"Extremely White" Is A Color
Full disclosure: It is possible that I'm related to the supposed Cherokee Senator, Elizabeth Warren -- possibly through the Cherokee ancestors in my family who lived along the German-Polish border (that is, until they emigrated to Detroit around 1900).
Maggie Haberman wrote (back in 2012) at Politico that supposed Cherokee Senator, Elizabeth Warren was playing it all clueless about the "minority" background (the one that she was clearlydragging around everywhere with her like Linus dragged his blanket in Peanuts):
Elizabeth Warren has pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School's "first woman of color," based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a "telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996)."
The mention was in the middle of a lengthy and heavily-annotated Fordham piece on diversity and affirmative action and women. The title of the piece, by Laura Padilla, was "Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue."
"There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries," the piece says. "This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reaons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995."
...She has said she had no idea Harvard was billing her that way or how the school found out that her family claims Native American heritage. She learned of it first from the Herald story, she said.
And it's possible Warren didn't see the Fordham story.
But the Fordham piece takes the description of Warren by Harvard Law beyond the boundaries of the Massachusetts school. Warren had described herself as a minority on a law professors' listing for several years, ending in 1995. She has said she wanted to meet people like herself, but stopped when she realized that's not what the listing was for.
She has pushed back hard on suggestions she got her job based on her heritage, and her backers have noted a 1995 Crimson piece, from the year she was hired, makes no mention of her background.
William A. Jacobson writes at Legal Insurrection:
It's hard for Warren to respond on the Cherokee issue in any meaningful way. She refused in late June 2012 to meet with a group of Cherokee women who traveled to Boston to speak with her.It was an issue she assiduously evaded during the 2012 campaign, other than to have her staff accuse people who exposed the truth (like me), of being "right wing extremists."
Here is the truth. Liz Warren has no Native American ancestry. A Cherokee genealogist studied all her family lines, and there is no Indian history.
The so-called 1/32 Cherokee blood was a false claim, and now is an urban myth.
The fact is that, while there may have been some rumors or stories in her family, Warren never lived as an Indian, never embraced that identity, never helped Indians or associated with them, and didn't even claim Indian status when she registered with the Senate. The only time in her life that Warren fully embraced her supposed Native American identity was in a law professor directory used for hiring purposes when she was in her mid-30s and starting to climb the law school ladder, eventually landing at Harvard Law School.
I've often wondered why Warren never challenged Hillary. If Bernie is doing well, Warren would have crushed Hillary. But Warren chose not to run for some reason -- I'm guessing that there is something out there in her Oklahoma history relating to the Native American claim that she doesn't want coming out, but that would destroy her credibility on the issue. It's something that would take deep opposition research, the type that only people like the Clinton's have access to ... and may already have.
So Trump is onto something. It doesn't absolve Trump of any of his own faults and issues, but it does put Liz Warren's core political problem in play again. And that's important, because if Hillary gets into legal trouble, Warren will be one of the names suggested to parachute in to save the party.
via @instapundit
My family also had an oral history of being part Cherokee, and I first learned about it when I was 10 or so, and really seized onto the idea, read everything about Native Americans I could get my hands on. In High School I wasn't sure which box to tick, I think I sometimes ticked both. In Massachusetts, you get educated about the one drop rule and racial issues a lot. Which I think ended up confusing me, because really, the only box I should have been checking was the white one but somehow I had this idea that I didn't count as pure white.
Anyhow, a couple years ago I happened to learn about the Melungeans, a group of swarthy Appalachians who claimed whiteness but seemed to be mixed race. They would explain their swarthiness by saying they were part Cherokee or Portugeuse or Arab. I looked in my family tree and there were Melungean names and places, so this year I got a DNA test. Got the results a few months ago... I am not Native American at all, but I am .3% African and .1% East Asian.
So basically it looks like there was a mixed race couple in colonial times, and all their descendants married white since then.
Anyhow, the point of this is that Elizabeth Warren probably really believed she was part Native American. I believed I was, and it was part of my identity for a long time even though it shouldn't have been. Now I know.
I also now know that even if I had been .3% Native American, both under one drop rules and under the laws they govern themselves by, I would not be considered Native American. But back in High School I did not know that.
NicoleK at May 28, 2016 1:05 AM
"Intersectionality and positionality: Situating women of color in the affirmative action dialogue."
A pox on this author.
Canvasback at May 28, 2016 4:22 AM
Obama has been pretty hard on the Democrat party. They don't really have that many options. The other name people have floated around is Biden for a Clinton replacement. All I can say there is while he doesn't appear to be corrupt it look like it's because he isn't smart enough to pull anything off.
Who else could the Dems put up if Hillary ends up in court?
Ben at May 28, 2016 5:09 AM
The problem w/pols is that they are so adverse to telling the truth (look stupid, knew it was "sketchy", "Oops!", etc.) that only the Clintons can get away with it.
Nicolek hit it spot on. It was a family oral history that was believed until logic/maturity kicked in. Period.
Warren would have been a sure thing but the Clinton machine would have eliminated her in some way because it was HRC's time.
Dems deserve what they have got. They did not protect the Democratic Party. They just jumped on the Clinton train to make sure they got the graft they "deserved".
