You seem to be confusing an agenda — no matter how marvelous — with data.
I am completely confused by what you just said. This is about how the students are recorded on the MCAS. If all the white students followed Christopher and did not indicate their race, we may not have detected this possible discrepancy. It has nothing to do with how the staff self identify, it is an assessment comparing student data on our internal school grading metrics and the statewide assessment.
@ confused: I was confused, I apologize.
I was thinking of a form the staff filled out, rather than the students, when I characterized your argument as circular.
I agree that we must gather data about ancestry in forms like the MCAS form in order to measure the degree of discrimination based on ancestry in our schools.
I apologize for misunderstanding your comment.
No, no, no, no, no. Please … just stop before you dig an even deeper hole.
Ms. Warren correctly claims to be of Native American ancestry, and she released DNA tests that prove that. There is absolutely nothing improper about that.
Sickle Cell Anemia is NOT a “genetic marker[] of African ancestry”. The genetic variants that cause Sickle Cell Anemia are found outside African groups. You may be thinking of a related but very different idea — the variants that cause Sickle Cell Anemia are over-represented in the African population in comparison to other groups.
A better analog is that you might well claim Southern Italian ancestry even while making no claim at all about Italian citizenship. Christopher makes the same correct claim about Scottish ancestry.
Ancestry is NOT ethnicity. Tribal claims are about tribal membership, and Ms. Warren has explicitly clarified that multiple times — she does NOT assert any membership interest in ANY tribe. The observation that a spokesperson for a particular interest group has made a claim does not make that claim correct.
One more time — she DOES think she is “meaningfully part Native American”, because it is true — just as you are meaningfully part Southern Italian, Christopher is meaningfully part Scottish, and I am meaningfully part German. Of COURSE no tribal authority will take her — that’s irrelevant. You could not get an Italian passport, Christopher could not get a Scottish passport, and I could not get a German passport based on any of our respective claims.
It is crystal clear that DNA is now part of our larger social and political culture. It therefore ought to be equally clear that we each (including our Native American groups and our people of color) need to understand that ancestry is different from ethnicity.
Using your logic then we can all list ourselves as African American, since every one of us has some percentage of African DNA. Race is a social construct and NOT genetic. I really hope we have moved past the 1920s in this regard. In no world was Elizabeth Warren ever treated like a Native American by white society. It is wrong for her to claim an identity that is not hers and wrong for Republicans to use this to discredit benefits for those that truly deserve them.
The only person in this discussion who does not seem to understand this is Sen. Warren, who confused ancestry with ethnicity on the form in question.
Sorry, my friend. Ms. Warren claimed ancestry. She did not then and does not now claim tribal membership.
Your commentary on this thread is, sadly, filled with fuzzy thinking about ancestry vs ethnicity.
My middle name is “MacLeod”, I am a registered member of the MacLeod clan. The clan castle is Dunvegan, Scotland — I’ve been there and been enjoyed the clan-only tour.
My connection to the clan is through my paternal grandmother. Her father was a Scottish Presbyterian minister in Nova Scotia. As it turns out, she was the daughter of a completely non-Scottish widow who her father met and married while she was a toddler. Her father adopted her, and that is how she acquired her “Scottish” heritage.
I am a member of Clan MacLeod. I do not have Scottish ancestry.
Ancestry and ethnicity are different.
Though in that case your ancestry is legal rather than biological. My understanding is that adoptees are recognized in every way as much the children of their adoptive parents and biological children would be.
@legal rather than biological: This misses the point.
Whatever MacLeod DNA I got did not come from my grandmother.
I am a member of the MacLeod clan, so I belong to the MacLeod (and therefore Scottish) ethnic group. I do not have Scottish DNA.
@using your logic: Sigh. If you’re unwilling to engage the facts then discussion is useless.
You apparently have not read enough genetics to understand the evidence that demonstrates that she is of Native American ancestry.
You keep insisting that Ms. Warren has claimed identity as a Native American.
She has never made that claim, and several of us have tried to show that to you. At some point your continued insistence in the face of facts to the contrary becomes a lie.
I wish you would take a few deep breaths.
