In defense of Elizabeth Warren....personal experience

[Peacetrain]

I am hoping Biden runs.. because I truly feel we will need someone with his experience in the Executive Branch to hit the ground running to save what is left of our government..

Having said that..Not for a New York second do I believe E.Warren purposely tried to mislead anyone.. She (just like me) had been told all her life that she had Native American ancestry.. so did I.. either one fourth or one eighth Cherokee.. everyone in our family laid claim to our Native American ancestry.. then 23 and me gave us all a whole new DNA history... we were not not one inkling Native American.. where did all those traits we saw in each other that we identified as Native American come from.. our straight black hair, high cheekbones, and almond eyes.. blue not brown.. but almond shaped none the less..

She made a claim to her heritage in the 80's... God knows I have..but we are 85% Irish and English.. we all knew that we had that Irish heritage.. but no Native American.. in fact E. Warren does have some claim to Native heritage

So in the age of Ancestry.Com.. we can be self sanctimonious and demand perfection from someone who did not have that accessible to them.. berate them, and let a President make racially insensitive comments calling her Pocahontas..

Give E. Warren a break.. its tough to lose part of the identity you were always told you had.. trust me.. I know.. She did not try and take advantage of tribal membership.. just like us.. it was just a proud part of her history, that her family always told her..

[unblock]

1. what pisses me off is that we as a country decide things like tax rates on the basis of this crap.

in effect, the national dialog amounts to:

should income beyond $1 million be taxed at 70% instead of 23.8%?
should consumers and investors get serious protections from greedy peddlers of dubious securities?
should everyone be guaranteed health insurance?
yeah, those all sound like great ideas, but one of the people who suggested that once said something that might be considered offensive to some people, so, no, we'll stick with the current deal where ordinary people get routinely screwed.

[ProfessorPlum]

8. boy, well said.

you've put it perfectly. this is no way to make policy

[ZeroSomeBrains]

25. I couldn't have said it better myself n/t

[mountain grammy]

37. Yes!! Well said

[Charlotte Little]

66. This!!!!

I'm pissed too. And you're right. When did the United States of America become a reality TV show and/or therapy session? And where are the adults?

[mainstreetonce]

2. My thought on this is

Why do people care? It is just not important.

[PatSeg]

67. I agree

With all the scandals we see on a regular basis from the republicans, real scandals, why is the media spending so much time on this manufactured right-wing crap? I don't think for one moment Elizabeth Warren has ever been dishonest about this or any other issue, but apparently she and her family thought they were more Native American than they thought. Well, most people have beliefs based on family stories that could be questionable. That does not make them dishonest and hardly qualifies as a scandal.

Republicans created this faux scandal and the damn media perpetuated it once again. Will journalists ever get a clue? Look around, DC is full of real scandals!

[Bradshaw3]

3. Too many are trying to make an issue of it

Including some on here. Her long, long history of fighting economic equality is the real talking point.

[LexVegas]

4. At the end of the day, the voters will decide. nt

[eissa]

5. How many people are like this person?

[link:

|

Told all their lives that they belong to a certain ethnicity, only to discover otherwise. In the grand scheme of things, this is such a non-issue.

[LexVegas]

6. Being told you are a different kind of white person is a little different. nt

[RobinA]

16. You Know This

because it happened to you, or are you just seeing an opportunity to take a shot at white people? White people's ancestry can be just as important to them as non-white people's.

[TexasBushwhacker]

18. But when a form asks for race

You put "white" whether you're Irish or German or Italian. Warren put "Native American" even though she's white.

I love her, but she's toast.

[RobinA]

55. I Do.

But I was referring to the notion that a white person finding out that what they thought was their heritage is really not their heritage is somehow of lesser consequence than it would be to an non-white person as referenced by the "different kind of white person" remark.

[Caliman73]

68. White people's ancestry HAS been infinitely more important than any non-Whites

For most of history. When White people claim to have non-White ancestry and it gives them an advantage apart from their White privilege it is a bit upsetting to those of us who have faced discrimination.


