Funny, the media only decide to get feedback from the Native leaders after a Democrat responds to the constant racist baiting by Trump. Tell me again how the mainstream media are biased towards liberals?
Instead, Trump’s abject racism gets turned into another “bothsides” wankfest that the media craves. Anything to keep up the horse-race narrative.
Much of how legal tribal status is established is based on outdated racial politics and will not survive another generation or two. Have a look at the Seminole and a few other tribes and their struggles to identify themselves in some rational way. Warren descended from the native peoples who lived on this continent. Her DNA matches her family traditional stories. She has every right to be as proud of that heritage as she wishes to be. Her pride in that heritage does nothing to diminish any one else’s right. Trump has no right to attack her for having expressed a connection to her biological heritage that she believed in good faith that she had and now is scientifically confirmed to exist. There is no evidence that she did anything to claim any improper advantage from this heritage or any legal status as a member of a registered tribe. People with native bloodlines should be proud of their native ancestry an people who are members of legally recognized tribes should stop acting like the ancestry of others is of a lesser importance or invalid. Such an attitude is racist and disgusting as much as saying that someone is not black enough or not white enough and attempting to exclude them from the community on those grounds. She has the parentage. If she wants to connect with the culture on some level her ancestors give her the right to do so. No one has the right to mock it. That is what this is about. Native Americans will come away stronger by embracing that principle than by suggesting she is not pure enough to be counted among them.
I thought that was a very measured and absolutely unsurprising take by the Cherokee SOS. He didn’t even need to avoid taking sides for political reasons; membership in the tribe has little or nothing to do with DNA. If your ancestors weren’t on the rolls it doesn’t matter what your actual heritage is or what you look like. If they were, ditto. It’s a very imperfect line (and in the case of the Black Cherokee, a particularly problematic one). But the issues the tribes and tribal members are dealing with are still there nevertheless.
It’s very generic “calling names” that isn’t even directed to one side. Keep in mind that this is Oklahoma, not only Trump county but the deepest of red Trump country, and this is a political office.
To say someone is partly Native American or 1/32 or 1/64 is inherently wrong. The same may be said of being 1/2 Jewish or 1/4 Italian or was Obama 1/2 black or was he 1/2 white?
We do not call our son or daughter 1/2 our child. They are our child 100%. They are ours completely and they are our spouse’s completely as well (I’m old fashioned, edit that sentence as needed if you must). This is the way families work much to the dismay of mathematicians everywhere. The same will follow for the next generation and the next. If you have any doubt of this, talk to any racist in the South about the small amount of “negro” blood you have from your great-great-grandma and he (its generally a “he” as such things are too complicated for the women-folk to explain) will be happy to explain to you just how benighted you are as though you were from “darkest Africa”. In this he is right. President Obama was indeed fully black. He was not half black, or a lesser qualified black man, but a fully black American. But the other side that will blow everyone’s mind and maybe take another generation before we are ready to really say it out loud and accept it even on the liberal side is that means he was also fully a white man. He was as much fully the grandson of the white WWII vet from the midwest that lived the white American Dream and just as much right and claim to all that heritage even if a world would like to have tried to deny it him. This parsing of our ancestry into fractions is buying into a silliness that even the racists know is not true. We cannot divide ourselves in 64 or 128 pieces. A heritage is either something that is in us or it is not. If we have an ancestor, no matter how far back, that contributed to what makes our existence possible and we acknowledge that connection and honor it, then that heritage is ours fully, as fully as we would like it to be. Allowing others to define how much of that heritage we have a right to is as absurd as allowing others to define how much of a parents love we might receive.
*Please note I do understand the additional complications surrounding the legal recognition of Native Tribes for treaty rights and other federal issues. This is not what I am speaking of and not what Sen Warren has ever attempted to achieve for herself.
The report on her website says it was sent to a DNA testing company, and the results sent to Dr. Bustamante for analysis.
The point is not what company did the test, but the reference DNA population is small.
