Tuesday, May 08, 2012

THE CHEROKEE STORY HURTS WARREN, BY WHY DOES THIS MAKE IT WORSE?

Elizabeth Warren has described herself in the past as part Native American in a directory of law professors, though no one has yet demonstrated that she used this reported minority status in anything to do with employment. It's been determined that she is, in fact, 1/32nd Cherokee (just like the current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation), but the discovery that she's called herself a Native has been a setback for her Senate campaign.

OK, I get it -- but why should this make the situation worse for Warren?

... Legal Insurrection's William A. Jacobsen writes that he genealogical knife cuts both ways -- he says Warren is also related to a militia member who participated in the roundup of Native Americans ahead of the Trail of Tears. If Warren is 1/32nd Native American, she is also 1/32nd atrocity committer -- try getting an educational grant for that.

Really? How is that different from being African-American and also being descended from a slave owner, which is the case for a significant percentage of American blacks -- including both Barack and Michelle Obama? I wouldn't argue that Warren is truly Cherokee the way the Obamas are black, but you don't become less of a member of an oppressed group because you're also descended from the oppressors. That's crazy.

Are we going to stop calling people black if their slave ancestors were forcibly impregnated by their owners? That would be the logical extension of this. So, fine -- go ahead and criticize Warren if you think she passed herself off as something she's not. But her non-European blood is still non-European no matter what was done by the Europeans from whom she's descended.

4 comments:

Ten Bears said...

Why the hell should it make a difference? Both my grandmothers were half breeds, leaving me at a quarter, and as far back as a thirty-second escaped/captured black... and I'm as blonde haired and blue eyed as it gets.

A thirty-second is as far back as when many folks ancestors were still in Italy, or Ireland, of China or somewhere else. If her family has been here long enough to qualify for that she probably holds greater claim to "Americana" than the tea baggers.

Victor said...

Making Everest's out of molehills is what the Republican Party is left with.
And that includes wedge issues.

And the MSM is, as ever, there to help them.

Ray Bridges said...

So Warren is an American mestizo. There are a lot of us.

Anonymous said...

If you are 31/32 eurowhite and 1/32 something else you are white, unless the "something else" is black.

Then you're black.

That's how it works in America.

For black we have the "one drop" rule.

For everything else it's just "majority rule."