I suppose at some point the fractions become negligible, but what of those like Obama who really is half and half? What of the white immigrant from South Africa who could technically and literally could be described as African-American, or the reverse of that a black-skinned person who came from the Caribbean and whose family hasn’t been in Africa in centuries? To me there are just way to many nuances and permutations for this to be meaningful and when official forms ask these questions it just gives an official seal of approval to a social construct we really ought to be weaning ourselves off of as a society.
@ fractions become negligible: Because of the nesting, I don’t know what comment you’re responding to.
Emphasis mine:
The “very sacred form of identification” that you defend explicitly requires a biological ancestor included in the “Dawes Rolls” (I think you meant “Dawes Rolls” rather than “Dawes list”).
There is no way for an “actual record[] of discrimination like the Dawes [Rolls]” to also be a “sacred form of identification”, unless you are creating new special definitions for words like “actual”, “record”, “discrimination”, and “sacred”.
This entire contorted argument reminds me of the “epicycles” needed to explain away retrograde motion given a geocentric model of the universe.
America committed genocide against our indigenous peoples. American government compounded that genocide with explicitly racist policies, including the Dawes Rolls. To the extent that our current Native American tribal organizations reflect that racism and genocide, it makes no sense at all to declare the genocidal and racist past “sacred”.
The Earth revolves around the Sun, not vice-versa.
Yes, I know Reagan challenged Ford. His hypocrisy isn’t the point this time. I still think it’s a good idea and disagree that she is stooping to his level.
I think when our candidates clumsily weigh in on a complex racial issue we should call them out for it. I say this as a 2016 Bernie supporter happy he got called out early by BLM for his tone deaf approach to their issues. I hope and expect Warren to listen and learn from this misstep.
I will also add the same thing happened to Hillary Clinton and she adopted one of the most racially progressive platforms and campaigns in modern history. Far more racially progressive than President Obama’s. It is a key reason why she lost, but also one of the things I admired most about her run. Totally repudiated her husbands record and strongly condemned Trump as a racist. So Warren has two examples from the last cycle she should follow.
The value of Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test remains to be seen. It has no material effect on her present political situation, and whatever next week’s Trump scandal is will blow it off the pages of the Boston Globe. It’s an almost perfect attack because it has almost no substance to it, which makes it harder to defend. What exactly is the charge? Nothing much. It’s just the basis of namecalling.
According to family legend, my great grandfather’s mother was allegedly Native American. I haven’t been able to disprove that claim, but I haven’t been able to prove it either. His father’s family I can trace directly back to England. His mother’s family is a dead end. I can’t find anything about her father Samuel Goucher, Perhaps ironically, my great grandfather’s grandfather was an officer in the army when they massacred Indians in Utah during the Civil War. My point: claims of Native American heritage were widespread. Warren’s claim was naive, and likely caught up the multiculturalist zeitgeist of the time.
We should be careful about considering the Cherokee as pure victims. Yes, they are victims. Yes, we owe them for our country’s historical treatment of them, but victims tend to be people too. And as people, they are also political about who belongs in their tribe, regardless of blood.
Someone with 100% Cherokee DNA could be excluded from tribal membership if they aren’t listed on the Dawes Rolls. Cherokees also held slaves [sic] whose descendants they worked to exclude from tribal membership:
Toussaint L’Ouverture was also a slaveholder, but I hold him in higher regard than Thomas Jefferson. He did not have nearly as much agency to refuse to participate in the slave trade to gain the kind of rare black prosperity needed to eventually lead a successful slave revolt and found the first free black nation in the hemisphere. Similarly, while I condemn the Cherokee nation for excluding black Cherokee and participating in the peculiar institution, we should also remember that they lost the majority of their male population during the Trail of Tears and were forced by our government to make a wasteland prosperous in a short amount of time.
Had they been allowed to stay on their ancestral lands, it is unlikely they would have had to resort to slavery to offset the labor loss. Additionally, the rush to settle the lands taken from them exacerbated southern slavery and made it far more entrenched in the future Confederacy. I am not exonerating them, only arguing that “the Cherokee owned slaves” rebuttal is also an over simplification of a complex history. They may have behaved differently toward slavery had our government followed its own laws regarding their land. It never gave them that chance.