Yeah I mean seriously you leave a few million people on the frontier together unsupervised with no television and lots of scenery and secluded areas for a few hundred years and all sorts of stuff happens.
What is really a problem is this SoS equating Warren and Trump’s part in this.
Warren proudly said she had some Native American ancestry, but that it did not definitely her.
Trump mocked her for years accusing her of lying and using a Native American historical figure – Pocohantus – as an insult.
Suggesting that both are equally to blame for confusion over what denotes a legal Native American is stupid, and just played into Trump’s hands.
You’d think at least some lessons would have been learned by now… They still feel no need to examine (and atone!) for their pivotal contribution to this ongoing shit show.
IF the Cherokee Nation doesn’t like they can take it up with Watson and Crick. It’s a DNA test and she isn’t the only one who has tested with Native American ancestors.
All this may be true, but as you point out in your footnote, the exact percentage is everything when it comes to claiming tribal membership (at least for the Cherokee). It doesn’t convey indefinitely. And membership does have particular political and financial rights that are perhaps more meaningful in recent decades - in large part due to the work of tribal governments.
Of course, none of that applies whatsoever to Elizabeth Warren and what she said or claimed about her ancestry. Conflating the issues is the attack.
This is absolutely true. But there is something about Warren’s Indian heritage claims that I fully understand might offend real members of Indian tribes. They suffer, still, for their heritage while she gets to wear her miniscule percentage as sort of a flag pin, albeit with no malicious intent.
I’m reminded of the line from Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “My Country 'Tis of the People You’re Dying”, Now that my life’s to be known as your heritage… To me it explains a lot.
It’s actually one of the most stunning protest songs ever written.
It’s hard to ignore the misogyny permeating these attacks on Warren. It is simply another version of the “shut up b*tch, quit persisting” command so favored by Trumpublicans.
Scott Brown made the argument before Trump. Imagine that. Trump had to copycat the most shallow, superficial one half term Senator in Massachusetts history.
And that is my point. This SoS should not be conflating the issue. He should be glad Warren is embracing her heritage and acknowledge that her interest in her heritage is in no way a threat to his legal rights, if anything it is a positive thing for Native peoples. His behavior is self serving and attention seeking with very poor timing and not in the best interest of the Cherokee. He would turn the matter of Cherokee rights into highlighting how much they are based on the rather dubious and outdated notions of racial purity that are difficult to support in a modern society. Best NOT to shine a bright spotlight there by disparaging the heritage of others.
This is what I think.
I understand and am sympathetic to the Native American wish not to have their culture coopted by white people but that is not happening here. What happened here is a scientific test that showed Elizabeth has the ancestry she claimed and that’s it.
I do not get what the Cherokee Nation is upset over. They may as well be mad about DNA testing in general. DNA testing shows that we are all the same race and same species and that is a scientific and unavoidable truth.
I tell all my students that they should live by one code in class: “If it’s not an issue, don’t make it one.”
The Cherokee Sec’y of State is partly right in saying this all is just a big nothing-burger. But since the 3rd grader-in-chief decided to make it an issue, then Sen. Warren was right to call him out on it. But since the guy, who turned coward and ran away claiming “bone spurs” when his country asked him to defend it, acts like a coward again when caught in a lie, it’s going to be brought up again and again.
It’s like I said yesterday. Sen. Warren is way out of Trump’s league. He’s better off picking fights with someone his own IQ, like Jeff Sessions.
I think it’s already a loss, judging by. How the whole public debate is resembling a food fight now. Except a food fight would be more wholesome and productive.
As I recall, Elizabeth didn’t start this initially - that male pinup who ran against her did. His campaign got it from her college records.
I’m not sure what such members would be offended by, if she acts and fights for their interests as a Senator (to the extent she is able). As far as I can tell that is exactly what she does every day.
The problem isn’t that white privilege exists, per se. (Elizabeth Warren is no more responsible for that than she is for the moon hanging up in the night sky.) It’s white privilege that doesn’t acknowledge its own existence.