Elizabeth Warren Stands by DNA Test. But Around Her, Worries Abound.

Politics & Elections
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Oh just saw this so let me clarify: yDNA and mtDNA can trace one line that is literally exponentially less important each generation but can trace long migrations, autosomal DNA is far more iffy but can be a useful tool. But heritage is not genetic, and ancestry is not necessarily important to culture or heritage. It is a tools that has use and can help answer questions but it doesn’t do anything to justify a biological basis for race. It can be a hint for finding heritage or inferring relationships, but it is useless for justifying a claim to membership in a tribe.

“Englishmen” isn’t a genetic grouping and neither is “Cherokee”, these are cultural and political groupings and not related to DNA at all. Elizabeth Warren didn’t claim to be “broadly from historical populations from the Americas” she claimed to be “Cherokee” then resorted to racist theories to back up this claim.

People seem to be ignoring is the explicit attempts of the government to historically “breed Indians out of existence” and how that relates to a potential POTUS making claims to membership to that heritage.

Blood quanta and DNA with Native Americans has been leveraged, to use a very strong word, to commit genocide. This may be absurd but realize that the US government admits that several Indian Health Service regions sterilized more than 25% American Indian women without their consent in the early 1970’s.

Actual genocide is a real and valid concern for the various distinct groups, nations and peoples who are labeled as Native Americans even today. This is not a conspiracy theory or hyperbole.

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The thing I am pissed off about is that people won’t keep looking for other possible better candidates and will just ignore actual explicit racism and this will cause me to have to decide between to racist candidates and probably reduce Democratic turnout by people who do realize that this was racist making it more likely the Republicans maintain power.

This bothers many Native Americans, so it bothers me. I am bothered by people who claim to be progressives who are demonstrating that they are only fair weather progressives but I expect that from the Democrats. I remember DOMA and similar discussions under Clinton. Personally I would have preferred to not be intentionally cruel to LGTBQ individuals for two decades, but I get that people on both sides will self-justify hate when it is convenient.

Check your privilege

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What a true American Hero looks like, related to the mainstream Democratic party and their willingness to be cruel when convenient.

I wish John Lewis or someone who held his world view could be POTUS.

Hopefully in the next 20 years we learn to treat Natives as humans like we have started to with LGBTQ individuals.

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Agreed, but there is a huge jump from “Based on geographic genetic clustering, certain SNPs tended to be endemic in certain geographical regions that will allow one to determine with a moderate degree of certainty that an individual with specific genetic marks likely had ancestors from that region” to “Humanity can be genetically subdivided into specific phenotype groups that match our cultural understanding of race and are define with a whole host of differences in aptitude.” The first is reasonable scientific understanding, the second is an attempt to cloak racist ideology in science. I further acknowledge that the accuracy of the genetic test is a lot less solid that the purveyors of that test lead its clients to believe. But still just because one takes such a test and accepts the results as true doesn’t make one a racist.

Warner heard a family story in which one of her forebears suffered due to racial discrimination. She took this to heart and felt kinship to this ancestor. When a bigoted bully publicly mocked her for this kinship she shot back. Politically it might not have been the best move but I don’t see how when can assume that just because she felt the need to defend her feelings of kinship she’s racist.

It would be different if she tried to use that small connection to try to claim the financial benefits of tribal membership, which I agree is a real problem. But what she did was tone step up from wearing a “Kiss me I’m Irish” button.

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People are looking for other candidates. This thread is about Warren and it’s not exactly chock full of people saying “she’s our only hope!”.

Conflating a little ignorance of DNA testing usefulness with racist genocidal history is way over the top. Really wanting to believe in her family lore is not hateful. Just a debating tip: your angry hyperbole is incredibly unpersuasive.

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By Warner did you mean Warren?

No she got called out for claiming to be “Cherokee” for almost a decade in everything from school registries to cook books, one of the Cherokee tribes was offended and asked for an apology that she never offered.

Members of the Cherokee tribe actually traced here genealogy to show there was no connection to the tribe, and she believe the family story and Trump caught on to the story and started on his racial baiting.

Warren took the bait and then resorted to what is the modern equivalent of testing for skull shapes to prove race and published the results, despite her promises to a large national group that she was going to fight for them.

And she has still not apologized for her claim, and the fact that you think her DNA test which compared against a few random individuals in Central America proves she is “Indian” demonstrates that you don’t understand that you have accepted a theory of a biological basis for race and so did she.

