In the past (perhaps during her Senate campaign), Senator Elizabeth Warren has mentioned that she has some Native American blood in her geneology. For some reason, Donald Trump has accused her of lying about this, and he's also made fun of her by calling her "Pocahontas". It seems reminiscent of ...
To properly characterize the results shown today, refer to the Boston Globe article that details the analysis comparison for "Native American" depended on references from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia to stand in for Native American.
@dandavis When it turned out that the "keep your doctor" plan didn't completely pan out, many citizens were impacted and felt betrayed. No one's life depends on Warren's ethnicity.
If you check Trump's actual words, I think you'll find he said that he would make such a challenge and offer, if he had to debate her. But he never actually made such a promise about the one million dollars. (But I don't have his words in front of me, that's just what I recall.)
More to the point, he said he would give a million dollars if she proved she was "an Indian". We can reasonably take that to be equivalent to proving she is "a Native American." But we can't reasonably construe that as "has Native American heritage", which is a much more fluid concept, as evidenced by the media uproar over all this. It seems a bit of a stretch to suggest that having 1/64th to 1/1024th of one's ethnicity from a particular people group makes one a member of that people group.
@Barmar No one's life depends on Warren's ethnicity, but millions of lives (and not necessarily all American lives) may depend on a future president's mental stability.
Let me add some math into this: Assuming your genes are inherited 50% from each parent, this means the formula is 0.5^n, where n is the amount of generations. It was said 6-10 generations? At 8 generations, the genetic inheritance would be at 0.4%. I am already just half Hungarian with one parent being non-Hungarian, so how much is she native Indian? 1/256th?
"...Why does any of this matter?..." For some people it matters, for others it doesn't. The reason is probably that you can use it to denounce her, similar to a harassment campaign. Politics can be quite dirty.
Mostly because Trump cannot dispute her policies so he resorts to personal attacks. It is all he has going for him. For decades whites claimed a drop of black blood, any non-white ancestor, made someone not white. It is a big deal about absolutely nothing.
@Wildcard You're right, he said it would be if he were to debate her. But they debate each other regularly on Twitter, could that count? He also said he would bring the DNA kit and administer it -- would you want Trump swabbing your cheek?
@alephzero What about a present president's stability?
@TylerH Ask a reasonable sample size of the US population to define what Groups are comprised by Native American, and I'd wager those including Mexico, Peru, or Columbia would be statistically slim. Likely, a greater portion would include Eskimos.
@DrunkCynic - You realize that the indigenous peoples on the North and South American continents did not delineate themselves by modern and western-European-drawn political boundaries, right?
@Kylos - not sure why a blog by an extreme right-wing shill dissembling for Trump and knocking down straw man claims in place of what Warren has said is somehow relevant.
@PoloHoleSet They had tribes, and the tribes that are considered "American Indian" or "Native American", which the US government displaced and established treaties with, didn't include those in Central and South America. So if someone has Mayan ancestors, that would be indigenous but not relevant to whether they're an American Indian for political purposes.
@Battle - she never claimed "I'm an Native American minority," she's always claimed that she had a distant ancestor who was. 6th generation, making her 1/64th is exactly where she claimed the ancestry was.
@Barmar - But at one time those "tribes" were a tribe that migrated to the continent and then some settled and some continued to migrate. It's those common shared gene markers that the analyst (MacArthur Fellowship aka "genius grant" winner for population migration science) was after when he chose to use them to expand the comparison database pool.
@Barmar - which form? For what? Are you claiming that she ever claimed to be primarily Native American, and not white, with a dash of Native American in the mix?
America has a long history of aggressive, tribal war mindset tactics for elections. I think both why we don't actually fix voting problems is the same reason things like "Pocahontas" become a thing. People like Trump just want to win -- so long as people are made to doubt another candidate, bu confused, or otherwise not interfere with his plans, it's "fair game". Just like the Republican mocking of sexual assault survivors -- they're enabling an aggressive, winner take all mindset in their base and group and they just don't care who they hurt or if it's offensive, racist or backwards.
@PoloHoleSet Some kind of personnel/payroll form at University of PA. You can see it in the Globe Article. The actual label is "Native American or Alaskan Native".
You saw that she classified as "White/Caucasian" when she got her job there, right? You know that they generally didn't allow multiple classifications back in 1990, as they do today, right? So, like I said, when did she ever claim to not be primarily and overwhelmingly white?
@PoloHoleSet Right, she changed her classification from White to Native American on Dec 6, 1989. Don't you see the report with "Previous Content" and "Current Content" columns?
Yes. It's pretty clear that you don't understand how that reporting works, or what it is used for, if that is what you are extrapolating from that payroll category indication.
not Warren, either. Seems to me that mentioning her as a rebuttal to an accusation, once, is hardly "making a big deal" out of it, on Harvard's part. FYI - that's a U of Pennsylvania form you linked to. Back in the dark ages, when computer years could only be two-digits, they did not track ethnicity for employment reporting purposes with "multi-racial" or more than one race. If you were not 100% white, you were encouraged to report the other ethnic portions, but it's always been whatever you feel you are. Federal reporting of more than one category was not done until 1997.
That's the form I have an image of, she presumably did similarly on other forms. And there are other quotes from her about her native American heritage, she mentions her cheekbones as being inherited from them.
No, the report of what she told Harvard is not simply checking a classification box, but that she had that in her ancestry, so don't presume that. Sharing what she was told growing up is not offering it as evidence or proof, but giving background on what she heard, which shaped what she came to believe about her background. It was never offered as any kind of proof or evidence of anything. Regarding the use of Mexican, Canadian and South American DNA, here's an article that explains in more detail what I was mentioning to you about the common genetic traits.
@PoloHoleSet Let's put a stop to this. I really don't want to debate whether she is or isn't Native American, or what the actual definition of that is. I don't really care. The question was about why anyone else cares.
I'm not debating whether she is or isn't, at all. I'm pointing out that she's never made the claims that are being attributed to her. So when a rebuttal is "yeah, but she's only 1/64th, at most," and that's her original claim, then that would mean her claim is validated as consistent with the facts.
@PoloHoleSet The Cherokee Nation disagree's, and has firmly rebuked the use of a DNA test as a method to try and establish Native American Heritiage and tribal membership, aside from the verification of lineage. link
> Senator Warren has given some indications that she might consider a run for the Presidency in 2020.
Regardless of whether she's able to get this specific point sorted, it's quite unlikely she has any chance at all against a sitting president. The smart move would be waiting another 4 years.
@DrunkCynic - Seeing as how she was only using it as a means of verification of lineage, and specifically said she was not claiming heritage or membership, I'm missing how that's any kind of refutation of what she did. Aside from falsely framing what she did, just as you have, I don't see anything in their statement that refutes what she did, or what she has claimed.
@PoloHoleSet You're obfuscating the point. At the outset of her release, she was making it a claim of heritage, to defend claim of heritage she's been making since the 80's. It wasn't until the Cherokee Nation responded, that she changed the stance of her position. She's made multiple claims over the decades of being Native American, that her parents eloped because racism.
Discussion on question by Barmar: Why…
Discussion on question by Barmar: Why…