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Post by robeiae on Oct 15, 2018 8:47:18 GMT -5
Elisabeth Warren has apparently gone all sciencey to prove her Native American ancestry: www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/politics/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-native-american/index.htmlThe full DNA report: mk0elizabethwarh5ore.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Bustamante_Report_2018.pdfIt shows that indeed, Warren has Native Americans in her family tree. To whit: Well okay, then. And yet, the final conclusion in the report: Warren still feels vindicated: This is all--in my view--terribly pathetic. Warren has now succeeded in "proving" that she likely has a distant ancestor who was a Native American, which I think hardly justifies her initial action that started all this: Warren choosing to identify professionally as a minority--Native American-- starting in around 1986 (a choice that Harvard Law School picked up on when it identified her as its lone Native American professor). Prior to that, it seems she identified as white. I can't say what prompted the change, to be sure, and no one can positively demonstrate that she benefited professionally from being "Native American" (though it's clear that Harvard liked the idea). Still, I think it's tough not to see some sort of ulterior motive in the shifting designation, whether it was to advance professionally, enhance a resume, or to just have something to brag about (a false pride, to be sure). But now, Warren has publicly presented evidence...that indicates a distant ancestor was likely a Native American. And thus the obvious conclusion: any evidence of a minority ancestor--no matter how distant--is sufficient justification for someone to identify as that minority (and I guess the reverse would be true--should be true--as well: any evidence of a non-minority ancestor means one can identify as the same). And it would also seem that one can pick and choose when to make such identifications. So, since I have both Black American and Native American ancestry (along with a ton of European ancestry, to be sure) and my ex-wife is Hispanic, my kids can identify as any of these ethnicities/races when it suits their needs. Can we scrap the whole race angle, now?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 9:12:03 GMT -5
To be fair, I actually sympathize with Warren here, though I rather wish she'd let it go.
Unless I missed something, I didn't see Warren "identify" as a Cherokee. What I see here is that Warren used a throw-away line a while ago about a family legend that they had a Cherokee ancester. My understanding us that's all it was --she didn't use it to try to get benefits intended for Native Americans.
The right gleefully jumped all over it as if she had done so, making her out to be a liar. Finally she decided to confirm one way or another whether the family legend was true. Apparently it is.
We have a couple of family legends in my family, too: one, that the Sicilian portion of my family has mafia connections, and two, that we have some African ancestry. I haven't confirmed the former yet, but DNA testing demonstrated that the latter is true-- I have a trace of sub-Saharan African ancestry, which, since all my grandparents are from Europe, likely comes from either my Spanish or Sicilian sides. It was likely around 200-250 years ago.
It's not at all hard for me to imagine making a passing reference to either of those two family legends. I wouldn't expect someone to seize and worry on it as the right has with Warren.
I am not now going to identify as Black. But I have been going about telling people I have some African ancestry, simply because I think it's kind of neat. (I have some middle eastern ancestry, too, that came as a total surprise. One of my great-grandparents was an abandoned baby in Sicily--I rather suspect he's the interesting one. I can trace most of the others back a ways, but not him. And Sicily is quite the melting pot.)
And I often joke about the mafia legend. It's a good one and contains some specific stories, some of which I suspect may be true, but as it stands, I don't know.
I also don't identify as a mafia chick.
Much too big a deal has been made -- by the right -- about Warren's ancestry. I sympathize with her desire to say "see, I'm not a liar!" Still, I think if it were me I'd have just left it alone, because the right's jeering was fucking stupid and offensive to any of us who might actually vote for Warren. And no matter what she does here, she can't win with them.
For what it's worth, though, Trump's bringing up Pocahantas in every fucking speech has made me far more supportive of Warren than I was.
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Post by robeiae on Oct 15, 2018 9:18:37 GMT -5
Unless I missed something, I didn't see Warren "identify" as a Cherokee. What I see here is that Warren used a throw-away line a while ago about a family legend that they had a Cherokee ancester. My understanding us that's all it was --she didn't use it to try to get benefits intended for Native Americans. From the FactCheck link: She absolutely did identify as Native American, and was recognized as such at both Harvard and Penn.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 9:31:10 GMT -5
Meh. I'm still giving it a shrug. According to that same Factcheck link, it doesn't appear she used it to gain advancement, or that it played any role in it.
