This has been a garbage year and an especially difficult few months. I want to concentrate on the midterms, but of course I know that as soon as the midterms are over, the 2020 presidential campaign begins. I keep hoping that Robert Mueller is going to come out to play this month or next month, but I suspect he’s watching the midterm results very closely too. Anyway, many people believe that Senator Elizabeth Warren will run in 2020. She is wildly popular in Massachusetts, and she’s a badass on most liberal-progressive issues. I mean, if she runs, I would probably vote for her in the Dem primary.
Here’s one of the biggest signs that she’s planning to run too: she took a DNA test and she’s making the results public. This is because unhinged racists like Donald Trump have taken to calling her “Pocahontas” because she dared to repeat some family lore, that a distant relative many generations ago was Native American. That’s literally all she did – she repeated some family stories in public, and she’s been the victim of some of the nastiest hate speech from Republicans and Trump himself.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test that provides “strong evidence’’ she had a Native American in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations, an unprecedented move by one of the top possible contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president.
Warren, whose claims to Native American blood have been mocked by President Trump and other Republicans, provided the test results to the Globe on Sunday in an effort to defuse questions about her ancestry that have persisted for years. She planned an elaborate rollout Monday of the results as she aimed for widespread attention.
The analysis of Warren’s DNA was done by Carlos D. Bustamante, a Stanford University professor and expert in the field who won a 2010 MacArthur fellowship, also known as a genius grant, for his work on tracking population migration via DNA analysis. He concluded that “the vast majority” of Warren’s ancestry is European, but he added that “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor.”
Bustamante calculated that Warren’s pure Native American ancestor appears in her family tree “in the range of 6-10 generations ago.” That timing fits Warren’s family lore, passed down during her Oklahoma upbringing, that her great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, was at least partially Native American. Smith was born in the late 1700s. She identified as white in historical documents, though at the time Indians faced discrimination, and Smith would have had strong incentives to call herself white if possible.
The “controversy” around Warren’s claim of Native American genes never made much sense to me. I live in Virginia, and many, many people around here claim they have Native American ancestors as well, and some (if not many) of them are probably right. These are stories that get passed down through families, and repeating those stories isn’t controversial or scandalous. I truly believe that the Republicans made it into a thing because A) they’re racist, B) they literally believe that someone who looks like Elizabeth Warren wouldn’t have Native American blood (which means they’re complete f–king idiots), and C) because they just wanted something stupid with which they could “attack” Warren. There were racist idiots outside of her rallies doing “Tomahawk” chants and chopping motions. This whole thing is just… profoundly stupid and unsettling. I’m disappointed that Warren even felt the need to engage with this sh-t, but then again… Obama dropped his birth certificate after all of those stupid Birther claims, so apparently it’s a thing now.
Flashback. July 5. Trump on Elizabeth Warren: "I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian." (via Fox) pic.twitter.com/rQ8cxHGg8s
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 15, 2018
Update: Senator Warren just released this FIRE ad.
My family (including Fox News-watchers) sat together and talked about what they think of @realDonaldTrump’s attacks on our heritage. And yes, a famous geneticist analyzed my DNA and concluded that it contains Native American ancestry. pic.twitter.com/r3SNzP22f8
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) October 15, 2018
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Now it is official the orange white supremacist will have her deported. 😉
Actually quite the opposite. It means she has more rights to this land than he does.
Naw, they’ll just take away her voting rights.
And her health care
Why did it get to be a big deal? Just her chilling with friends? I do remember she was pictured on a college’s brochure that addressed inclusiveness — were O klahomans a disadvantaged class? She looks very AI I think, and could have sought favor. I’ll give a million dollars to anyone who can can nail her on that. Speaks with forked tongue.
My grandmother is half Seminole; this does not make me Native American. My father’s grandfather was English, this does not make me so. I could scream over the nonsense that people are pulling out these days. If you have ONE ancestor from the 1700’s who was NA, this does NOT make you a NA. Elizabeth Warren is a white woman of European descent who is trying to use the Native American theme to get ahead. Call it quits already.
Laura,
I would give your comment a thousand likes.
Elizabeth did not claim she was Native American. She repeated family stories about having an ancestor who was Native American. It was the gop who amped up the whole Pocahontas thing.
She never used the stories to improve her position in life because they were stories.
The orange one now claims he never said anything about donating a million dollars to a charity of her choice. How shocking.
“trying to use the Native American theme to get ahead.”
except that she never did.
Except Laura and AmunetMaat, she never said she was Native American. But her DNA results showed she was not lying when she talked about her family passing down stories of having Native ancestry. “blows raspberry”
Being “Indian” (or anything else!) is about culture, about the stories handed down from one generation to the next. I have a grandfather and a great-grandmother on the Muskogee Dawes rolls; I have a tribal membership card and a CDIB card issued by the Federal government; and Elizabeth Warren has every damn right to call herself Indian if I do. I call myself Irish, too, because my mother’s family is. If you’ve got a problem with that, it’s all yours, not mine and not Elizabeth Warren’s.
Show me where Elizabeth Warren used the claim of Indian ancestry to get into college, to get a job or a promotion. Even when she talked about it during election campaigns she did not claim to be a tribal member. She said she had Indian blood. Millions of people in this country can make the same claim. You are what your family stories and traditions make you, and your percentage of DNA from a particular part of the world is not relevant. Unless you grew up in that family, you’re in no position to say what she is or is not.