I don't know that it is necessarily something that should eliminate Warren from contention, but there are probably a lot of Native American people who aren't too happy.

[gratuitous]

7. Warren relayed a family history of Native ancestry

She took the test to shut up the vulgar talking yam, and it turns out her family history was accurate: She does have Native ancestry. She didn't lose part of her identity, it was confirmed. In all the kerfuffle, there is no evidence that she presented herself as a tribal member entitled to any benefits or preferential consideration. In all that time, she has been an exemplary student, professor, public official, and elected official, conscientious and hard working. Any alleged boost she may have received early on (and there is no evidence of that, just to say it again) has been more than justified by her career since then.

Anyone stuck on Warren's ancestry while excusing every Republican fuckheaded distraction from their own perfidy is such a dupe he or she shouldn't be out in public unsupervised.

[ProfessorPlum]

11. I believe (and please correct me if I am wrong)

this issue was first brought up by the Boston Globe when Warren was running against Scott Brown. They found that she had once checked a demographic survey box asking her what her ancestry was, and one of the boxes she checked was native american. That is what she'd been told. Brown, of course, classily started calling her Pocohontas.

There also seems to have been some issue with what Harvard did with that information - I think they may have published a book or schedule of professors with different backgrounds and listed her that way. I have read this, but haven't confirmed it.

All in all, I find she has done _nothing_ wrong, and handled this issue quite well. All the bullshit about the test having gone wrong baffles me. She proved that she had been telling the truth her whole life.

I frankly love her, and her concern for people over banks. She knows just how we are being screwed and is angry about it. I'll be supporting her in the primary.

[gratuitous]

13. I don't know about Harvard

But it wouldn't surprise me if Harvard wanted a broad demographic profile of its faculty as a way of presenting its diversity credentials to prospective students and the general public. Warren certainly has Native ancestry, and what Harvard did with that information isn't Warren's responsibility (as you know).

I agree, Warren has done nothing wrong and walked hand-in-hand with the truth throughout this issue. The persistence of the "clouds" and the "lingering questions" on her reputation I attribute to a rapacious financial services industry (payday loan vultures, Wells Fargo and other "too big to fail" banks) that Warren has publicly stated she would like to break in pieces.

[maddiemom]

40. Wait, what? SCOTT BROWN started the "Pocohantas" thing?

Just another thing Trump took credit for that he didn't deserve? Well, he did tell those Native Americans "'We" call her..."

[ProfessorPlum]

45. Yes

After the Boston Globe published a big story on this non story.

[Hekate]

65. Yes, and his supporters did the woo-woo yell and hatchet-wave gesture at her. Nice, right?

You can tell just how "beneficial" that was to her career by how those yahoos responded.

[Ferryboat]

62. THIS

Very well stated.

[hopeforchange2008]

9. I had a similar experience.

Family lore was that somewhere in the far distant past, we had a Native American ancestor. 23andme and Ancestry advise otherwise. Growing up, it was always presented as infinitesimal, so we never brought it up outside of our home.

What's interesting about the DNA testing is that as the sample size grows, the details of ancestral makeup change. My sister did hers much earlier than I did, and since her initial report, she's seen much fine-tuning.

[customerserviceguy]

57. It's like political polling

The larger the sample, the lower the margin of error. DNA companies have been making strides in going to far-off areas of the world to get more testers from well-documented groups of people.

[LexVegas]

10. I was told we had Asian ancestry. I believed it because....my mom was a Korean woman.

[SweetieD]

12. I think it was intentionally misleading. Her parents aren't native, she knows nothing of

Native languages or culture, has no affiliation with a clan, band, or other kin group, did not grow up in or near any native community. She is not native and knew it at the time. The only reason for trying to reach back and claim some 4th great grandparent to describe your race or ethnicity is if she thought it would benefit her. It is disrespectful to real native americans, especially ones who can't pass for white.