I wouldn’t call it a rebuttal. I’d call it a humanizing factor. We should accept their victimhood without idealizing it.
Aside from her naivete and misplaced multiculturalist enthusiasm–for which she is paying politically–Warren didn’t do anything wrong as far as I’m concerned. Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of cultural appropriation attacks, particularly when they pertain to facts.
That is the definition of cultural appropriation and it is based on the fact that she chose to identify with a culture she is not meaningfully apart of and that would not claim her as a member. I got family stories about no Irish need apply and Italian families being called WOPs as well. Even my grandparents being unwelcomed in their WASPy part of Arlington when they first moved there. That does not mean I can claim their discrimination as something that has happened to me personally or affects how society treats me today. I have to own my white privilege in order to wrestle with it and subdue it. I do not doubt her grandparents or great grandparents had some native heritage and were mistreated because of it. That does not give her the right to identify with their race when she so clearly is not part of that race.
Her speech in June affirmatively put this issue to rest for me and many native communities and her DNA test was easy bait she fell for that muddies the waters. Now her defense is that she was right in the first place when she mislabeled her form. Or at least, I was wrong but I’m .05% right, which seems like the dumbest hedge to make on a fairly trivial issue.
As for the politics many here also said this would blow over after the 2012 campaign. Or argued the emails were not going to effect Hillary’s chances against Trump. I think it remains to be seen, but for people just hearing about it for the first time it is not a great first impression for a candidate. I know that friends of color are really upset about this, and this is a constituency no modern Democrat can afford to alienate.
Anybody who hasn’t heard about this controversy has been living under a rock. They seriously never heard Trump call her Pocahontas? Frankly, this is her life and her family and people of color don’t automatically get the moral high ground on this one.
Obviously they heard her called that and he did so to demean her racial ancestry. She then doubled down on that by insisting she is a race that she is not. It is the latter issue that has upset civil rights groups and people of color. Unlike you and Tom, I am not going to whitemansplain to them how they determine their tribal criteria or why people that legitimately deserve affirmative action, under assault at her institution by the federal government, are upset a white professor and now Senator is insisting she is not white.
“whitemansplain”?
Your characterization of what’s happening here is irrational.
You are starting to sound as bad as Trump and his fellow birthers. She has NOT claimed to be a member of a tribe, and she has NOT either sought or received any type of affirmative action on this basis. All she did was check a box AFTER she was hired by Harvard since the university wanted to know the backgrounds of their faculty. She just said look, this is what my DNA shows, and to be honest if you consider the history of her native Oklahoma I’d be surprised if she didn’t have Cherokee blood.
@Cherokee blood: I don’t mean to nit-pick, and yet this is the kind of colloquialism that perpetuates incorrect and racist stereotypes.
Using “blood” language like this implies a 50/50 division as far back as one wants to go — halving the contribution of a given ancestor for each subsequent generation.
That’s not how DNA ancestry works.
The DNA of a child includes a portion from each parent. That portion is not a fixed 50/50, After several generations (geneticists estimate about six), it is possible for a descendant to have ZERO DNA from a specific ancestor, even though that descendant is “1/64” by blood.
Our casual use of “blood” to define ancestry leads to unacceptably racist conclusions.
Well I certainly didn’t mean it that way and I’m not sure how, just colloquially rather than scientifically. It’s just an expression meaning descended from. For me I’ve studied a lot of royal genealogy and speak all the time of people having royal blood or being of a royal bloodline, or the “house and lineage” to use a Biblical phrase. To say that someone is descended from a certain group (i.e. having the “blood” thereof), is just an observation or statement of fact. If someone makes racist assumptions based on that, that is on them.
@ I didn’t mean it that way: Understood.
You give two good examples of how this can all be so easily misconstrued.
A tenth-generation descendant of royalty can “have royal blood” and have no genetic contribution at all from that distant royal ancestor.
The various genealogies of the New Testament claim 14-35 generations separating David from Jesus. From a genetic perspective, Jesus had essentially none of David’s DNA. Thus, whatever it was that tied the biblical Jesus to David (or Abraham) was not DNA.