Lets be clear, outside of mtDNA and yDNA, if you are European you are directly descended from all Europeans who were alive in 900AD who have living descendants.

You are related to EVERY single one of them as a great-great-*-grandparent.

The claims above are based in the same non-scientific claims of race that we have had for 150 years.

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This is more than technically wrong. She claimed Native American heritage in the school registries. The family story was always that her grandma was of Cherokee AND Delaware background.

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Have you ever considered the “white genocide” myth that a large portion of Trumps base believes may in part be due to the fact we tried to use assimilation as a form of genocide like with boarding schools?

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

But even with her, it is more than just “wanting to believe” hell she created an entire website.

To add to this, the only efforts she has made after Trump started his racist name calling is to support a minimal amount of legislation that still homogenizes this broad and diverse set of cultures under that historical racist category.

But you are also ignoring that her lineage was traced, here by a real member of the Cherokee Nation.

And you still aren’t getting that many natives don’t view this desire to attach one’s lineage with Native Americans as so innocent.

Is it so hard to understand that “assimilation” being used as intentional efforts of cultural cleansing with Native populations along with other attempts at genocide and even modern legislative efforts by both parties makes this a very sensitive subject.

As I stated before, her ignorance, like any other form of privilege is excepted. The long history of doubling down on the claim combined with the evidence showing that she doesn’t view Native populations as anything but one large homogenized group that just “happens” to match up with racist groupings is the issue here.

As we already have an incumbent POTUS who is clearly a proto-fascist is is more than critical that we don’t have both sides of our two party systems lead by people who have demonstrated a willful acceptance of racism.

I get from our non-Native backgrounds this seems trivial, but if you revisit history you will see this has often lead to extremely bad results. The exception in this case is that discrimination is already institutionalized and very real for native peoples and this is an actual escalation of that treatment.

Note that the effect of her actions betrays her promises too, consider this speech from earlier this year.

http://www.ncai.org/news/articles/2018/02/14/senator-elizabeth-warren-addresses-native-heritage-and-commits-to-indian-country-at-the-national-congress-of-american-indians-2018-winter-session

Outside of those empty words, please show me any indication that she even grasps the distinction. Because she has already broken that promise.

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I should add: As the reference populations used int the tests are limited, and the fact that Europeans and Native peoples have shared ancestors within the period of the Last Glacial Maximum and later, those three markers found in the Central American populations that are her “Proof” may exist in Europe but just not in the small number of reference genomes. You seem to keep claiming that it was definitive prove for an ancestor in the Americas when it is not. The current data sets can’t even tell North or South American or really reliably from North East Asia today.

The straw-man that I am ignoring well established science is completely based on an ignorance on what is possible with the current data sets. With Native peoples historical and ongoing battles with fighting real federal cultural cleansing efforts this will probably not change in the near future either. Ignoring those very real recent cultural cleansing efforts is quite tone deaf BTW.

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Those empty words are basically the same thing you’ve been saying all along but don’t let that get in the way of your outrage.

This isn’t some sneaky gotcha but that “kill the Indian save the man” link quote you gave reminds me of something interesting.

Did you know that the Cherokee Nation only very recently lost a court case where they sought to bar their slaves’ descendants tribal membership?

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Did you know that the Federal Goverment only very recently lost a court case where they sought to restrict tribal sovereignty or that three other cases were in front of the court this year?

But note you are dismissing the words of tribes, and minimizing their concerns and not just the Cherokee Nation. I am just the messenger who is mostly outraged at the hypocrisy and flat out dismissal of those concerns.

I am saying basically the same thing I’ve been saying all along because outside of just hand waving them away, no evidence has been presented to convince me your claims are correct.

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I always love it when people link to logical fallacy sites. Shows they can’t argue on their own.

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And again, what’s the claims I’ve made that haven’t been proved correct? You are arguing with shadows.

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And moving from tu-quoque to ad hominem attacks proves you have no factual bases for your claim. As you are just swapping out fallacious strategies I will bow out and let you have the last word.

As you are asserting that pointing out major logical fallacies is invalid it is clear that you are interested in an augment and not a debate. Although in my connotative understanding even an argument is an opinion that is supported with evidence. So if you want to believe that Native America disenfranchisement isn’t an issue feel free.