And I actually like Elizabeth Warren but I think she was wrong for this. She was also old enough to know better. It was not some innocent mistake.

[ProfessorPlum]

14. she NEVER claimed to be Native American - on edit, I was not correct on this point

Last edited Thu Feb 7, 2019, 02:31 PM - Edit history (1)

she claimed (correctly, it turns out) that she was told she had a Native American ancestor. There is nothing wrong about what she did.

The GOP implies that she made some kind of claim that she never made - and you seem to be responding to that innuendo. But don't be propagandized.

Or maybe there is something you mean by "she was wrong for this" that i don't know about. Can you clarify?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

15. Wait. She didn't print "Native American" on her Bar application?

I think the whole thing is silly, badly handled but silly, but she did print that on the application. Unless I’m mistaken.

[ProfessorPlum]

17. I don't know if it was the bar application or some other test or what

but there are questions where they ask about your ancestry (check all that apply), and I believe she checked Native American in addition to European/Caucasian) for one or more of those questions.

That was true as far as she knew at the time. And it turned out to be actually true.

She could have lied on that question, I suppose, and hidden her distant Native American ancestry as if it were something to be ashamed of. Do you think she should have?

[SweetieD]

23. Should Obama's mother described herself as black? Like on applications under race put black?

Because his mom also had a distant black ancestor. But both common sense and reality is that she was white, her parents were white, etc. If she had put black on some application that would have been wrong.

It is about common sense. I'm black and African-American. I've had my dna tested. I got 3 percent germanic origins. So when it asks my race and ethnicity should I put white german? Like come on.

Sorry I will just never agree that w Warren innocently listed her race as native American.

[ProfessorPlum]

27. what you seem to be suggesting is if Obama was asked what his heritage was

he should not have listed his white/european ancestry.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

26. She wrote it out.

I don’t get it. She was an attorney for 10 years at this point and she’s claiming to be “American Indian”

Having a small bit of Native American heritage is a far cry from being “American Indian”






<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Here is the form Elizabeth Warren filled out for the State Bar of Texas claiming American Indian heritage. <a href="https://t.co/VwHifS7BCL">pic.twitter.com/VwHifS7BCL</a></p>— Amy Gardner (@AmyEGardner) <a href="

Link to tweet

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[ProfessorPlum]

28. whoa

I stand corrected.

She did, apparently, in that one case make that claim.

Thank you for that.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

35. The only thing I can figure is she was a Republican at that point.

We know how republicans feel about these questions. Maybe she was just being “cute” at that point.

I had a training officer that worked for me 20 years ago in the mortgage business who used to tell new hires not to fuck around with those boxes on mortgage applications. He would tell a story about a loan officer he knew who was investigated because all his applications had, If I recall correctly, “Native American Alaskan/Inuit” checked. A sudden surge of those applications in an area that didn’t make sense tripped an investigation. Supposedly he got a stern talking to.

[ProfessorPlum]

36. yeah, bizarre

I guess she did flirt with her identity a bit. That form was a definite lie.

I still like her plans for reining in the fraud in the financial sector, but I'm glad for the information.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

38. I like her too.

[progree]

34. It has Race: _________ and she wrote in American Indian (no multiple checkbox stuff)

The date coincided with her first listing as a “minority” by the Association of American Law Schools. Warren reported herself as minority in the directory every year starting in 1986 — when AALS first included a list of minority law professors — to 1995, when her name dropped off the list.

Warren also had her ethnicity changed from white to Native American in December 1989 while working at the University of Pennsylvania. The change came two years after she was hired there.

Several months after Warren started working at Harvard Law School in 1995, she okayed listing her ethnicity as Native American. Harvard listed Warren as Native American in its federal affirmative action forms from 1995 to 2004, records show.