They had the means handed to them (not turning emails over to State, deleting emails instead of turning them over to State 2 years late, telling staff to send "sensitive" material over unsecured means, the Clinton Foundation, etc.) but did not use it to get her under their control.
Bob in Texas at May 28, 2016 5:40 AM
My family also is from Massachusetts, and I experienced almost exactly what NicoleK described. Oral history described my long-departed biological grandfather as Native American. (My mother was adopted and raised by her stepfather.) There even was a backstory about my grandmother's family resisting the marriage on this basis! Since my mom and her brother have dark hair and complexions, and some rather strong features, I never questioned it. Made sense to me, and when people would ask me what my ethnic origins were, I'd include Native American.
Once I even got disqualified for a medical study that I wanted to take part in, because I stated I was part Native American, and they said it would have thrown off their results.
After her stepfather died a few years back, my mom and her husband started tracing her biological roots in earnest. We can find zero evidence that this guy was Native American.
Insufficient Poison at May 28, 2016 7:30 AM
Like the Republican Party which thought it could use its fringe elements (i.e., fundamentalist refugees driven out of the Democratic Party) and then found itself battling a fanatic insurgency, the Democrats let their fringe have too much power and it drove them out of the house.
While the social conservative fundamentalists and the fiscal conservatives have not driven out the former base of the Republican party (Northeastern big government liberals), they have managed to create a fractured party (although the more Panglossian Republicans would call it a big tent with many ideas represented).
The left-wing big government zealots in the Democratic party have, on the other hand, managed to drive out the moderate, blue collar, and pro-capitalism Democrats. They've ruptured the Democratic Party and, unlike the Republican party, the people needed to re-balance the party have abandoned ship or been driven out. There are no more Paul Tsongases, Sam Nunns, or Zell Millers to pull the Democrats back from the left-wing abyss.
The difference is the Nancy Pelosis, Harry Reids, and Hillary Clintons cannot accept a Democratic party with Zell Millers, Jim Webbs, and Daniel Moynihans in residence. While fundamentalist zealots in the Republican party whine about RINOS who don't thump their Bible enough, the other partisans, Barry Goldwater for instance, could accept a Republican party with Bushes and Romneys in residence. So, the Republicans, while plunged into turmoil, didn't get torn apart the way the Democrats did.
Beginning with Truman, the Democrats began the steady process of driving out its right wing. At first this was limited to the Southern pro-segregation politicians who didn't fit the party's cosmopolitan self-image. Later, the party's puritans demanded ideological purity and began driving out anyone who didn't advocate a socialist America. The Democratic Party today is a leftist shadow of its former self. This transformation culminated in a party that nominated an inexperienced one-term Senator with a mediocre record of "present" votes and a wind-sock for an internal compass; a party that is now stuck with an openly corrupt machine politician as its only choice in the coming presidential election.
The Republican Party, by not articulating a specific policy (social conservative, fiscal conservative, or pro-capitalism liberalism), found itself without an identity (or with one provided by its more extreme elements and political opponents) and no central theme to its legislative and political activities. This political ambivalence left them with a mixed record at best in governing and a chaotic primary process dominated by a loudmouthed opportunist.
At least with Donald Trump, you get Paul Ryan, Olympia Snowe, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and a host of competing in-party political ideologies to tamp down his more ridiculous policy goals. With Hillary, you have to hope the Republicans win Congress to tame her more extreme ambitions - 'cause Nancy, Liz, Harry, Zoe, et al will only enable her.
Conan the Grammarian at May 28, 2016 7:47 AM
Fauxcahontas used the alleged family story as an excuse to claim minority status to get a job.
Did she believe it? No. She pursued nothing about her Cherokee heritage in the years leading up to using it to get a job and did nothing to celebrate it afterward.
Now, I've done nothing to pursue my Scotch, German, or Irish heritage. I haven't joined the Sons of Hibernia or even worn a kilt. However, such heritage won't uniquely qualify me for a job or allow me to skirt EEOC rules.
Those EEOC rules were not put in place to allow people so removed from their minority blood as to be indistinguishable from the majority to slip ahead of their competition. They were put in place to protect those who are obviously minorities from blatant discrimination. Warren is whiter than I am and would have faced no discrimination in employment (except the reverse discrimination she, herself, favors).
I think Harvard knew she was full of crap, too. They used her story of Cherokee heritage to virtue badge themselves and ignored the inconvenient holes in her story.
Conan the Grammarian at May 28, 2016 7:54 AM
"She pursued nothing about her Cherokee heritage in the years leading up to using it to get a job and did nothing to celebrate it afterward."
Now now. She did release a book titled 'Pow Wow Chow' full of stolen recipes.
And that is why I don't buy the 'Elizabeth Warren probably really believed she was part Native American' bit. She knew she was not a tribe member. She knew she was not of close ancestry. She did intentionally try to use those distant ties to further her career. I doubt that either NicoleK or IP have release a plagiarized book playing off of their supposed distant heritage. I have no issue with either of those two ticking off the native american box on the form. But Warren took things quite a bit farther. She intentionally misstated her heritage for personal gain.
In the end it shows the falseness of 'white' privilege. If there was such a privilege to being white Warren wouldn't have falsely promoted her ancestry.
Ben at May 28, 2016 3:07 PM
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