The current CHEROKEE NATION Tribal Registion criteria is explicitly racist. Sorry, it just is. Among other things, it requires tracing biological parentage to an ancestor listed in the “Dawes Roll”, an explicitly racist example derived from the now-notorious “Blood Quantum” laws.
Whether “sacred” or not, the concept that underlies criteria like this is fundamentally racist.
Why do that though? Forget aside all the critical race theory I brought from BU Wheelock to BMG, maybe to the detriment of my wider argument, is she not contradicting her prior claim? The politics of this are bad. Tom is with me on why.
Her initial defense made sense to me, I heard some stories, I put it down on a meaningless form and I know I am not part of a tribe. Full stop. All eloquently settled in June.
Why she ripped the band aid off is beyond me, since it’s basically flip flopping on your conclusion Christopher. Now it reads ‘I was wrong but also actually .05% right’ is a very odd take to have. I am not sure what this did other than piss off minority groups in the primary, and black Democrats are just as angry about this as indigenous ones, while also giving more ammo to the right to appeal to white working class resentment of quotas in schools. To do so when Harvard’s own laudable affirmative action policies are under assault by Jeff Sessions Justice Dept is even more bizarre.
It’s one of many in a series of self serving moves this cycle. She’s hoarding cash, she’s not actively campaigning for Dems in close races, and she is now trying to leapfrog the start of the invisible primary with moves like this that divide our coalition when it needs to be united.
She ripped the band-aid off according to an article by Verena Dobnick at the Chicago Sun Times because
“Warren took DNA test to help rebuild ‘Trust in Government'”
Misson Accomplished
Here we go again.
I think it’s past time to remind your “friends of color” that issues like this require more than knee-jerk bumper-sticker contemplation.
Of all the several aspects of this that are disturbing, the one that is most noteworthy to me is the woefully egregious misunderstanding of Ms. Warren’s DNA results and their interpretation. Every competent human geneticist knows that ancestry is different from ethnicity. Media reporting of this issue exemplifies utter ignorance about genetics.
Ms. Warren has never made any assertion of tribal membership, and she has never sought any gain from her family history. She gave a typically clear, concise, and completely defensible answer at last Friday night’s senatorial debate: “I am an open book. I released these test results in the interest of full disclosure, just as I’ve released my tax returns for the last 10 years, in the interest of complete transparency.”
The only assertion Ms. Warren has ever made about her ancestry is that she is of Native American ancestry, and her DNA tests confirm that claim. Period. Full. Stop.
It’s all well and good for us to debate the politics of this here, that’s what BMG is for.
I completely reject the premise that people of color or anybody else should be pandered to for issues like this. Ms. Warren has proven that she has Native American ancestry. Ms. Warren has again shown that her “Pocohantas” attackers are nothing more than crude racist thugs.
There is nothing in any of that for which any person of color has a legitimate right to be upset.
You do not have the right to make that judgment on their behalf. That is entirely paternalistic. A prominent black Democrat, Bakari Sellers, found this deeply troubling. You are also conflating two issues. Her initial response to Trump was to give a great speech calling him out on his racism and admitting that her ancestry does not make her a Native American. SHE is the one NOW confusing the issue, not her critics.
I most certainly DO have a right to make that judgement. Incorrect is incorrect, it doesn’t matter who makes the observation. It is incorrect to assert that climate change is a hoax. It doesn’t matter whether the assertion is from a Democrat, a Republican, a conservative, or a liberal.
We MUST regain an awareness that there ARE objective standards of correctness.
I have every right to observe that a voter who claims to value honesty and then chooses a demonstrated liar is being foolish.
Perhaps if prominent black Democrats started worrying a little less about attacking their supporters as “paternalistic” and a little more about stopping the racist thugs that seek to kill them, we might make more progress.
I am not conflating anything. The conflation is between ancestry and ethnicity. Ms. Warren did not conflate those and I do not conflate those.
