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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy do so many purposely misinterpret Senator Warren's position?
Elizabeth Warren spoke to colleagues and friends of a personal family folklore of ancestors back in the 1700's who were shunned because her great, great, great, grandfather married a Native American. Warren was never advanced in academia because of that folklore and she never claimed she was a tribal member, only that she contained "some Native American blood" as a result of that story. It was just a family story that had roots through generations of her family. As a matter of fact, it is not an uncommon story in Oklahoma.
She was challenged. Warren's mother, who told the story to her and her siblings, was called a liar by scumbags like Scott Brown and Donald Trump. This foolish agony followed her through her entire political career. Warren then took a DNA test. That test proves she has some Native American blood, from 6 to 10 generations ago. The 6 generations back would validate her mother's story. That's all this DNA test proves and all Warren wanted to prove: That her mother's story is plausible and likely, not that she can legally claim tribal membership. Even in Warren's original telling of her family folklore, the Native American ancestry would not bring her to the 1/16th native heritage to legally claim Native American status. This test just proved she wasn't lying. I am disappointed with the Cherokee spokesmen who criticize Senator Warren when all she was doing was clearing her name and giving validity to a family folklore. If I take a DNA test and unknowingly find out I'm 1/64th Native American, did I do something wrong, too?
I can understand Native Americans not wanting DNA tests to prove tribal membership. They want documented proof for such a claim. But that's not what Senator Warren was trying to prove. She just wanted to prove that her mother's story, told to Warren and her siblings when she was a little girl, had validity.
Reader Rabbit
(2,621 posts)Americans will find faults in women, however minuscule, that they would give men a pass for.
we can do it
(12,118 posts)SunSeeker
(51,378 posts)TheBlackAdder
(28,076 posts)unc70
(6,095 posts)louis c
(8,652 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)If you were naturally conservative, would you want to be associated with this profoundly mean-spirited and undignified dishonesty instead of issues of principle?
Response to louis c (Original post)
Post removed
chromdome35
(1 post)Finally, someone gets it!
Jakes Progress
(11,121 posts)where your very first post is to support a republican talking point.
Raster
(20,996 posts)Cha
(295,926 posts)certainot
(9,090 posts)and it's only a big deal here like most of the bullshit because the left ignores talk radio.
scott brown used it and got traction on it because limbaugh and his wannabes were yelling about it across the country, even local blowhards.
her bringing up the issue jabs at all the dittoheads and talk radio loyal, otherwise known by uninformed political analysts as the 'trump base'. that's why trump calls her pocahontas - because limbaugh has been calling her that for years before trump ever heard it. limbaugh will attack her again minimizing the degree of native heritage
as a matter of fact limbaugh started his show now and within minutes has just said "pocahontas' 3 x saying warren's melting down - and now claiming it's made up - and she's mexican, columbian (drug cartels, he says), etc. and making excuses for trump qualifying the bet......
that's on 600 radio stations and he'll yap about it over and over. and her supporters will continue to ignore the cons' biggest and only unique advantage.
wellst0nev0ter
(7,509 posts)Something that is supposed to defuse the argument with reasonable people riled up the racists. Don't give them oxygen.
certainot
(9,090 posts)make advertising on rw radio toxic os the only ad money they get is from trump lovers - let it represent the true demand
Tumbulu
(6,267 posts)the power of these radio stations has only gathered steam.
Nobody except you and me seem to get this- and I cant figure out why!
So frustrating! Im grateful that you keep bringing it up!
Jakes Progress
(11,121 posts)At least you could try to put us a reasonable argument that Warren did something wrong and trump did something right.
Oh, yeah. There is no such thing.
Okay. Go ahead with your propaganda.
SunSeeker
(51,378 posts)Jakes Progress
(11,121 posts)Trolls need money. Seems like a place like DU could do at least as good a job as FB.
nolabear
(41,915 posts)Twenty two years ago she was claimed as Native American. Was this her idea? Was she being used then as a bolster for Harvard's image as she's being used now by...hell, damn near everybody for everything.