And, apparently, it's in fact true she has native American ancestry.
I'd call it all a big-ass tempest in a tea-pot. Truly, who cares? I can see why she's interested in her ancestry, since I'm interested in mine, but no one else particularly should.
Where I think you and I might have common ground, though, is that I gather you agree Warren should have just dropped it and ignored Trump's jibes.
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Post by robeiae on Oct 15, 2018 9:47:08 GMT -5
As I said, there's no way to show if she did or didn't benefit from it, but I'm not willing to give it a "meh," simply because checking those demo boxes has real consequences. The fact that Harvard used her to tout its diversity is evidence of that, no? And beyond her, specifically, claiming a given ethnicity can mean access to various programs, scholarships, grants, and so on (and actually, Warren did receive that Penn teaching reward as a "minority"). Yet, if we accept her evidence, it suggests that one can claim to be Black, Native American, Asian, or whatever almost freely (based on any evidence that one has an ancestor who might be one of the above), and can change that designation just as freely.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 9:51:25 GMT -5
I might have a bias here, to be sure -- I find Trump's Pocahantas shit very offensive, and I'm one of those people who bores everyone around me with my 23andme results and the stuff I've dug up in my family tree research.
(I have a cousin who was used for medical "research" by the Nazis at Auschwitz--he wasn't Jewish, but he was a member of the Polish resistance. My great grandfather was abandoned as an infant at a Catholic church in Agrigento, Sicily, and brought up among the priests. My grandfather's Y haplogroup is the same as that of the ancient people responsible of the cave paintings in the corner of northern Spain in his family came from. It's a rare haplogroup so I am likely directly descended... But wait! There's more! Where are you all going?)
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 9:56:12 GMT -5
Another thing I'll note:
As I've noted, I am part Spanish and have a Spanish name. I do not check the Hispanic box. At least twice, I've found that an employer had gone ahead and checked it for me.
At law school, a fellow student two years ahead of me (now a famous guy) gave me shit for not joining the Latina law students organization. I explained that my background is mixed and all European, that I didn't think I was what was intended, etc., but, yeah. My name makes it an issue whether I want it to be one or not. Some will always assume I only got into law school because of affirmative action. It's annoying. But all I can do is shrug it off. (It's sad, because I'm actually quite proud of and interested in my Spanish heritage.)
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Post by nighttimer on Oct 15, 2018 10:22:07 GMT -5
This is all--in my view--terribly pathetic. Warren has now succeeded in "proving" that she likely has a distant ancestor who was a Native American, which I think hardly justifies her initial action that started all this: Warren choosing to identify professionally as a minority--Native American-- starting in around 1986 (a choice that Harvard Law School picked up on when it identified her as its lone Native American professor). Prior to that, it seems she identified as white. I can't say what prompted the change, to be sure, and no one can positively demonstrate that she benefited professionally from being "Native American" (though it's clear that Harvard liked the idea). Still, I think it's tough not to see some sort of ulterior motive in the shifting designation, whether it was to advance professionally, enhance a resume, or to just have something to brag about (a false pride, to be sure). But now, Warren has publicly presented evidence...that indicates a distant ancestor was likely a Native American. And thus the obvious conclusion: any evidence of a minority ancestor--no matter how distant--is sufficient justification for someone to identify as that minority (and I guess the reverse would be true--should be true--as well: any evidence of a non-minority ancestor means one can identify as the same). And it would also seem that one can pick and choose when to make such identifications. So, since I have both Black American and Native American ancestry (along with a ton of European ancestry, to be sure) and my ex-wife is Hispanic, my kids can identify as any of these ethnicities/races when it suits their needs. Can we scrap the whole race angle, now? She would if He would.
The worst kept secret in Washington is Sen. Warren's presidential aspirations. This DNA test is not for her critics. They will wave it away the same way Trump did with a dismissive "So What?" Warren does not have that option. She had to do something in 2018 to clear an obstacle for 2020. Nothing she can do will end Trump's attacks, but that is no reason for her not to defuse the issue now.
