Senator Warren

Was Senator Warren’s claim to have some Native American ancestry insulting to Native Americans? Was her apology sufficient? Was she a racist for these actions? I will leave it to Native Americans themselves to decide those questions. As the latest cliché goes: that’s not in my lane. There are, however, facts, and here are a few of them:

• Senator Warren’s family talked about having an unspecified ancestor a few generations back who was a Cherokee
• The young Elizabeth Warren believed this family lore and was proud to count Cherokee as one part of her ancestry
• Unless you’re part of some country’s royal family, it’s not likely that you will have accurate records going back more than a few generations & family myths may be the only “history” that you have
• People like to emphasize aspects of themselves that are unique and different. If you’re surrounded by white people, mentioning some Native ancestry might seem “cool”
• Probably NOT cool to appropriate a culture that’s not yours, but people aren’t always rational
• Senator Warren never used her claim of Native American ancestry to advance her career, notwithstanding her filling out “Native American” under “race” on a bar association card
• Senator Warren was used by Harvard University to claim that they had a diverse faculty
• Other than a few instances in her early career, there is no record of Senator Warren emphasizing her belief that she had Native American ancestry, and certainly no instance of her using this belief in her political career (her opponent in the first Senate race brought it up & Trump jumped on it)
• Elizabeth Warren at no time benefited from quotas or affirmative action by claiming Native American ancestry

The DNA test was perhaps a boneheaded move, aside from the fact that these tests don’t have a solid scientific basis, they don’t address cultural or identity issues. They don’t have anything to do with Tribal affiliation/enrollment, which Senator Warren never claimed. Warren also made the mistake of trying to engage Trump using Trump’s rule-book; she was never going to get him to back off, even if birth certificates (ha!) or other records were produced to prove a recent Native American forebear.

There’s a lot of misinformation, “fake news”, if you will, about this subject. A lot of mocking and faux-outrage from the right wing. If Senator Warren becomes the Democratic Party presidential nominee she will have to deal with it all – the racist, insulting nickname from Trump as well as the twisting of the facts from the rest of the MAGA brigade. The way she handled this causes me to suspect that, despite my belief that policy-wise she’s the strongest of Democratic candidates, she will be unable to stand up to Trump head-to-head. I hope I’m wrong.