Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread

[Trebuchet]

Since I inadvertently started a thread digression (Sorry!), can we move the discussion here?

What I said, which pretty much one and all disagreed with, was that I wish she'd take a damn DNA test and announce the results one way or another.

I like Warren rather a lot. My point was that if she gets nominated for POTUS, which I hope she does, the R's would be incessantly complaining about her supposed lying about her ancestry. It would be endless. Why not put it to bed?

I don't care if she does or does not have NA ancestry, which isn't going to be much in any case. I just want to close this issue and don't understand why she doesn't.

 

[dudalb]

I overall like Warren, but thought her making a bid deal about Having a fairly distant Native American ancestor was pretty silly. But not a silly as people constanly harping about it. She did a dumb thing;;show me a politician who has not done a dumb thing.

 

[LSSBB]

As repeatedly mentioned, there is no definitive test of her ancestory, and since we all rely on family lore for our background and it isn't a condition for the presidency, it's all a load of crap and she shouldn't have to provide anything.

That way, she can legitimately run, and hopefully be beat by one of the many candidates I feel would be better in the job.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Since I inadvertently started a thread digression (Sorry!), can we move the discussion here?

What I said, which pretty much one and all disagreed with, was that I wish she'd take a damn DNA test and announce the results one way or another.

I like Warren rather a lot. My point was that if she gets nominated for POTUS, which I hope she does, the R's would be incessantly complaining about her supposed lying about her ancestry. It would be endless. Why not put it to bed?

I don't care if she does or does not have NA ancestry, which isn't going to be much in any case. I just want to close this issue and don't understand why she doesn't.

You don't understand why she doesn't? There seems to be a few good reasons.

The attacks are dishonest. Nobody involved in decision making seem to say it mattered. So a result doesn't invalidate a benefit she did receive. A negative result doesn't invalidate her memories of family stories.

 

[bonzombiekitty]

I overall like Warren, but thought her making a bid deal about Having a fairly distant Native American ancestor was pretty silly. But not a silly as people constanly harping about it. She did a dumb thing;;show be a politician who has done a dumb thing.

Serious question: Did SHE make a big deal about it? AFAIK, she listed herself as having native american ancestry on some form when she worked for (attended?) a university, and her opponents found out about it and that started the whole thing.

The whole "controversy" is stupid.

 

[crescent]

Wiki has a nice summation of the issue:

In April 2012, The Boston Globe sparked a campaign controversy by reporting that from 1986 to 1995 Warren had listed herself as a racial minority in the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Directory of Law Teachers.[67] Harvard Law School had identified Warren as a "woman of color" in response to criticisms about a lack of faculty diversity.[68][69]

Scott Brown, her Republican opponent in the Senate race, accused Warren of fabricating Native American heritage to gain advantage in the job market.[70][71][72] Former colleagues and supervisors at universities where she had worked stated that Warren's ancestry played no role in her hiring.[69][67][72][73] Warren stated that she had listed herself as a minority to meet people of similar heritage, and was unaware that Harvard had listed her as a woman of color.[74] Her brothers defended her, stating that they "grew up listening to our mother and grandmother and other relatives talk about our family's Cherokee and Delaware heritage".[75] In her 2014 autobiography, Warren stated that she had gained no career advantage from her stated heritage, and described the allegations as untrue and hurtful.[76] A 2018 comprehensive review by The Boston Globe found "clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools."[77] Genealogical investigators could not find proof that Warren's ancestors were or were not Native American.[72][78][79] The Oklahoma Historical Society said that finding a definitive answer about Native American heritage can be difficult because of intermarriage and deliberate avoidance of registration.[80] Both Brown and President Donald Trump have challenged Warren to "prove" her Native American ancestry by getting a DNA test, however a genetic expert from the Department of Genetics at Stanford University states "It's really difficult to say that a DNA test would be able to identify how much Native American ancestry [Warren] has."[81][82]

It seems like a non-issue that can neither be proven nor disproven. She never made a big deal out it. She never got any advantage from it. DNA testing would neither prove nor disprove anything. Lack of genealogical sources shows that she has no known ancestors on any of the tribal records, but those records are known to be incomplete. She never brought the issue up in the campaign, her opponent did.

What she has is a claim of a story passed down through her family - nothing more, nothing less.

In Mass. US Senate race, a question of heritage

Tara Damron, assistant curator of the society's American Indian collection, said finding a definitive answer about Native American heritage can be difficult, not only because of intermarriage, but also because some Native Americans opted not to be put on federal rolls, while others who were not Native American did put their names on rolls to get access to land.

"There are a lot of people in Oklahoma who do have native lineage but can't prove that," Damron said.

 

[carlitos]

From the Washington Post, via the wikipedia entry. (this is footnote #81)

Would a DNA test actually answer that question?

No.

Nanibaa' Garrison is a bioethicist and assistant professor of pediatrics at Seattle Children's Hospital. A Native American, she earned a PhD in the Department of Genetics at Stanford, with a dissertation focused on ancestry. In a phone call Tuesday afternoon, she explained why Brown's suggestion -- and the Republican National Committee insisted on Tuesday that it was only that, a suggestion -- wouldn't do any good.

"It's really difficult to say that a DNA test would be able to identify how much Native American ancestry a person has," Garrison said.


That's because determinations of ancestry are based on "ancestry-informative markers" -- genetic flags that offer probabilities of the likelihood of certain ancestries. Most of those markers, AIMs, are "based on global populations that are outside of the U.S.," she said, "primarily people of European descent, people of Asian descent and people of African descent.