Nope. A white person cannot tell a person of color to shut up and stop being upset. That is not the way the world works anymore Tom. Nor should it be. Our job is to listen. Sen Warren eloquently stated this back in June and has sadly gone back on her word to score cheap points against Trump that are quickly turning into own goals. On that last point at least you and I are in agreement.
None of us said that anyone should “shut up and stop being upset”,
A straight hetero individual who is angry because two Lesbian women publicly display their affection for each other has no legitimate basis for his or her anger. If that person goes on camera and broadcasts a statement condemning the women, I have every right to dismiss their opinion. The color of that person’s skin has no bearing whatsoever on the matter, and neither does the person’s ethnicity.
If Ms. Warren had said “I understand the suffering of Native Americans because I am one”, then the objections would be more valid. She didn’t say that.
Here is an example of what Ms. Warren’s critics DO say (emphasis mine):
Let’s replay the part I emphasized:
“Ms. Warren emphasizes undocumented lineage over tribal citizenship criteria”
Except that Ms. Warren DID NOT DO THAT. Ms. Tallbear and you ignore the multiple times when Ms. Warren explicitly said that she understands and does NOT claim tribal membership.
I have every right to be just as critical of such distortions from Ms. Tallbear as I am from anyone else. Ms. Tallbear has erected a strawman and then knocked it down.
I absolutely reject your assertion that because of Ms. Tallbear’s documented Native American tribal membership, I and we are therefore required to accept anything she says.
The Pope is not infallable, nor is any other man nor woman.
Ms. Warren made a statement of fact about her DNA, just as she made a statement of fact 30 years ago her family heritage. She had absolutely nothing to apologize for 30 years ago and has nothing to apologize for now.
Plus with this evidence it is fair to say her lineage is no longer undocumented.
As far as I can tell YOU are the only person making this about historical victimhood. Yes, the Native population have been victimized in our history. I assume everyone here knows that. I assume Elizabeth Warren knows that. Elizabeth Warren has never claimed to have been victimized herself on account of her Native ancestry, childish insults from 45 aside. Why can’t we just accept this as a statement of fact? Listening to one demographic does not nor should not prevent us from sometimes saying, yes, you’re skin is a little thin on this one. Surely when the Christian Right claims to be persecuted you don’t think well, they played the grievance card so I have to just shut up and listen now?
Apples to oranges. Christians have never been persecuted in America so their claim is bullshit. Native American sensitivity over their tribal identity, cultural identity, and symbolism is entirely justified. Cleveland and Washington should change their teams. Sen. Warren should apologize for the offense and make amends. It is just basic human decency, the kind that the people attacking her have never exhibited.
I agree, but it still shows that claiming victimhood is not per se the trump card.
This is an effective attack because there’s almost nothing behind it. It’s very effective name-calling propaganda because it has nothing behind it and it’s hard to defend against because there’s nothing behind it. It’s going to remain an attack by our white nationalist, er, I mean, the Republican Party.
The Cherokee Nation’s statement was abjectly stupid and, I suspect, highly political as it concerns intra-tribal politics:
“Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well-documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”
She had a Cherokee ancestor. That’s it. She’s not saying she’s a Cherokee. She’s not claiming membership in the Cherokee nation. She’s stating a fact.
She’s not allowed to state that one of her ancestors was a Cherokee because only tribal governments can decide that?
“Tribal interests”? That’s a political response. At best, there’s a teachable moment about what makes a Cherokee a Cherokee. There is a lot of internal, tribal squabbling about who qualifies as Cherokee. In some cases, there is money involved in that identity. That’s what I mean about Native Americans being people too. Their legitimate victimhood doesn’t make them pure or politically disinterested.
Amen. Preach it, brother Mark.
This is a blog dominated by white males and I would be very hesitant to speak on behalf of non white males or engage in conspiracy theories about ulterior motivations. I respect the tribe, I understand I can never repay them for the crimes my country committed against them, and have a wise degree of deference to their claims of who is in and who is out. It is not my call to make and not my call to judge how they make it.
Using a government roll that determined who lost citizenship and who did not is a far better marker of ancestry for assessing past discrimination and present reparations than a DNA test the tribes reject. Tribes also have a warranted skepticism toward medicine based on the experimentation too many of them endured at the hands of white scientists in the same way blacks have apprehension toward medical institutions because of Tuskegee. To call their tribal traditions backward or anti-science is the textbook definition of white paternalism.
