Transracial?

[repoman]

If the test came back with even less Native American, would she have released the results?

We need a respected, ethical mediator like Maury Povich for situations like this.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

In reference to the OP, Elizabeth Warren never claimed to change her race or her ethnicity. She said it was part of her family lore that someone 4 or 5 generations ago was married to a Native American and had a child. Elizabeth Warren never tried to change her race. Never. Never.

If she did not wish to give this impression, taking and publicizing the results of a DNA test was the wrong move.

If the past two years have taught us anything, it's that no one ever benefits politically from doing something Donald J. Trump advised them to do.

Allowing herself to be pushed by Harvard as native american (if that happened) was also a bad move. Her being hired or not hired for the job there is one thing. Her claiming it at all in any official document or any sort of PR move is another. Both are questionable acts if either happened. Unless of course she honestly believed it to be true and actually identified as it. If she suddenly decided to push it later in life for a PR or personal gain reason... that's worth looking at.

 

[Angry Floof]

Allowing herself to be pushed by Harvard as native american (if that happened)

If only there were some way to check that... hmmm. Oh well, whaddya gonna do?

 

[BH]

I've heard from family lore a great great great great grandfather was an indian chief. I have no proof or pictures or anything, it is just a family legend. I have never used it on job applications or statistic questions about myself. Even if it were true I am so light skinned white and blondish haired it no longer shows.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I've heard from family lore a great great great great grandfather was an indian chief. I have no proof or pictures or anything, it is just a family legend. I have never used it on job applications or statistic questions about myself. Even if it were true I am so light skinned white and blondish haired it no longer shows.

There you go.

 

[laughing dog]

Allowing herself to be pushed by Harvard as native american (if that happened)

If only there were some way to check that... hmmm. Oh well, whaddya gonna do?

Continue with innuendo and "what ifs" instead of basing an argument on the actual facts.

 

[steve_bank]

How far do we carry this ridiculous progressive narrative?

In am a black man inside a white body.

 

[J842P]

Didn't occur to me that Snopes would cover that. So it is true then. She did claim it. I don't need specific evidence that she gained her position at Harvard law through it. The fact that she claimed it at all is reason enough for me to conclude she was dishonest about it, and I thin it reasonable for the default explanation of that to be that she did it for some sort of personal gain she thought she may get out of it. Unless she has some alternate explanation? She was doing it as a joke? She was doing it as some sort of social experiment for the students? Nothing plausible comes to mind.

But the question of this thread isn't that. My question is whether there is anything wrong with her doing it. In a society seeing things more and more by group identity, with assumed upsides and downsides, and benefits and costs for each identity, but also allowing people to identify how they want (trans movement - or is that only for gender?), I see a conflict.

I don't think she was dishonest. A lot of people in the US, particularly from the region she is from, have family lore that includes having a Native American ancestor. I think she did really believe it.

Not only does she believe it, it seems to be fact.

There is some evidence that it could be true. I don't think it is close to being established as a fact.

In any event, this is all dumb. I hate to say this, because I've been on the Warren train for years, but she handled this badly. All she should have said, which is what she had said in the past, is that she was lead to believe as a child due to family stories that she had Native American ancestry. All she had to say is what was established by the Boston Globe:

The Globe closely reviewed the records, verified them where possible, and conducted more than 100 interviews with her colleagues and every person who had a role in hiring decisions about Warren who could be reached. In sum, it is clear that Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her.

The evidence is clear. She never listed herself as anything but white in any of her admissions documents, and only later changed her ethnicity designation, around the time her aunts, the matriarchs in her family, started making their supposed Cherokee background more of a prominent thing.

She never once claimed to be a member of the Cherokee Nation. This was always an issue within her family. And it seems to have stemmed from a sincere belief regarding how Warren's parent's had to elope because, apparently, at least her father's family thought that the claims of Cherokee ancestry were true enough to disapprove of the wedding.

I think she fell into Trump's trap here, unfortunately.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

How far do we carry this ridiculous progressive narrative?

In am a black man inside a white body.

So you are Michael Jackson.

 

[Toni]

Not only does she believe it, it seems to be fact.

There is some evidence that it could be true. I don't think it is close to being established as a fact.

In any event, this is all dumb. I hate to say this, because I've been on the Warren train for years, but she handled this badly. All she should have said, which is what she had said in the past, is that she was lead to believe as a child due to family stories that she had Native American ancestry. All she had to say is what was established by the Boston Globe:

The Globe closely reviewed the records, verified them where possible, and conducted more than 100 interviews with her colleagues and every person who had a role in hiring decisions about Warren who could be reached. In sum, it is clear that Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her.

The evidence is clear. She never listed herself as anything but white in any of her admissions documents, and only later changed her ethnicity designation, around the time her aunts, the matriarchs in her family, started making their supposed Cherokee background more of a prominent thing.

She never once claimed to be a member of the Cherokee Nation. This was always an issue within her family. And it seems to have stemmed from a sincere belief regarding how Warren's parent's had to elope because, apparently, at least her father's family thought that the claims of Cherokee ancestry were true enough to disapprove of the wedding.

I think she fell into Trump's trap here, unfortunately.

I agree. Her wisest course of action would be bemused silence---and then on to actual issues.
Trump is masterful at distraction.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Within the framework of identity politics, affirmative action, etc, SHOULD we be allowed to change our race?

Sure. I didn't create these absurd rules, but if I can make them work for me then why not. I've heard a lot about white privilege, but being brown I'm unable to access it. Maybe I can just say I'm white and suddenly I'll get everything for free and never get arrested.

 

[RavenSky]

What if somebody grows up adopted into another family who is another race, and lives as that family does their whole lives? Should they be allowed to claim to be that race and should we recognize them as it?