Trump's long record of racism and race-baiting is not "fake news," but established fact. He likes to give his opponents demeaning nicknames and mocking them for whatever he perceives as a flaw he can poke at. When Trump was the biggest mouth behind the Birthers, he tried for years to cast doubts on President Obama's birth certificate and where he was born. It's a shitty move to attack an opponent, but shitty moves are Trump's way.
Ding Warren for yeasting up her Native American ties, but this is America and this is a land full of mutts, not thoroughbreds. It's dead easy to criticize Warren for making such a show of her DNA results, but it's disingenuous to overlook the cause which forced her to do so.
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Post by prozyan on Oct 15, 2018 10:53:58 GMT -5
As a member of the Cherokee nation, I'd like Elizabeth Warren to let us know what tribe she can claim with a single ancestor dating back "6-10" generations. Otherwise she should shut the hell up about it.
Point of fact, I have ~1.7% African DNA in me according to the ancestry blood test. Guess I can claim I'm an African-American now because either my great-great-great-great grandfather or great-great-great-great grandmother had a child with a black person?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 10:58:29 GMT -5
to note: what would make me go beyond "meh" with this story is evidence Warren gained or tried an advantage she would otherwise not have gained -- one reserved for Native Americans.
E.g , if she tried for a scholarship that was reserved for Native Americans. That would be inappropriate and I'd bash her for it.
ETA:
Otherwise, it seems to me that any "advantage" she gained from claiming trace Cherokee ancestry is about as significant as the advantage Paul Ryan gained by knocking an hour off his marathon time.
Only here, Warren actually does have trace Native American ancestry.
Tempest in a tea pot city, as my dad would have said.
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Post by Optimus on Oct 15, 2018 12:22:21 GMT -5
In the South, I could throw a rock in the air and be pretty confident it would land on a white person with a Native American somewhere in their ancestry.
I don't think she did herself any favors by digging up this horse from the grave and beating it again. Unless, of course, it was pre-emptive for a future POTUS run; an attempt to circumvent it from being brought up as an attack in the campaign. But, I'm not sure she even achieved that. Time will tell, I suppose.
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Post by robeiae on Oct 15, 2018 12:36:01 GMT -5
I don't think she did herself any favors by digging up this horse from the grave and beating it again. Unless, of course, it was pre-emptive for a future POTUS run; an attempt to circumvent it from being brought up as an attack in the campaign. But, I'm not sure she even achieved that. Time will tell, I suppose. Cillizza agrees on the reasoning: www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020-dna-test/index.htmlBut he assumes an efficacy that I--like you--question to some extent: Warren proving that somewhere in her background--deeeeeep in her background--there was probably someone who was a Native American isn't enough to justify her being a real part of that minority ethnicity in my view. It's just not all that removed from the hyperbolic claim of "we're all Africans if you go back far enough." That's not the point of collecting such demographics or of programs and the like designed to assist groups that have suffered from marginalization.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 13:23:00 GMT -5
In the South, I could throw a rock in the air and be pretty confident it would land on a white person with a Native American somewhere in their ancestry. I don't think she did herself any favors by digging up this horse from the grave and beating it again. Unless, of course, it was pre-emptive for a future POTUS run; an attempt to circumvent it from being brought up as an attack in the campaign. But, I'm not sure she even achieved that. Time will tell, I suppose. I agree with all of this, actually.
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Post by nighttimer on Oct 15, 2018 13:29:17 GMT -5
Warren proving that somewhere in her background--deeeeeep in her background--there was probably someone who was a Native American isn't enough to justify her being a real part of that minority ethnicity in my view. It's just not all that removed from the hyperbolic claim of "we're all Africans if you go back far enough." That's not the point of collecting such demographics or of programs and the like designed to assist groups that have suffered from marginalization.
Of course Trump won't back off an inch. Because that's what bullies do. Snarking at Warren for reacting to Trump's race-baiting harassment is only excusing his bullying and it was a smooth move on her part.
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Post by celawson on Oct 15, 2018 13:39:39 GMT -5
My favorite response to the hoopla about this on Twitter is someone who asked, "What percentage annoying is Liz Warren?".
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