Well, I’ve done my own genealogy, and 1/1024 is equal to about having one single 8th great grandparent who was a Native American, and based upon my own timeline would be that that person was born around 1700. She is a generation ahead of me, so put her ancestor at around 1730.
One of them. Born in 1730. Is it really fair to claim that heritage based upon that one conception? That’s a pretty thin reed based upon her past comments.
If I had the same African American ancestry and started fist bumping my boys and calling myself a homeboy, I would expect to be similarly mocked.
Yep. Just a retarded move. She let herself get goaded by Trump. And then she actually releases this data showing she’s no more native American than your average white person in America?
She must have been gaming the affirmative action system and needed something to substantiate her claims, at least enough so that her diehard supporters will accept it. Much of the liberal media accepted it, something they would never have done if Trump said he was African-American. But I’d lay 50-50 odds he’s as African-American as Warren is Native.
Most Americans have some minority blood in them, which apparently via the Warren precedent means they can call themselves minorities. Congratulations! White supremacy is over! We’re all minorities now!
Two different issues. You can be 100% NA and not a recognized member of a tribe. You can be 0% NA and be recognized as a member of a tribe. Granted, those are extremes and not likely, but membership in a tribe is not necessarily about DNA.
Family lore and NA ancestry is notoriously inaccurate. Certainly if your roots go back many, many generations in the US, the chances of NA ancestry is greater. But a great many white Americans of European ancestry don’t trace their American roots more than a few generations back, and so the odds of NA ancestry is slim.
Well, we’re not that far from the point where “most Americans” will be minorities of one type or another. It’s already true in my state, CA, the largest in the nation. But most white Americans don’t have minority ancestry.
I didn’t realize genetic testing was even accurate enough to pinpoint 1/1024th of something. That’s three zeroes after a decimal point. Claiming Native American heritage based on that figure somehow seems more ridiculous than claiming it with ZERO percentage of it.
My 23andMe report showed 1.2% Chinese ancestry. Neither I nor anyone else in my family has any knowledge of any ancestry from anywhere near China, yet there it is. How it got mixed into the European genes, I haven’t the faintest idea, nor do I care. If I claimed to have any connection whatsoever to the country or culture of China based on that, it would be seen as utterly absurd. Totally and completely laughable. Well, Warren has even less Native ancestry than I do Chinese, so think about where that leaves her in this.
It’s not that I’m ascribing malicious intent to Warren. It’s more that the optics are bad. I certainly don’t think it’s going to stop Trump from calling her Pocahontas. Trump is great at bestowing derisive monikers on people. Little Marco; Lyin’ Ted; Low Energy Jeb; Crooked Hillary. It gets his supporters super fired up. I’m afraid the Pocahontas nickname is well stuck on her at this point and if she runs, Trump is going to double down on the teasing and taunting of her. And it’s liable to throw her off her game in debating and campaigning.
Let me make this very clear: most adult humans are totally rattled by being the target of direct, unambiguous, mean-spirited mockery. It’s just not something that the average person ever has to deal with. And even among public figures, it’s rarely encountered head-on from one specific individual; it typically comes from a collective of anonymous trolls. Trump makes everything so personal, and I do believe it’s effective in getting under the skin of his enemies. Whoever faces him in 2020 needs to be the brick wall of all brick walls. I don’t see Warren stepping into that role.
She didn’t use 23andMe or Ancestry, so you’re starting off with a false premise. I would be suspicious of anyone using those commercial tests to claim ancestry from 10 generation back*. It’s possible the analysis that Bustamate did was more sensitive than your typical commercial analysis, even if 10 generations back is pushing the limits of the most sensitive test. When you get back to 10, 11 or 12 generations in the past, it starts to get likely that you have no DNA from a particular ancestor.
*Worst case of the results she obtained. She might have had a “full blooded” NA ancestor from as recent as 6 generations back.
First, the DNA claim. It sounds like the tester put the level as between 1 in 64 and 1 in 1024. Why go with the minimum, rather than the maximum or average? Oh, I know why: because your goal is to disparage Warren rather than to seek truth or be objective.
1/64 Indian is exactly what would be expected if Neoma Ocie were half-Indian. Since Dopers seem better at repeating confused errors than learning simple facts, let me repeat a key fact: Warren’s family claim was not some vague myth — it was always the specific fact that her mother’s mother’s father’s father was the son of Neoma Ocie, who was christened Sarah Smith by her apparent stepfather. Neoma’s wedding license allegedly shows her as “Cherokee.”
And, BTW, I strongly think it to be quite false that a large plurality of Americans have Native American blood. My ancestors came to the New World in the 17th-, 18th- and early 19th-centuries; my DNA shows Zero Native American. Others?
Finally, and most importantly, Warren did not attempt to claim any advantage from her tiny amount of Indian blood. It was more of a conversation piece, as those whose hobby is genealogy or old family lore will appreciate. (I’ve joked on this board about my “Scottish sense of humor” even though the one time I had a chance to holiday in Edinburgh on the company’s dollar I just went to Heathrow and said “I’m tired, Scotty. Beam me home!”)
