When Elizabeth Warren was outed as a fake Native American (specifically, Cherokee), I thought it was comical, but not otherwise newsworthy.
According to Elizabeth Warren (and Harvard), she claimed to be Native American when applying to go to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, as well as when applying for a professorship at Harvard, but did not benefit from those claims . Given that the only purpose for asking someone’s ethnicity on an application is to allow preferential treatment, there is no question that Elizabeth Warren was at least trying to get preferential treatment. Harvard immediately championed Mrs. Warren around as the first Professor of Color in Harvard Law School’s history (and put her on a diversity board), making it look like her Native American status was a major factor her being hired (in spite of their claims otherwise), and Elizabeth Warren certainly benefitted from her Native American status after having been hired.
Still, Harvard hired her in 1995 (more than twenty years ago), and I initially did not think it was a very important issue. I thought it was funny how easily Donald Trump could poke fun at Elizabeth Warren, and I noticed how the mainstream media kept trying to spin Donald Trump’s criticism of Elizabeth Warren as being racist, rather than calling Elizabeth Warren’s case of ethnic fraud an act of racism (talk about bias!), but at the same time, I saved my criticism for the media. I was not going to pay much attention to a case of fraud more than twenty years old…
Then Brett Kavanaugh happened.
I believe in the power of redemption and am far more concerned with who someone is today than with who they were several decades ago, but Elizabeth Warren poo-pooing what she did twenty some years ago, while simultaneously calling for Brett Kavanaugh to be hung out to dry based on something he allegedly did (no proof) more than thirty-some years ago, makes her a terrible hypocrite. That does bother me, and I have in fact created a new rule: I will forever more hold all politicians to the same standards they hold their political opponents to. This completely disqualifies Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, and a host of other people (including some Republicans) from consideration.
Rather than simply saying she made a mistake (twice) when she was young, Elizabeth Warren doubled-down on her claim with a DNA test. Mrs Warren did not use a run-of-the-mill DNA test, such as the one from Ancestry.com, as that would have shown her to be 100% white. Rather, she had one of the top geneticists in the world pour over every minute detail of her DNA, looking for any possible indication of anything not white. It turns out Elizabeth Warren has five markers of Native South American ancestry (most likely from Columbia or Bolivia), and Mrs. Warren sent her report to the Boston Globe (which broke it as a major news article), supposedly ‘proving’ that she is somewhere between 1/64th and 1/1024th Native American.
As if Elizabeth Warren publishing a report showing she is only 1/1024th Native American were not comical enough, by the time I read the article, the Boston Globe had added a correction to the bottom (which those clicking the link above will see), in which they say that the original article included a math error. Elizabeth Warren is not 1/64th to 1/1024th Native American, but rather an ancestor of hers from six to 10 generations ago, was 1/64th to 1/1024th Native American.
Elizabeth Warren is somewhere between 1/64th of 1/64th, and 1/1024th of 1/1024th, Native American. If you do the math, that comes out to 1/4,096th on the high end, and 1/1,048,576th on the low end. My wife, who was born and raised in Communist Poland, is in all likelihood (statistically speaking – she has not had a DNA test), more Native American than Elizabeth Warren, and Elizabeth Warren is very possibly the whitest person on the planet. And, to make this story even more comical, the Cherokee lived more than three thousand miles away from South America, emerging as a people hundreds, if not thousands of years, after Mrs. Warren’s last full-blooded Native American ancestor lived.
Picture in your head, for just a moment, the President of Harvard University proudly proclaiming that their Law School is now taking ethnic diversity seriously, and then marching Elizabeth Warren out as proof. Saturday Night Live should do a skit – they could have her march out dressed like Heinrich Himmler, and have her do the Nazi salute before giving her speech about how hard it was growing up with blonde hair and blue eyes, in a white neighborhood, with the Anglo-Saxon name of ‘Herring’ (her maiden name).
There are legal standards in place for claiming benefits from Native American heritage. To receive any benefits at all, one has to be at least 1/16th Native American. Elizabeth Warren had absolutely no business claiming to be Native American without first documenting that she met that standard, and every actual Person of Color in the nation should be outraged that the whitest person on the planet sought, and with all likelihood got, preferential treatment, by claiming to be an ethnic minority. That his essentially exactly what Harvard did!
Defending Elizabeth Warren’s claim of Native American ancestry, as our mainstream media is doing, may be the most comical part yet. If she’s Native American, we all are…
Elizabeth Warren is very likely running for President in two years. Committing fraud twenty-some years ago should not disqualify her (IMHO), but her hypocrisy, and her ongoing lying about her heritage should. By defending Elizabeth Warren’s claims, our mainstream media has proven beyond any shadow of doubt that they are partisan, and as we move further and further toward the midterms, we all have to keep that in mind.
The only way we will ever get a truly fair and honest press corps again will be to ignore the media, to recognize their bias, and to vote Republican. I wrote in a recent article that due process is on the ballot. So is factual honesty. Vote accordingly.
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Terrific piece, Wallace! I like your new rule: Hold politicians accountable to the very standards to which they hold their own opponents. Wouldn’t things get a good bit more sane and civil if voters widely embraced your rule?
Thank you! Yes – I think politics would improve a great deal if everyone held firm to that rule.