I prefer to fight my own ignorance, and wouldn’t mind your assistance in doing so, but your hand waving away concerns of a minority group you don’t belong to as unimportant isn’t incredibly persuasive for me.

Feel free to keep think us white people get to decide means to be a member of one of the numerous sovereign groups of native peoples with diverse backgrounds, you already made it clear that unless they are important pawns you don’t care to chase them as tokens anyway.

To be honest it is highly unlikely that you will convince me to pay lip service to minorities only when it is useful for my personal desires anyway. Our world-views and core values probably just differ way too much to reach a shared consensus. But I wanted to provide you a direct cite of what I personally found particularly objectionable and that quote pretty much sums it up for me. In my world view using minorities as pawns is wrong.

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Do you deny what I said was true? How pissed off one Cherokee tribe is has very little effect on Warren’s electability. She’s not running for governor of Oklahoma any time soon.

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I don’t think that debasing minority groups or dehumanizing them is productive for Democratic election results. The Republicans already have a corner on that market with their southern strategy.

Treating minorities as sub-human pawns, which are only valued if it conveniences the same white people who invented those labels will have a negative impact on all minority turnout.

Tyrants dehumanize the powerless and dehumanization and violence so closely connected. If you want my honest opinion, will it effect her electability? Yes and probably enough to lose the elections which have been so close. Note you are arguing that winning the battle, but at the cost of losing the war.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146167216675334#_i40

I can’t speak to others but if your mindset was the majority of the party, where basic Human rights are tossed away simply to elect a known flawed candidate I would vote 3rd party even if it meant Trump won again. Trying to out-Trump Trump and handing the party over to the whims of white supremacists, eugenics and the scientific racism it the only way to win the office I am betting others will jump too.

Consider that a lot of the black electorate remember the it on only take one drop of black blood to make a person a Negro.

The incredibly fragile coalition of people of color is important, she can’t win with just urban whites and a small number of blue-collar white people in swing states. Racism touches most people of colors daily lives even if you are insulated from it.

If your above stated opinion was the norm of the party I could launch a campaign and dissuade a large portion millennial vote as a Republican strategist too. Unlike the boomers a large number of white millennials are fully or universally committed to racial justice. Remember that people don’t need to vote for Trump, they can just stay at home.

I am betting many of them would start a pit thread if you reproached them with your desires to tokanize humans based on their assigned race too.

You may not have a problem with racism but how do you really think that millennial and people of color would react to a simple media campaign that points out that her claims are basically exactly the same thing as the one drop rule for “Negros” but for the western hemisphere.

Sure some Hispanics will still hold their noses and pick the lesser of two evils, but lots will stay home too because you “can’t tell the $minority_people people apart because they all look the same to me” is pretty offensive and dehumanizing.

If she does get the nomination I am willing to bet you that the Republicans or some conservative PAC does make a campaign, which will be the truth, pointing this out.

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Very few people think she was debasing anyone by thinking her grandma had Cherokee heritage no matter how loud you say it’s what she did.

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It is the DNA claim that did the most recent damage.

DNA test used samples from “Mexico, Peru and Colombia” to claim she was “Native American” which is EXACTLY analogous to “Negro” for the African continent but applied to the US continent. It is the claim that 5 markers from that group assigns her to the same group that Cherokee’s “must belong to” which is where it moved from tone deaf to racist.

Seeing as the genetic makeup of modern Europe was established only about 4500 years ago, I guess native peoples aren’t allowed to have their own ancestry despite the longer time line? Also note that a french poodle and a chihuahua have tested with more Native DNA than Senator Warren with one service.

Indigenous heritage is not defined by DNA and tests aren’t nearly as accurate as you seem to think.

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She would be a really poor candidate for President even without the whole Native American thing. I’ve watched videos of her speak. Her vocal mannerism is…I don’t even know how to put it. I don’t want to say “Schoolmarm-ish” because I’m not sure what a schoolmarm is supposed to sound like, even though I’ve seen that word used to describe her. How I’d put it is…almost supplicating, desperate sounding…she always sounds as if she is delivering bad news. It’s not a style that projects confidence. She always sounds concerned, and I’m sure that she is, but that’s not the kind of delivery that makes a good candidate.

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I don’t “seem to think” anything. You make up ridiculous positions for your opponents because you’ve already decided what you want to argue about and you’re all practiced up on that conversation.