Those three populations are not enough to determine how much Native American ancestry a person has." There are some companies that are obtaining DNA from Native Americans to fill that gap -- but that's almost certainly not enough information to make that identification.

 

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Stacyhs View Post

That's quite the assumption since no one has either proved or disproved that Warren has NA ancestry.

Originally Posted by BrooklynBaby View Post
She's proved she isn't part Indian to my satisfaction. She won't take the test because she would fail. There is no rational reason for her not to support her claim if she could. Fake news would be running front page stories on this every day if Fauxcahontas was a Republican, saying exactly the same thing I am saying.

That's like saying someone has proved their guilt because they haven't taken a lie detector test which are proven fallible. DNA tests for heritage can be very misleading because they do not give a person's complete heritage, especially from several generations back (as in my case). They can tell you what heritage you do have, but they cannot tell you what heritage you don't have because of the way genes are passed down. Remember, you only inherit half of your parent's DNA and that is halved with each generation.
If Warren did take a DNA test and it came back with no NA heritage (as mine did), it doesn't take much imagination to know what Trump would do with that information. He wouldn't bother to mention that it doesn't prove anything...and that would be fake news.

 

[BrooklynBaby]

Democrats are hounding people all over the country for "cultural appropriation". With Fauxcahontas we have what I would think is the highest level of cultural appropriation possible, yet the Democrats yawn and say, "Nothing to see here, please move along". No calls for her to prove it or resign. Nada. There is some serious hypocrisy going on here. Don't even try to convince me she wouldn't be getting Red Henned if she was a Republican.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Serious question: Did SHE make a big deal about it? AFAIK, she listed herself as having native american ancestry on some form when she worked for (attended?) a university, and her opponents found out about it and that started the whole thing.

The whole "controversy" is stupid.

It, to the best of my knowledge, gets weird.

According to Politifact's breakdown of it outside of a weird and out of left field incident with a cookbook back in 1984 (no seriously) this whole thing started because Warren sent a formal notice to a couple of law schools (Harvard and University of Penn) claiming either Cherokee or Delaware blood in what appears to be a bid to get a teaching job.

And this was pretty much it (outside of a one off reference in a 1996 University newsletter from Harvard touting the schools diversity) until 2012 when it got brought up... somehow in some context during her Senate race and sort of just snowballed from there.

 

[kookbreaker]

I’m almost certain we’ve had this conversation before. With much the same findings.

It’s just another case of Trump (previously Brown) thinking he’s clever with a 3rd grade insult based on something he imagined to be true.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I’m almost certain we’ve had this conversation before.

We did:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=327744&highlight=warren

 

[pgwenthold]

I overall like Warren, but thought her making a bid deal about Having a fairly distant Native American ancestor was pretty silly..

How did she "make a big deal" about having a Native American ancestor?

 

[BobTheCoward]

Democrats are hounding people all over the country for "cultural appropriation". With Fauxcahontas we have what I would think is the highest level of cultural appropriation possible, yet the Democrats yawn and say, "Nothing to see here, please move along". No calls for her to prove it or resign. Nada. There is some serious hypocrisy going on here. Don't even try to convince me she wouldn't be getting Red Henned if she was a Republican.

Because it isn't cultural appropriation.

 

[carlitos]

Democrats are hounding people all over the country for "cultural appropriation". With Fauxcahontas we have what I would think is the highest level of cultural appropriation possible, yet the Democrats yawn and say, "Nothing to see here, please move along". No calls for her to prove it or resign. Nada. There is some serious hypocrisy going on here. Don't even try to convince me she wouldn't be getting Red Henned if she was a Republican.

If she provided a DNA test and it said she was 1/64th Native American, Donald Trump and Joseph Farah could then spend years asking for the "long form" of the DNA test, so really there is no point.

 

[crescent]

If she provided a DNA test and it said she was 1/64th Native American, Donald Trump and Joseph Farah could then spend years asking for the "long form" of the DNA test, so really there is no point.

Good point - its Birtherism v2.0. Our President is a Birther, along with a big part of the GOP faithful.

There is no evidence they would ever accept.

 

[Stacyhs]

Democrats are hounding people all over the country for "cultural appropriation". With Fauxcahontas we have what I would think is the highest level of cultural appropriation possible, yet the Democrats yawn and say, "Nothing to see here, please move along". No calls for her to prove it or resign. Nada. There is some serious hypocrisy going on here. Don't even try to convince me she wouldn't be getting Red Henned if she was a Republican.

She may well have been "red henned" if she were a Republican. However, that hypothetical is no excuse for actually calling her Pocahontas or Fauxcahontas as it has neither been proved nor disproved for reason that have been explained. Trump was calling her that before he had any idea whether it was true or not. He used it to degrade her, a tactic he so often resorts to.

 

[JoeMorgue]

1. Cultural appropriation is a stupid concept.
2. The idea that it doesn't matter whether or not the claim she made is true or not because her opponent won't believe it doesn't make sense.
3. The whole thing is still pointless.

 

[LSSBB]

Because it isn't cultural appropriation.

And neither you nor I are Democrats.

 

[varwoche]

I overall like Warren, but thought her making a bid deal about Having a fairly distant Native American ancestor was pretty silly. But not a silly as people constanly harping about it. She did a dumb thing;;show be a politician who has done a dumb thing.

Same. I think it's disingenuous to represent one's self as ethnicity X when at best one is 1/64th X. Based on what little I know about the particulars, it appears to simply have been a young person trying to look cool. BFD.