If Warren isn’t allowed to feel a little frisson of fun for 1.6% Cherokee blood, I wonder about me and my tinge of irrational pride that I share 0.1% of the DNA of the great abolitionist John Brown. No, that’s not enough to affect my character. Genealogy is a hobby, a source of harmless conversation; is this so hard to understand?
It was Pompous Asshole who made such an asinine deal of it all. And now the 38% rejoice that she fell for his trolling? :smack: The 38% are just assholes, idiots. (I except the Trumpists arguing in the thread of course.)
I didn’t make a “preposterous claim”. You asked me my opinion on something and I shared it. I don’t take “assignments” from you or do your homework for you.
Y’know, Elizabeth Warren wrote “The Two-Income Trap”. She’s been one of the staunchest opponents of predatory financial organizations, and spearheaded the CFPB, which really is one of the better things to come out of the Obama administration. She’s an absolute firebrand with an impressive record.
Why in god’s name are we talking about whether or not she’s 1/1024th Native American?! What the fuck, guys?!
Wrong again. Reread your own #214. I’ll bet even Trumpists — the few that have some self-awareness — realize your claim is preposterous. This Trump rant wasn’t any sort of ordinary speech.
I’ll admit there are a few whose prattle isn’t awfully dissimilar: Sarah Palin, Alex Jones, a few of the FoxNews assholes. (Is that why you think Trump’s speech is normal? Your reference point is rants on FoxNews and InfoWars?)
Start with the constant repetition of the intended insult “Pocahontas.” You cannot name a single politician who prattles such a rude and silly insult over and over, can you? Even comedians like Stephen Colbert don’t do that, but you don’t want to pretend Colbert is “an average politician infesting DC.” Then you’d have to defend Trump’s top mentor, vomit-mouth Sean Hannity.
And that’s just one word, “Pocahontas.” IIRC, every single sentence of Trump’s rant was stupid and rude. If finding a similar Youtube not by Trump is too impossible a mission, point to any part of this Trump rant that was not a moronic insult. This should be a challenge you can win! I didn’t have a transcript nor did I even finish this despicable shit-talk.
Or retract your claim. Blame it on the mushrooms you ate, or the cat pounding on your keyboard. Or, are you tempted to emulate your own idol? He who just moves from one preposterous lie to another, never bothering to defend his claims, just doubling-down with ever more preposterous lies?
Or — and this you’re quite likely to do, 2nd only to continuing your complete refusal to back-up your claim — blame me. I used an insulting word, or made a grammatical error in my challenge, so you’re off the hook. Makes great sense, hunh? Trump can rant and rave like Alex Jones, but it’s all OK because septimus misplaced a comma. Got it.
Of course a crab recipe would be out of place for a Plains tribe. What does that have to do with the Cherokee? I don’t actually know any Cherokee recipes, but it’d be rather surprising if a tribe from the Eastern Seaboard didn’t have crab as a significant part of their diet.
…You do know that the Cherokee are from the Eastern Seaboard, right? History education in this country isn’t that poor, is it?
At the time, she was relying on “family lore”, and that lore had it that she had NA ancestry on both sides of her family. That lore was it was a mixture of Cherokee and Delaware ancestry. At any rate, the DNA test does not attest to tribal affiliation so there is no telling what tribe or tribes she is genetically related to, even if she has no official tribal affiliation with any of them.
In order to determine which side of her family has NA ancestry, she’d need to get relatives from both sides to be tested. No reason to expect her to do that.
The fauxcahontas bit won’t impact Warren on the Left, but makes for great agitation on the right. Remember that the right hates affirmative action, and this makes for a great game to showcase how bad affirmative action is. They will continue to claim that she used a nonsensical bit of family lore to get hired into a minority slot, regardless of the reporting:
Is this critical Nope. But it makes for an easy dig, simple attack, and fits into the right wing desire to both take her down and to also call into question any and all affirmative action type programs that are favored by the Left. It makes for a great methodology for driving interest and support from their base, and Warren’s DNA report gave the whole issue new life.
-Algher,
East Asian & Native American: 0.1% according to 23 and Me
I think the first time I ever heard of Betsy Warren was a piece in some right-wing rag (probably National Review) long ago, implying that this lying white lady was getting Affirmative Action benefits for pretending to be a Native American. I for one am glad to see her address this line of attack.
But yeah, the right want to *pretend *she’s a race fraud to avoid her record as one of the most important political figures of our era.
Agreed. This is mostly a nasty, personal attack ginned up by her political opponents on the right and exploited by Trump in his usual hateful way.
The only part that could legitimately be used against her (IMO) is this part from the Snopes article: " …it is true that while Warren was at U. Penn. Law School she put herself on the “Minority Law Teacher” list as Native American) in the faculty directory of the Association of American Law Schools". But I’m not sure how “true” that is. Did she actually claim to be Native American, or did she do something as innocuous as check a box that said something like “check here if you have Native American ancestry”? And I’m not sure we’ll ever know the answer to that.
I find this sort of topic interesting from the standpoint of American genealogical issues, but I agree that from a political standpoint it registers about 0.1 on the 0 -10 outrage scale, for me. It would not affect my vote for her if she were the candidate for president in 2020. I still think it would be mistake for the Democrats to nominate her, but it would be easy for me to vote for her in a contest against Trump.