On edit: I know she marked a box somewhere. I mean a public claim for favor or gain.
qazplm135
(7,447 posts)Here's the most likely scenario:
1. Young Elizabeth was told she was part NA by her family. She, not surprisingly believed it. I was told I was half Black, half Scot-Irish. the Black part is...obvious. But I assume if I take a DNA test, it could turn out I'm not half Scot-Irish. Does that make me a liar? Nope. It just means my mom was wrong/lied/mistaken when she told me that.
2. Older Elizabeth believed this and told someone at Harvard. Harvard then used that as a promotional fact. We have no idea if Elizabeth Warren knew that or not, but let's go worst-case and say, she did.
3. We have ZERO evidence that she received a job, promotion, advancement, scholarship, aid, or any advantage from any claim of being NA. Zero point zero.
4. Someone looks at her, questions her heritage (tied to her being a politician no doubt) and then Trump later seizes on it because he's afraid of her and wants to reduce her as a possible future opponent.
5. Now Senator Warren decides to put the matter to bed and takes a DNA test. Not to claim any benefits but to silence the claim that she was lying.
Now, the only issue I have with this is she had to know that this wasn't going to move anyone. The better response IMO was to say I grew up being told there was NA ancestry in my background. Like everyone else, I believed what my family told me, why wouldn't I? But I have NEVER used that to any advantage, in any job, in any scholarship, or for any advancement. The DNA test just reinforces both sides.
But I do not see how she "brought this situation on herself" other than deciding to become a public figure. Anymore than I have by believing that I am half Scot-Irish. I have zero idea what a DNA test would show. Maybe it would show I'm a quarter French. Maybe I'm plain old English. Maybe there's some NA in my background (not uncommon with someone who is a mixed race American). Doesn't matter. If I was told bad info, and there's no reason to challenge it, and I haven't used it to my advantage...who fucking cares?
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)This is fake fucking outrage. No more, no less. The GOP lies, lies lies. They put a sexual assaulter on the Supreme Court. And there's outrage over THIS? I call muthafuckin' BULLSHIT.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)Warren made the mistake of thinking truth is an antidote to alternative facts. It isn't. Trying to prove the truth just allows the liar to double down on the lies. Instead of getting a DNA test, she should have said that Trump used to pretend he was Swedish because after World War II, his Jewish tenants wouldn't rent from a German. It's actually true, and it throws the attacker back on the defensive.
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,085 posts)StevieM
(10,499 posts)went with the deputy director of FEMA?
HipChick
(25,485 posts)mercuryblues
(14,491 posts)that she did this right before the election. Saying she somehow took focus off races in other states and ruined their chances of winning by doing so. Oh, yeah she is single handily destroying the Democratic party.
My take: She exposed trump and sucked the oxygen away from him. This fits into a pattern of slamming women who defend themselves against republican smears. They should shut up and wait for permission to counter attacks against them. It's not like billboards in her state have been using this smear. Or bill Maher called her Pocahontas to her face.
Oh, wait.
#
George II
(67,782 posts)....claimed to be an "Indian" or has "Indian" ancestry. She has ALWAYS used the Native American terminology.
Shiva, being (East) Indian should be ashamed of himself to link his heritage to Native Americans.
I just went to his website (sorry to give him the click!) and found a couple of things. This jumped out at me:
"There are three people on the ballot for U.S. Senate: myself, the Fake Indian and now, a MA GOP Fake Trumper."
And he claims to be "the inventor of email"!!!! He was about ten years old when email began being used. What a freaking nut!
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)D23MIURG23
(2,833 posts)Looks like it will take an Indian with better campaign sense than that to defeat Warren.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)India and Native American?
Caliman73
(11,694 posts)That is Republican humor. Debase a woman by using a token ethnic candidate. As long as they are punching down, the base will find it funny.
MaryMagdaline
(6,849 posts)/that shes trying to claim membership in the NA community.
By tomorrow the media will be asking why does Elizabeth Warren claim tribal membership and is she trying to get free medical care?
Leith
(7,802 posts)They really don't know any other way to act.
kimbutgar
(20,882 posts)I just dont get the big outrage over this. Another bs and stupid talking point to divide us.
RobinA
(9,878 posts)the outrage either, and I hereby pronounce that I have zero Native American blood, and I haven't done a DNA test. I will not mention what kind of DNA I probably do have, based on genealogy research, because some day some vicious idiot may come along and challenge and mock me about what I would say. Why, I don't know.