There’s no indication Warren had anything to gain by reporting herself as Native American on the Texas bar card. Above the lines for race, national origin and handicap status, the card says,

“The following information is for statistical purposes only and will not be disclosed to any person or organization without the express written consent of the attorney.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-calling-herself-native-american/2019/02/05/1627df76-2962-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html

The Wapo article also notes that based on a Boston Globe investigation, that none of this has been shown to help advance her carreer - she was considered white by both the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. And that she filled out the above card AFTER being admitted to the Texas Bar (so it wouldn't be, or was ever meant to be, a factor to help her get admitted to the bar).

[LisaM]

50. It the question was "check all that apply", then I think this is case closed.

Back when affirmative action was still around, there was a lot of interest in peoples' background, and a push to make universities more diverse. Some people come from backgrounds with lots of different ethnicities.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

51. You are a couple days behind on the news cycle.

Look up ^^^^

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11788798

[druidity33]

52. Yeah, seeing it now... nt.

[SweetieD]

20. She was wrong for putting down Native American as her race on the Texas bar

Application. I think that was in the 80s. She also said a couple of days ago she may have listed her race as native American on other forms. That is wrong and was misleading.

[ProfessorPlum]

21. need documentation of both of those claims please

thank you in advance

[SweetieD]

24. Google it. It came out a few days ago. Both the application and her response to it.

[pnwmom]

43. She knew it wouldn't benefit her. My husband was filling out forms in the same era,

and in the kind of towns they came from people LOOKED DOWN on Native Americans. So for someone like Elizabeth Warren to proclaim what she thought was her ancestry was a mark of solidarity.

And there was no benefit to filling out a form after she already had the job, which is what she did. The question was asked for statistical purposes only. She didn't get any special Native American scholarship or other consideration.

[catbyte]

53. As someone who's more that 5/8 Ojibwe, I don't think she intentionally misled anybody. I'm much

angrier at the jerks calling her "Pocahontas" and all that bs. There are a lot of family myths out there, and she never gained anything monetarily or professionally for claiming Indian ancestry. It's just another republican hit job that is insulting to Senator Warren and us.

[panader0]

19. My grandmother was one half Crow. Born in Lodge Grass, Montana, in the 1880's.

That makes me one eighth Crow. I have never tried to claim that I was
Native American, as my other ancestry is Irish and English. On various
forms I have always identified as white, and for Warren to claim Native
American to get into school or whatever, is wrong. She stepped in it, and it
will stick to her shoe. She should not seek the POTUS.
Apparently her ancestry is between 128th and 1024th Native.
I really like Warren, but I think this shoots her ambitions down.

[ProfessorPlum]

22. She never claimed to be native american - on edit, that's not true, thanks for the info

she claimed to have a native american ancestor.

Am I the crazy one for recognizing the difference?

[panader0]

29. How about when she applied for the State Bar of Texas?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-apologizes-for-calling-herself-native-american/2019/02/05/1627df76-2962-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dd84665e47d9

[LongtimeAZDem]

30. Yes she did

?w=862

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/06/audio-elizabeth-warren-couldnt-recall-native-american-claim-apologizes-again/

Does it matter? Depends on who you ask.

My take is that if Native American groups speak out against it, she should apologize.

If Hannity or Carlson speak out against it, she should say, "yeah, but I was a Republican at the time".

[SharonClark]

31. See #17 above. She wrote "American Indian" as her race.

[frazzled]

32. I think the issue is not that she thought that she had Native American ancestry

which, it turns out, she did--but quite remotely.

The issue is that she consistently identified herself as Native American (or "American Indian" ) on official documents and in official capacities: on her application for the Texas Bar, and at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard Law School. In other words, she hasn't just claimed to have Native ancestry or heritage. She claimed to be Native American.

That's a little crazy. My actual grandparents (not my 4th great grandparents or 8th great grandparents) on one side were from Hungary. I grew up eating my grandma's paprikash and goulash and her incredible dobos tortes. My grandparents spoke Hungarian, though I never learned a word. But I would never list myself as Hungarian on an official document.

