Elizabeth Warren 2020. How do you feel about it?

Politics & Elections
381

This isn’t about Trump. This is about a Senator who, in my opinion, falsely embellished what was at best old family lore into a claim that she was somehow a minority herself. She has told many stories about her ‘native’ background. She claimed that her parents had to elope because of discrimination, to amp up her cred as a ‘minority’.

I understand why Natives are furious with her. I understand why Republicans are laughing at her. What I don’t understand is why progressives are giving her a pass. What she did diminishes your cause of identity politics. It makes a mockery of separating people by race and gender and assigning a ‘privilege’ ranking to them. If I believed in identity pokitics and white privilege, I would be absolutely incensed by a privileged white woman claiming to be a minority when it benefited her- especially if she used that claim to get into Harvard, potentially displacing an actual minority person. This is ‘cultural appropriation’ far more troubling than wearing a sombrero on halloween.

But I guess as long as she votes the right way, she gets a pass.

382

Where and when has she claimed to be a minority, other than (possibly) checking a box at a university many years ago?

And she has gotten plenty of criticism from plenty of progressives – and I agree with at least some of it.

Your understanding of progressive views on “identity politics” and “white privilege” appear to be severely lacking (and rather comical, in fact), though, but that would probably best be covered in a different thread.

383

Exactly. Why are we focusing on Warren here? She has taken a DNA test to prove that she has some Native blood because a bigoted asshole keeps calling her Pocahontas in some effort to say she’s a liar about who she is.

The only thing Trump has “won” here is that he is using a racist insult against a person who actually has the heritage that he is insulting. He’s normalizing the use of ethnic slurs. No one cares. Big win for the racists. Now they can talk openly about how various people of color should know their place.

Maybe Elizabeth Warren used her tiny bit of Native heritage to gain an advantage when she was in school, maybe not. But if we can’t PROVE what someone did in school we have to let them get away with it, right? Also, it pales by comparison to Trump admitting that he has sexually assaulted multiple women.

384

Wow! I agree that Ms. Warren over-emphasized her family lore and left herself open to Trumpist malice. But everything else about this post is very wrong.

First off, your phrase “She claimed that her parents had to elope” implies that you think she was lying. I hope you’re not stooping to that, but please clarify. Let’s be clear: Ms. Warren isn’t responsible if her grandparents were misinformed, or even if her parents lied to her; the question is: What did she believe? At least one of her older brothers has confirmed the elopement story.

And while we’re on the topic of your repeating things that are untrue (inadvertantly I’m sure) let’s look at “especially if she used that claim to get into Harvard, potentially displacing an actual minority person.” Do you have any cite whatsoever here? Your phrasing with “if” might, I suppose, make your sentence valid even if you knew she didn’t use that claim to get into Harvard. I’ll assume, however, that you are honestly ignorant. I think we’ll want a very specific retraction here, or a cite. AFAIK even the Trumpists aren’t making the claim you imply (though they have a related, debunked, claim).

These factual errors are so bad, I guess I’ll wait until you retract them before bothering with your non-factual opinions. I did find “What she did diminishes your cause of identity politics. It makes a mockery of separating people by race and gender and assigning a ‘privilege’ ranking to them” to be … rather quaint! :slight_smile:

Your final sentence is so irony-filled it deserves its own celebration! “But I guess as long as she votes the right way, she gets a pass.” You’re from Canada; have you heard of a man named Donald Trump? Has he lied or committed frauds? If you stretched your imagination or exercised Google skills, do you think you could come up with Trump foibles as bad as whatever you think Warren has done?

Yet as long as he plays along, stealing trillions from the poor to feed the rich, appointing a hyper-partisan misogynist to the Supreme Court, does he get a pass?