Jakes Progress
(11,121 posts)probably speak Russian as their native language. And there is a lot of koch money to pay for American born trolls.
Don't let the bots get you down.
Turin_C3PO
(13,650 posts)I do think its not the best timing to release such information. Bottom line is, I guess, is its a damned if you do, damned if you dont type of scenario.
Hekate
(90,202 posts)Last edited Tue Oct 16, 2018, 05:50 PM - Edit history (1)
...including my family -- have the same ancestral story. And it is true. In the late 1600s or early 1700s a male ancestor on my maternal grandmother's side married a woman who was "part Pequot Indian," and so it was recorded in an annotated list of births, marriages, and deaths I read at my grandmother's house when I was 13. The stories my grandmother told were about her more immediate Irish ancestors, but the first guy who landed on the East Coast was an English Separatist who sailed out of Leyden, Holland, and not an Irish Catholic at all. One does not exclude the other, and all I have mentioned are true.
My story is an American story, as is Elizabeth Warren's. If your family has been here more than a few generations, and if your family has outmarried from your original immigrant group (as most do once they get over their grandparents' ancestral prejudices about the difference between Swedes and Germans or whatever), you also probably have a trace of Native American -- or African American, and that is another very American story.
The amount of knee-jerk reactions to this coming from all sides of the Democratic party spectrum are absolutely appalling, imo.
LAS14
(13,749 posts)ripcord
(5,084 posts)No matter how you want to spin it, she is not a minority and shouldn't have claimed it when applying to universities. Using her as an example almost every single person in the country qualifies.
EleanorR
(2,374 posts)Squinch
(50,774 posts)good at getting people to believe any old thing.
ripcord
(5,084 posts)Including the AALS, she notified two separate universities of her Native American background and this DNA test is not helping her at all. I would love to see her in the White House but this announcement is not going to help, especially with Native American groups being upset,their heritage shouldn't be used by either side for political gain.
louis c
(8,652 posts)Response to ripcord (Reply #45)
Squinch This message was self-deleted by its author.
Hekate
(90,202 posts)Cha
(295,926 posts)did that.
Response to Cha (Reply #40)
Name removed Message auto-removed
jcgoldie
(11,584 posts)This has been debunked by Harvard.
Response to jcgoldie (Reply #44)
Name removed Message auto-removed
jcgoldie
(11,584 posts)Caliman73
(11,694 posts)You made the claim that she "claimed minority status". Please cite your source and defend your claim or admit you were wrong and apologize.
Oh and Elizabeth Warren, Native ancestry or not, belongs to a protected class. She may know a thing or two about discrimination. Or perhaps you can explain why there aren't 50 woman Senators and why half of House members aren't women or why in 240 years we haven't had a woman as President?
louis c
(8,652 posts)louis c
(8,652 posts)marybourg
(12,540 posts)The OP clearly stated that this never happened. Did you read the OP? You sure you belong here?
LiberalFighter
(50,504 posts)pnwmom
(108,925 posts)It was only after her last appointment, when she already had her job at Harvard, when she got a form asking her to check off her racial categories -- for some statistics Harvard was collecting.
And like a faculty friend I know, from the same era, she checked off both boxes, because she didn't want to deny the small part of Native American blood that she had been told ran in her family.
Like my friend, she didn't make an issue of it. She didn't get any benefits from it. She didn't think much of it, except she was being precise, as best as she could.
Decades later, Scott Brown had an investigator dig into her past, and found this "revelation" in an old form that she had checked off. And they've been calling her a liar ever since, while THEY have been the ones telling the lies, because her answer on that form gave her no benefit whatsoever. She only filled it out after she had her final faculty position, at Harvard.
fescuerescue
(4,448 posts)So she did check off Native American on official college paperwork?
I thought this story was something that Trump made up whole cloth.
I didn't realize there was a real basis to it. Yikes.
Politically speaking, I dunno, maybe following Trumps suggestion on doing the DNA test and publicizing it...Maybe that wasn't such a great idea for her political career.