Perhaps I am being overly sensitive and politically correct about this, but that is where the progressive movement needs to go to have credibility with minority voters. It is no longer enough to be not Republican.
Trump and his attacks against Warren are Capital R racism. Full stop. She was right in June to condemn them, to endorse the tribal authorities definition of ancestry, and to pledge solidarity to native causes.
She did not consult with them first. I think this is something that is being underrated by others on this blog and a mistake that makes her pledge of solidarity back in June now sound hollow. Warren is still engaging in a form of white washing that undermines those that have more legitimate claims to experiencing pain and harm for their native ancestry than she does.
James, it may be my age, but I start to draw lines where the facts and the truth are concerned. If that makes me a white paternalist, then so be it. If Native Americans oppose it, I’m fine with that too. It’s worth a discussion.
Today, I read about the Havasupai tribe that allowed geneticists to come in to see if they could figure out why so many of their tribe of forty-one people had Type II diabetes. The researchers used their DNA for other purposes. There was an issue with informed consent, and I certainly don’t believe they should be compelled to participate in DNA stuff. One complaint was that DNA contradicted the creation myth of the tribe. (If they could have avoided the DNA stuff, I don’t have a problem with it either. I know conservative Christians are a bunch of white people with power, but where do we draw the line with creation myths and science?
The questions concerning DNA and heritage are deep and complex. It’s a culture clash in more than one way. I think Elizabeth Warren was unknowingly caught up in the clash. Victimhood is a factor in that clash, but in some ways, I fear we are elevating victimhood into some sort of ideal.
6 6s for the above comment!
One tribe does not speak for the entirety of the Native American experience. The tribe in question she is claiming genetic heritage from is the Cherokee tribe. They reject genetic markers as a determination of any tribal heritage. Their word goes with me. It does not with you. So be it.
See my wider post below on why this is lousy politics regardless of your take on the genetic ancestry question.
@ one tribe: Indeed, one tribe does NOT speak for the entirety of the Native American experience. The Cherokee Nation also does not speak for the entirety of the Native American experience.
Ms. Warren has never claimed membership in any tribe, and so any tribe’s criteria for membership is irrelevant — a distinction you have been stubbornly refusing to accept for days now.
Ms. Warren has NEVER made any claim of tribal membership. Period.
The effect of your argument is to say that any Native American who refused to submit to the shamefully racist demands of the Dawes Rolls a century ago has no right to claim any Native American heritage because they, too, fail the criteria of the Cherokee Nation.
This is a preposterous assertion. Enormous numbers of Native Americans refused to participate for a variety of reasons. You are stubbornly insisting that ancestry and citizenship are identical. They are not.
Ms. Warren has demonstrated, compellingly, that she has Native American ancestry. Ms. Warren has never claimed membership in any tribe and does not do so now.
Ms. Warren has Native American ancestry. That is is fact. Ms. Warren is not a member of any tribe. That is another fact.
That’s enough for me.
Based on the name alone I suspected the Dawes Rolls were a creation of the white US Government which probably has a few issues. This did not take long to confirm. It strikes me as a bit odd that the tribal nations themselves take this as gospel.
This is NOT about the crimes committed against them, nor about who is in and who is out. Yes, you are being overly sensitive IMO. Progressives should be about reality and fairness, wherever that may lead. You really do sound to me like Scott Brown saying, “As you can see, she’s not.”
Only because now she has changed her story to “according to DNA markers, I am .05% one”. Had she not done that. There would be no problem.
Reality is acknowledging she made a mistake many years ago and does not have a meaningful claim to Native American heritage. A trivial percentage does not make one a member of the broader community. She eloquently acknowledged this reality in June. Now she is muddying the waters with a DNA test nobody from that same community recognizes as a valid marker of ancestry. They find it offensive. I side with the people of color on this one against whites who are unfamiliar with their culture. You do not have to.