385

Let’s return to the actual genealogy for a moment. We know that the Crawford brothers William and Preston were, rightly or wrongly, thought of as half-breed Indians. We know this because that lore is attested from descendants of both William and Preston. Preston Crawford was born circa 1824 in Tennessee and moved to Missouri where his son and granddaughter were born. (It now appears that the Crawford brothers were more likely to have been quarter-breeds than half-breeds, but of course this has no effect on the family lore handed down.)

The claim is that Warren’s paternal grandparents were upset about the ethnicity of her maternal grandparents, specifically of Bethania `Hannah’ Reed née Crawford, born 1875, grand-daughter of afore-mentioned Preston Crawford. This concern led to the alleged need for elopement.

In other words, the allegation that the Herrings were worried about Hannah’s “Indian blood” implies that the stigma of “half-breed” associated with Preston Crawford was retained for two (2) generations and passed on to Preston’s grand-daughter Hannah. Unlikely? Perhaps. But hardly impossible.

386

That’s exactly who has kept his particular bit of nonsense, and the “Pocahontas” story, so alive. Yes, it’s about Trump, and his enablers and excusers and fellow haters.

Your “opinion” might have some relevance if it were even loosely connected to fact. Unfortunately its relevance is only that it shows how unimportant factuality is to a particular faction in US politics that oddly has some foreign supporters too.

387

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-penn-and-the-warren-story-1539798838

As reported by WSJ, which was citing the Boston Globe. Again, I don’t know if I’m reading the right websites, but nobody’s refuted that information as far as I can tell.

But this seems more damning: a 1996 article from the Crimson, Harvard’s paper, in which someone is quoted as confirming Warren’s “Native American” identity:

388

Trump is NOT responsible for what Trump says. But Warren IS responsible for what some dude named Chmura says. Got it.

389

I asked you about her alleged claim to membership in the Cherokee tribe. There is no mention of the word “Cherokee” in what you quoted.

390

Everything I read about this makes me more convinced that the faulty isn’t Warren’s, but America’s, i.e. if she made a mistake, it was in underestimating American stupidity.

391

Look, it’s like this:

Henry Louis Gates had a DNA test years ago. It said he was largely of Western European descent. To an African in Africa, with his English name & Western background, he might be considered a kind of European. But in this country, he’s “African-American.”

Folks like Sen. Warren, being mostly white genetically and culturally, can pass for white. And to someone who is culturally “on the rez” Indian, she’s part of “the dominant culture.” But within some subcultures of middle-class white folks, she’s “mixed.” While to some folks (like me) that’s ordinary and good, to (a small, bigoted group of) others it’s bad that she comes from “half-breeds.”

In neither case is this a white person just playing, just pretending, even if darker-skinned folks want to call it “appropriation.” And the issue isn’t that she’s not a real “minority.” The issue is that a minority of white folks really can act vile toward those of us they can paint as incompletely white and therefore incompletely human, incompletely civilized, and/or incompletely intelligent. And one is, incidentally, President.

Context matters.

The attack on Warren is three-pronged:
To “real Indians,” it’s that she’s a fake Indian, and by her “appropriation” ostensibly took an opportunity from a real, live, culturally Indian Indian. This is not proven.
To folks who figure that Indian ancestry is normal and unobjectionable, it’s that she somehow spun an inconsequential amount of heritage into an affirmative action benefit for herself. Except,even if she did at some point (not proven), I’m not convinced that’s so bad, Anti-half-breed bias has historically been real in some places; and maybe we should have affirmative action for some classes of poor white folks.
To those who believe that only Western European Christians can be civilized and do deserve rights, it’s that she’s any amount Indian at all. Hence, “Pocahontas.”

By never spelling out which objection you’re making, you get to make them all. That’s why it’s good to spell all this out, and take each attack on its own more clearly defined terms.

392

Also, while I say “not proven,” the evidence supplied for this supposed Affirmative Action abuse is indirect at best and thus really, really weak. Did it make a difference once? Maybe, but not proven. And not getting into law school, nor getting most of the very prestigious teaching jobs she got over her career, nor becoming the hero of the progressive left. Warren’s career owes to her work, her worldview rooted in her “poor white folks,” Oklahoma background, and not to some supposed diversity hire, once. If that were all she had, she’d be a laughable obscurity.