I mean Id vote for her. But the optics of this...well they could be better.
pnwmom
(108,925 posts)It didn't ask for any percentage amount. It didn't specify how you were to determine WHAT you were. It just asked the question in a way that let him think he should mention that he wasn't just white -- that he had some small amount of Native American ancestry too.
You are forgetting what it was like decades ago. Remember the "one drop" rule? We weren't far past those years, when a "white" appearing person with a single black or Native American ancestor was classified as "colored" or "mixed." Like Elizabeth, my friend grew up in a state where there were a significant number of Native Americans and they were discriminated against. (As they still are.) There was no benefit to declaring yourself mixed, but my friend thought it was a matter of being honest, and not denying a real part of himself. So he didn't. Neither did Liz Warren.
https://www.salon.com/2018/05/21/one-drop-reckoning-with-the-erasure-of-native-identity-in-appalachia_partner/
It was the Racial Integrity Act that hurt Virginian Indians the most. The landmark piece of legislation not only made interracial marriage illegal, but it also instituted a one drop rule that effectively classified everyone into two categories. One drop of Native American or African blood, made one simply colored. Within only a few years of the legislation, the recorded population of Virginia Indians plummeted. Plecker had all but erased the footprint of the Virginia Indian.
Some Monacans held on to their traditions and refused to be defined by manufactured racial designations. This included many of the Monacans living in Amherst who were still classified by the state as colored but maintained their cultural ways. Today these people and their descendants make up the heart of the Monacan Nation.
Ninsianna
(1,349 posts)No such claim. Please stop peddling right wing talking points.
CentralMass
(15,265 posts)Cha
(295,926 posts)was brilliant!
flyingfysh
(1,990 posts)Elizabeth never said she was entitled to membership in any particular tribe, only that she had some Indian ancestry. Which is what the test showed. She did not claim to have ancestry in any particular tribe.
To gain Cherokee tribal membership, you have to go the "Dawes Roll", an official government list of people who were members of the "Five Civilized Tribes", compiled around 1900. It also has records of lots of people who applied, but were turned down; the reasons are in the records. You then have to prove blood descent from one of the Cherokees on the Dawes Roll. Just having some Cherokee ancestry is not enough. You have to be traceable to someone on the Dawes Roll.
0rganism
(23,856 posts)they succeed by distorting reality and throwing shade.
alarimer
(16,245 posts)Those tests rely on single nucleotide polymorphism, which is a real thing, but basically just shows that she shares certain parts of her DNA with some groups of people. That may or may not mean she actually is partially Native American, because it could be simply a chance occurrence. But it dovetails with family lore. Still not really proof, but not really a big deal because lots of Americans have some native ancestry. Its not a sin and it isnt a crime. It doesnt make you a member of a tribe, but were not claiming that. Neither is she.
D23MIURG23
(2,833 posts)Especially the part where they claim that she called herself a native American to get into Harvard. It speaks to resentment about affirmative action. It's also red meat for people who feel that Democrats and liberals are ashamed of being white.
tclambert
(11,080 posts)Imagine my disappointment.
LiberalFighter
(50,504 posts)And resign as a member of the Cherokee tribe.
demigoddess
(6,640 posts)He had done a lot of research and was certain. I did the ancestry DnA test and I had not one drop of Cherokee. I was disappointed. Don't know how he 'proved' it. Before he died he said he had proved it but it had been an expensive proof.
torius
(1,652 posts)Their heroes were glad to employ it when it benefited THEM.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)thats why theyre going after her. Elizabeth Warren shows that she cares about average Americans and that is her cardinal sin to them. Anybody who cares more about common people rather than the wealthy is their enemy.
treestar
(82,383 posts)and not where she stands on issues is proof of that.
Nitram
(22,671 posts)They perfected the technique by using it on Hillary clintonm for decades.
treestar
(82,383 posts)and the right wingers moving goalposts as if she had claimed to be eligible as tribal member, not just having some ancestry. Already heard a right winger claiming "the Cherokees rejected her" as if she had that goal - they lie as usual.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)Nothing. Too bad she didn't do the TV show with Gates. Science trumps their book.
[link:https://dna-explained.com/2012/12/18/proving-native-american-ancestry-using-dna/|]