Or I think about my son, who did the 23andMe thing about 9 years ago, before it was well known. His report came back as being 99.6% European Ashkenazic Jewish, which made us laugh (though we were hardly surprised; just a little scared at the thought of being so inbred). I don't know what that other .4% was, but say it was Chinese (yes, when some of my husband's relatives on his father's side fled Europe they ended up settling in China: one of them could have married a Chinese person). Would he rightfully have claimed to be Chinese on his college application?

[deurbano]

58. "...just a little scared at the thought of being so inbred." LOL!

Until this revelation, I thought this was nothing-- just a heritage (even if from the distant past) she was proud of, and not anything from which she directly benefited (or tried to benefit)... but it was weird to put that down as how she actually identified herself... and even if she didn't actually benefit, did she think it might provide some kind of advantage?

Like... my dad said his grandmother in Mississippi looked like a "squaw" (HIS words!)... and I was led to believe I have some amount of Native American ancestry. (Not that anybody in my racist family was celebrating that heritage!) When I lived in Vermont for four years (as a young, poor single mother), I wondered/joked if I had enough Native American ancestry to qualify for (what I heard was) free tuition for Native Americans at Dartmouth, and I had also "heard" (undoubtedly, from no one with any expertise) that to qualify as Native American, you had to have 1/16th ancestry. This was in the 1970s, and I obviously had no concept of tribes (or anything else)... and no evidence that what my dad said was true... and I never investigated that claim and haven't tried the DNA testing... and I never actually applied to Dartmouth (but instead moved back to CA to attend Berkeley as the white woman I am!)... but despite my little fantasy about attending Dartmouth tuition-free, I never would have identified myself as Native American. I mean, maybe if my family had proudly celebrated that heritage (as Warren's family apparently did), if there were multiple boxes to check, I might have included Native American... but not as the sole (or major) way of identifying myself. It does feel like she thought she might benefit in some "diversity" way.

[demigoddess]

33. my uncle told me in 1979 they had a grandmother who was Cherokee

and I was 1/8th Cherokee. I was happy to hear it, I admire the native Americans. Then recently did the DNA and it came back with none. So disappointed. I even heard from my uncle before his death in the 80s he said that it took a lot of money but he had proved it. I have a feeling it was a scam that genealogy scammers ran back in the day. I have read about this sort of thing in the 30 or 40s. I guess her family fell for the same thing.

[Scruffy1]

39. I once checked Eskimo on a University form.

Just bored, I guess.

[BigmanPigman]

41. Same here.

My grandfather always said he was part Native American and it was a never questioned. My mother started to do our family tree about 20 years ago but when she got the DNA test and had my father give a sample she found out 0% Native American.

[WePurrsevere]

42. Just because NA doesnt show up in a DNA test doesn't mean you don't have NA ancestry...

Ethnicity doesn't work like many seem to think it does and NA even less so.

Here's a great link to explain more about NA DNA...
http://www.rootsandrecombinantdna.com/2015/03/native-american-dna-is-just-not-that.html

And this site does a very good explanation of how Admixture/Ethnicity in general work...
https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2014/05/18/admixture-not-soup-yet/work

[IronLionZion]

44. I don't know how much we can trust DNA tests

There are many racists who were disappointed to find out they weren't as pure as they thought. That was awesome

[shanti]

49. Huh?

Were you being faceitious about trusting DNA tests? DNA doesn't lie.

[IronLionZion]

54. Not for ancestry. People have gotten different results from different companies

and identical twins have gotten different results

[shanti]

56. I've taken both

The only thing that was different is that Ancestry didn't catch my miniscule NA. Do you have a link to the identical twins results? I would like to read it.

[IronLionZion]

59. The limits of ancestry DNA tests, explained

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/28/18194560/ancestry-dna-23-me-myheritage-science-explainer

Twins get some 'mystifying' results when they put 5 DNA ancestry kits to the test
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/dna-ancestry-kits-twins-marketplace-1.4980976

[sandensea]

46. Well said. This has LOSING ISSUE written all over it for Republicans.

Something like one-third of White Americans have at least some Native American ancestry - and my guess is that most of them know it, and are rightfully proud of it.