393

Which subcultures are you referring to? I’m not aware of any subcultures of either middle-class white folks, or any other folks, who would view someone as being “mixed” because they were, at most, 1/32nd Native American. None.

394

At most 1/64th NA. I think some sources mistakenly reported 1/32 early on, but the math is pretty simple: 6 generation back = 1/64th. As a point of reference, though, take a look at Bill John Baker. He’s the Principle Chief of the Cherokee Nation and is 1/32 NA, “by blood”. However, that’s more an example of how Cherokee tribal membership is about culture and ancestry, not how much DNA is “native”. Not all tribes determine membership the way the Cherokee do.

395

I wish she had not let Trump drag her down into responding to such a stupid non-issue. It reminds me of Rubio and Trump debating penis sizes. I am afraid that if she runs, she could too easily lose. That’s a deja vu I don’t care to experience.

396

What’s odd about this is if Warren had run and been the Democratic nominee in 2016, she would’ve beaten Trump. If she runs in 2020, Trump and the Republicans will not only continue with the “Pocahontas” insults but paint her as a Hillary-clone. In fact, they’ll do the latter for whoever is the Democratic nominee. The GOP probably has pre-made TV commercials where, via CGI graphics, the face of the Democratic nominee morphs into the evil visage of Hillary. They’re just waiting for the Dems to nominate their candidate so they can just add his or her face.

397

There’s no evidence at all she would have beaten Trump in 2016. There’s no evidence any Democrat would have beaten Trump. We need to stop living in imagination land and accept reality. Trumpism didn’t just beat Hillary Clinton, it beat liberalism. It wasn’t just Hillary Clinton who lost on election night; the entire Democratic party got shellacked.

Progressives who insist that it was Hillary Clinton’s fault that the Democrats lost don’t get it. The Democratic party - the entire party - lost major races that night. This was Barack Obama’s party. The election was a rejection not just of Hillary Clinton, but of Barack Obama. Nobody wants to say that, but it’s the stone cold truth.

398

Maybe, maybe not.

But she appropriated her “Native-ness”, and even if you argue that she did not, others clearly did on her behalf, and she did little to nothing to stop them. In fact, by submitting to a DNA test and publicizing the results, she’s basically proving that she buys into her own bullshit that she somehow has a kinship to Native Americans. In reality, she has a genetic link - that’s it.

As I said, sandwich time. I don’t care if anyone believes me because I understand politics. Warren is toast. She got trolled. She got played. She got pelvic thrusted by Donald.

399

Oh, please. Contrary to what the right wing says, Hillary Clinton is not a wild-eyed radical. Her politics are slightly left-of-center. Moreover, her willingness to embrace monied interests resulted in only lukewarm support among those whose politics were further to her left on the political spectrum. Coupled with all the baggage she’s (often unfairly) accumulated over the past 25 years, the Democrats nominated someone who had a lot of negatives going into the race. Had Warren run and been nominated, she would have not had these problems or nearly any other Democrat. (I was also going to mention that Clinton’s getting nearly 3 million more votes than Trump hardly constitutes a stone-cold rejection of her and her “liberalism” but this thread is about Warren and not Hillary.)

400

She won against Scott Brown by 54 percent to 46 percent, not an especially impressive showing in Massachusetts in the same year Barack Obama racked up a win here over former Mass. governor Romney by 60.65 percent to 37.51 percent. Despite being an incumbent and running against a nonentity, I’m betting she won’t crack 60 percent in her reelection and will be out-percentaged by our popular Republican governor.

I’m fine with her as my senator and shudder at the thought of her going up against Trump. I watched part of her debate with whoever the GOP’s guy is running against her and she came across as easily rattled and somewhat fussy in her speaking mannerisms. Trump would eat her for lunch and spit out the bones.