According to those who claim that the Cherokee are pissed off at Elizabeth Warren, the answer is yes.

Elizabeth Warren, with her great-great-great-great-grandmother & DNA test but zero cultural ties, is not "allowed to claim to be that race"

Whereas for someone adopted into a Cherokee tribe, "it is understood that regardless of birth or origin they are treated no differently and have the same rights and responsibilities towards their tribe and clan." http://www.northerncherokeenation.com/cherokee-adoption-past-and-present.html

I think your use of "racial" is a problem in a discussion like this.

 

[Politesse]

What if somebody grows up adopted into another family who is another race, and lives as that family does their whole lives? Should they be allowed to claim to be that race and should we recognize them as it?

According to those who claim that the Cherokee are pissed off at Elizabeth Warren, the answer is yes.

Elizabeth Warren, with her great-great-great-great-grandmother & DNA test but zero cultural ties, is not "allowed to claim to be that race"

Whereas for someone adopted into a Cherokee tribe, "it is understood that regardless of birth or origin they are treated no differently and have the same rights and responsibilities towards their tribe and clan." http://www.northerncherokeenation.com/cherokee-adoption-past-and-present.html

I think your use of "racial" is a problem in a discussion like this.

The Cherokee, it should be noted, do not see Cherokee identity in racial terms to begin with; this is part of why a DNA test does not cut it. There are Cherokee people of many different apparent races, if by race you mean skin tones. Adoptions and marriages into the Cherokee Nation have been commonplace for the past four centuries, as well as emancipation of slaves back in the day.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I agree. Her wisest course of action would be bemused silence---and then on to actual issues.
Trump is masterful at distraction.

Yes. I also agree.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

What if somebody grows up adopted into another family who is another race, and lives as that family does their whole lives? Should they be allowed to claim to be that race and should we recognize them as it?

According to those who claim that the Cherokee are pissed off at Elizabeth Warren, the answer is yes.

Elizabeth Warren, with her great-great-great-great-grandmother & DNA test but zero cultural ties, is not "allowed to claim to be that race"

Whereas for someone adopted into a Cherokee tribe, "it is understood that regardless of birth or origin they are treated no differently and have the same rights and responsibilities towards their tribe and clan." http://www.northerncherokeenation.com/cherokee-adoption-past-and-present.html

I think your use of "racial" is a problem in a discussion like this.

The Cherokee, it should be noted, do not see Cherokee identity in racial terms to begin with; this is part of why a DNA test does not cut it. There are Cherokee people of many different apparent races, if by race you mean skin tones. Adoptions and marriages into the Cherokee Nation have been commonplace for the past four centuries, as well as emancipation of slaves back in the day.

I think its about time we dump the whole race categorizing of people altogether. Nobody should be "proud" of their race. Not white people. Not black people. Not first nations people.

 

[Bomb#20]

...
Whereas for someone adopted into a Cherokee tribe, "it is understood that regardless of birth or origin they are treated no differently and have the same rights and responsibilities towards their tribe and clan." http://www.northerncherokeenation.com/cherokee-adoption-past-and-present.html

I think your use of "racial" is a problem in a discussion like this.

The Cherokee, it should be noted, do not see Cherokee identity in racial terms to begin with; this is part of why a DNA test does not cut it. ...

Cherokee views on that point vary. The reason the Cherokee Nation recognizes the identity and equality of adopted members regardless of race is because the federal government ordered it to. The tribal government enacted a policy that only "Cherokee By Blood" were full citizens, held a referendum that ratified it, and spent 35 years in litigation before they finally threw in the towel last year.

Cherokee freedmen controversy

The policy statement RavenSky quoted is from the Northern Cherokee Nation, one of a number of Cherokee splinter groups.

 

[poster]

I had no idea that NA tribes also held black slaves. You'd think if anyone would sympathize with blacks it would have been them. Thanks for the link.

 

[J842P]

I had no idea that NA tribes also held black slaves. You'd think if anyone would sympathize with blacks it would have been them. Thanks for the link.

Slavery was a pretty common phenomenon across the world until very recently. It's still too common, actually.

The world cannot neatly be split up into oppressed and oppressors, and it is only those that live in relatively well off places cordoned off from humanity's ugliest excesses that can think that some totally unrelated group would feel some sort of solidarity due to some mutual enemy.

The indigenous peoples of America practiced slavery on each other in the pre-Columbian era. For the majority of recorded history, Europeans practiced slavery on each other. Africans enslaved Africans. Indeed, it was the Africans who started selling other Africans to Europeans for the Atlantic slave trade, and for the Arab slave trade before (and during) that.

So why would it be surprising, really, that indigenous North Americans would have owned black slaves?

 

[Bomb#20]

How far do we carry this ridiculous progressive narrative?

In am a black man inside a white body.

All white men are.

"...it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere."

- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man​

 

[poster]

I had no idea that NA tribes also held black slaves. You'd think if anyone would sympathize with blacks it would have been them. Thanks for the link.

Slavery was a pretty common phenomenon across the world until very recently. It's still too common, actually.

The world cannot neatly be split up into oppressed and oppressors, and it is only those that live in relatively well off places cordoned off from humanity's ugliest excesses that can think that some totally unrelated group would feel some sort of solidarity due to some mutual enemy.

The indigenous peoples of America practiced slavery on each other in the pre-Columbian era. For the majority of recorded history, Europeans practiced slavery on each other. Africans enslaved Africans. Indeed, it was the Africans who started selling other Africans to Europeans for the Atlantic slave trade, and for the Arab slave trade before (and during) that.

So why would it be surprising, really, that indigenous North Americans would have owned black slaves?

You're right. My bad!