Someone at the NY Times has a serious girl-crush on Elizabeth Warren

Warren's troubles are a lesson in PR. If you try to duck something like this, it's tough to get past it.

 

If she lied about it to benefit her career, it's a big deal.

But, more than that, this is akin to "Stolen Valor".

If you're a descendant of Native Americans, it mean your ancestors endured hardship, and strife. They likely literally fought for their lives, and for the right to preserve their Nation, language, customs, etc.

It's no different than claiming to descend from Holocaust survivors, or from former slaves. It has meaning. And, to falsely assert such a claim is disgraceful.

It somehow makes an otherwise "white" person feel more special, more exotic. But, it takes more that "high cheekbones" and "family lore" to make such a claim.

And, Warren claims both Cherokee and Delaware ancestry -- with no proof.

 

I'm pretty far to the left on this one.

 

And that's the message, the lesson to be learned here. There's a story I vaguely remember about some country singer (Merle Hggard? Waylon Jennings? David Allen Coe?) telling Johnny Cash that he was worried the public might find out he'd been in prison and that it could ruin his career. Cash's advice, as I recall, was to just come out and make it public yourself -- that way no one can use it against you.

That's the way it works in politics. If you admit a mistake, it's pretty much over with. When you run from it and it comes out anyway, you look a thousand times worse.

 

Of course, there is no "proof" that she doesn't have Cherokee and Delaware blood in her lineage, either, so she's not "falsely asserting" anything, and her explanations give no indication she was seeking any political or economic gain by saying what she believes to be true.

 

This has nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren, but people who grew up in the South a long time ago (i.e., me) recall when "white" Southerners used to trot out the Cherokee ancestor as a way to ward off suggestions of some OTHER sort of ancestor who might have caused them to have dark hair and less-than-pale skin. Whole buncha Cherokees running around back then.

 

Oh! So that explains her dark features.

 

I only started paying the slightest amount of attention to genealogy in the last five years or so, and without a complete crapload of work I traced all my family branches back to the point where they got off the boat (and a couple branches much farther than that), and I am able to cite quite specifically that none (zero zip nada) of my ancestry has any American Indian extraction, so I don't get to hop on the Indian ethic pride bandwagon Warren apparently hoped to get a toe-hold upon.

Kinda hard to believe a political maven like Warren at some point would not have had a basic family tree done -- just to make sure there was no mass murderer in her lineage that would come out and haunt her.

And no, there are no mass murderers in my family tree either. Although there is a warlock (posthumously pardoned, for the record).

 

Well of course her explanations wouldn't give such an indication. But it's certainly the case that there's a serious upside for someone with her credentials -- which however impressive are of the dime-a-dozen variety in that educational milieu -- to be able to claim minority status. She may have informed both Penn and Harvard of her understanding that she was partially of Cherokee descent after they hired her, but I'm skeptical. Not concerned, mind you, but skeptical ...

 

Didja know any Melungeons?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melungeon

http://news.yahoo.com/dna-study-seeks-origin-appalachias-melungeons-201144041.html

 

Not just "right-wingers" who have questions:

 

Oh, yeah. Lumbees as well ... check out that wiki.