If Cheeto thinks racial epithets against Native Americans is a good campaign strategy, the hosing Ivana gave him in the early '90s will be nothing compared to the one voters will give him next year.

[shanti]

48. I took the 23nme test too

and it came back with about the same amount of NA as Elizabeth Warren. I had no idea, and neither did my father whose side it came from. Liz took the test too, and now she knows. To know better is to do better.

All of this calling out of people for things that they did in the distant past is getting disturbing. Why is it that when Republicons do this they are not called, or when they are, it doesn't matter? This is a war, and they expect to win.

[peggysue2]

61. The reason I cannot get bent over Elizabeth Warren's DNA snafu is . . . personal experience

My husband had a near identical story in his family, a presumed Native American link to his great-grandmother. The story had been supplied through his grandfather with a lot of detail that sounded absolutely credible. And so, that story was passed around as real. And yet, when my husband took the DNA testing there wasn't a hint of Native DNA. His grandparents are dead so there's no going back to question the details. It will remain a family mystery. However, my husband did have a high Neanderthal score which has provided me with hours of teasing.

My DNA testing was pretty boring, no surprises other than a single link to a distant Finn blood relative some 5 generations ago. Everything else (92+%) pointed to an Irish/British data base, scattered with Northern European and a smattering of French/German lineage.

For me the DNA testing was important for health reasons. My father and sister had/have Alzheimers. I was grateful and relieved to find out I don't share the marker for the disease. And being the sort of nosy news spot that I am that was something I wanted a heads up on. Doesn't mean I can't have other problems with dementia caused by small strokes, for instance. That's the way my mother and my maternal grandmother went. But at least the Alzheimer factor is off the table.

But as for the family stories? I think these are far more common than we think. Elizabeth Warren is being hit over the head with all this for purely political reasons. Yes, the rollout may have been clumsy and now we know she used the ethnic/racial identity on one of her bar certificates. So what? This is just being weaponized to wound her chances in 2020. And btw, which has been more offensive--Elizabeth Warren's claim to Native American lineage or Trump's incessant shout out to Pocahontas?

For any objective person, it's definitely the latter.

[nolabear]

63. I have a Choctaw g-g-grandmother, Who may or may not be Choctaw.

My father told us stories of her using “Indian medicine” on him twice to save his life. It seems to have been a combination of some very smart folk medicine (plunging him in cold water to break a fever and swinging him around by the ankles to dislodge fluid in his lungs when he had pneumonia) and a laying on of hands and chanting, “talking the fire out of a burn.” This is a well known technique used many years ago in Native American lore. My father, who was as meanly judgmental as anyone I’ve ever known, spoke of her worshipfully and since much of my childhood was spent watching my mother slowly die I took to her as a source of hope that I had inherited something strong and admirable.

So, I took a DNA test. It shows no NA ancestry. At the same time the line is through my father’s mother so the haplogroups are tricky. And the grandmother in question’s father can’t be traced on ancestry sites. We’ve got everyone else way, way back. And of course that dreamy, longing for connection kid in me still wants it to be true.

I never put NA on a form, and if it was sheer opportunism I can see it as a mistake. But it isn’t a simple thing either. Facts and hearts sometimes battle over things. I really like EW and I hate that there seems no way to forgive a mistake when real good can be accomplished thereby. How she continues to handle it will mean a lot.

[TomSlick]

64. Yeah, me too.

I was always told that my great-grandmother was Native American. The surviving photo of her certainly looks like she was Native American. There was never any question in the family that she was Native American. The problem is that when family members started doing DNA tests, they showed that none of us have any - not any - Native American DNA.

[Peacetrain]

69. It is amazing to me that so many have had the same experience! NT

[McCamy Taylor]

70. Call Trump " the Swede"

His family lied about their German heritage. Warren never lied.

[Peacetrain]

71. Brilliant!!