Fairness would be conceding that they have the final say. Not a scientist removed from their history or a Senator seeking to turn a political liability into an affirmative token of trivial multicultural identity on the eve of a presidential primary where that identity is a perceived asset.
My final word on the subject.
I think the way to put this matter to rest is to do what she did in June. It’s a family story, one she is proud of, one that makes her want to be an ally. Full stop.
Doing the DNA test just reopens the narrative that she is pretending to be someone she is not. Now we have native American groups arguing this with far more credibility than any racist white politician on the right.
Let’s look at the results of this action. In one move she does the following:
1) Create a controversy where there was none before
2) Make that controversy news when the focus should exclusively be on the midterms and Republican capitulation to Trumps corruption and unfitness for office
3)Alienate native Americans and people of color that should be allies for future campaigns
4) Help opponents of affirmative action at Harvard right at the moment when it is under attack
Y’all can agree to disagree with me and the Cherokee Nation on this controversy. That is totally fine. You have to admit this is a lousy way to launch a presidential campaign.
Read the speech and tell me this recent action is not a craven flip flop.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/02/14/read-text-elizabeth-warren-speech-native-americans/ovAjQq28SbyqiDXnOp1rNK/story.html
I’m sorry, my friend, but to me your commentary on this thread is uncharacteristically stubborn.
You write: “A trivial percentage does not make one a member of the broader community”
You are simply denying the fact that the result of her DNA test is not a “trivial percentage”. The test shows persuasive (to any geneticist) evidence that Ms. Warren has Native American ancestry. You stubbornly and incorrectly deny that simple reality.
This is different from some racist “blood percentage” and completely different from any claim towards tribal membership — a claim that she has also explicitly not made, and that you explicitly refuse to accept.
It pains me to see you be so egregiously incorrect on this regarding a leader who we both admire. I think you’re being grossly unfair to Ms. Warren and hurting yourself in the process.
I wonder if you are aware that almost ALL our DNA is shared with animals (emphasis mine):
Just 1.2% of the DNA of ANY human (including Ms. Warren) is unique to humans. Perhaps you might share what your threshold is for non-trivial, especially in light of the stark contrast between your characterization and actual geneticists who actually know something about such matters.
Virtually every competent geneticist who has seen the test results agrees with Carlos Bustamante (one of the premier human geneticists in the world) that Ms. Warren had a Native American ancestor 150-250 years ago (as far back as 1700).
It is worth noting that, according to Mr. Bustamante, the analyst who performed the test did not know that the sample was from Ms. Warren.
Your claim that the results of Ms. Warren’s test show a “trivial percentage” is, well, indefensible. It is past time for you to either inform yourself or stop making such statements. It is literally like referring to heavy objects falling faster than light ones.
Truth is not a political football, 45’s best efforts notwithstanding. I see no change in story. She has said all along she has Native ancestry and now she can say see, I told you so. This latest action in no way contradicts, or is in any way relevant to, the speech you link. Progressives would do well not to pounce quite so hard on one of our stalwarts when she handles a situation a bit differently than we would have. As for the politics, maybe it would have been better to get past the midterms, but I actually think this is exactly how to prep a hypothetical presidential campaign because you get the facts out early so you can then move on and focus on issues. Otherwise this question will hang over her throughout.
The question was settled in her first speech largely to the satisfaction of Natibe American groups. Can anyone here produce a positive response from any of them since this revelation? I think this goes to show how little white society respects native culture and how far we have to go.
First and foremost is our racist commander in Chief, the sports fans who insist on racist mascots, morons like Scott Brown using tomahawks and the like. Warren approached this issue with the characteristic sensitivity and grace it deserved in her earlier speech on the subject to the NAIC. Now by using methods this marginalized community opposes, even if some of us find them above board, and making this announcement without consulting with them after promising to always tell and respect their story when she told hers, she made an error. I have confidence she will hear their voices and make amends. I have zero confidence our president will ever do the same.
So I am not holding her to higher standards. I hold them both to a high standard of respect and reverence for a community long neglected by our government and deliberately deleted from our history for far too long. I simply hold a Senator whom I was proud to meet, vote for, and continue to respect and admire to a higher expectation for meeting that standard. I hope she meets it soon.