+1000
Wonder if Trump will follow through. Doubt it. My son-in-law is 1/8 Indian but you would never know it. Looks mean nothing. And, honestly, I’m glad Warren did do the test because almost a year has been spent putting her down with the Pocahontas remarks.
Yeah I’ve been saying for a that until she gets a DNA test, the “Pocahontas” narrative will never die. I’m happy she did this, but I’m sure the Rethugs will find something else that is totally inconsequential to harp on her about.
*been for a WHILE that
Ugh. Mondays :/
It will never die because the deplorables hate truth, facts and human decency.
They’ll just say it was faked. You can’t argue truth and facts with lunatics and idiots.
Exactly, @lucy2. This is just like the birther movement garbage. This will never die.
Yeah that’s the thing. I think she’s great but if she thinks this makes a whit of difference to the MAGAs, she’s wrong. As Jon Stewart said, they don’t follow the rules. Remember how angry they got when Samantha Bee called Princess Complicit the “c” word….despite the fact that they all gleefully called Hillary Clinton that for years? They are either going to deny the validity of the test, or change the goalposts (“it doesn’t matter, what matters is she used it to get a job.”)
But that said, Warren would never win that crowd over, because of her policies, and because she’s a feminist.
Kelly Ann Conjob has already said she doesn’t care what the facts are, so Trump will clearly continue to hurl racist slurs at Warren. I hope Warren is relentless in calling on Trump to keep his promise to donate $1 million to charity if she takes a DNA test.
@Kitten: Lay off the weed, Son.
My grandma was biracial. I consider myself mixed race. You would never know it from looking at me. My mother’s side is 100% Norwegian. I can’t believe how much vitriol she has had to deal with.
Yeah, I’m technically mixed race because my dad is 100% Cherokee, but I’m white passing. Honestly most people think I’m Latina, not Indian. Or you just get the “what’s your heritage” questions a lot.
It actually has been going on for longer than a year. She ran for Senate against Senator Centerfold Scott Brown in 2012. At that time, Boston Herald columnist and right-wing radio talk show host Howie Carr, who aspires to be Rush Limbaugh, pounced on it and would spend half his show time and at least one newspaper column a week calling Fauxcahontas and Princess Lottalies, demanding her DNA tests, bringing in people who claimed she wasn’t what she said she was, (who themselves were subsequently debunked as frauds) and insisting that she had exploited her claims to steal jobs away from others. Carr’s minions than took over on social media, spinning more and more lies that she lied to get into colleges and get financial aid and to take jobs away from “real Indians.” Scott Brown would send his Senate staffers, who were being paid with our tax dollars, to her campaign rallies, dressed in costumes and “war paint” to chant. Carr and Brown were big early backers of Trump. Brown sold him his “supporter list,” which was heavily and illegally and unethically padded with names from his constituent services list and Carr and his wife donated heavily to Trump’s campaign. Brown is now our ambassador to New Zealand, where he has had at least two incidents of inappropriate behavior.
The comments underneath her Facebook posts are always so atrocious. The funny thing is that most of the people trolling her don’t even live here in Mass.
Really, what has Scott Brown been up to? I haven’t read anything about him in a long time. I had no idea about all of this. Great post.
I forgot it was Scott Brown and his minions who started these attacks. And to think that all these years later, our tax dollars are paying that racist to serve as Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa! It’s so wrong.
Did not know that. Thanks for the info. They are all dispicable and will of course never change.
Trump appointed Brown as ambassador to New Zealand, which Warren actually supported. There were complaints that he made inappropriate comments to several women about their appearance. When Brown was a state Senator, he gave Committee staffers autographed copies of his nude centerfold picture for Christmas presents. I know dozens of women who have had encounters with Brown when he said or did something inappropriate. He’s very handsy.
I love Warren. I’ve met her a number of times. She’s brilliant, funny, unexpectedly warm. But I don’t want her to run for President. She’s my Senator. I’m selfish
Uuuuuugh you know you’re a lifelong Massachusetts resident when just hearing “Howie Carr” sends you into a rage spiral! THE WORST. THE WORST.
I’m surprised we actually have an ambassador in New Zealand at all.
@BCity, it was difficult enough for me to type it!
Even if the test had been negative, that would not mean that her family stories were not true. The databases are most complete for European ancestry, and the further back an ethnicity appears— the harder it is to find traces in the tests. The genetic markers looked for simply may not have been passed on to that particular individual.
In Warren’s case, it would be smart to have any relevant living direct ancestors also tested to shut up the Orange Maroon. He’ll come up with some excuse to deny the results.
I hope she holds him to his $1 million donation promise. He needs to apologize also for all the lies he told about her using such ancestry to get jobs and get into school, which simply was never true. Anyone with an ounce of sense would realize she wouldn’t have been eligible anyway with such a remote connection.
Family histories are reliable in her timeframe. She and others heard stories from a grandmother, I think, who was the grandchild of the Native American. A grandchild usually knows who her grandmother is. This isn’t like people who think they have a certain ethnicity in their line from 300 years ago or more. This is within living memory of relatives who were alive when Warren was a child. Her other relatives have verified that they heard the same stories from several sources, and two Native American tribal affiliations were indicated.
But DNA tests can be inconclusive and records of the time were sparse. Plus if someone could pass for white under such circumstances, they would. It was a liability then to be identified as Native American.
Trump is the guy who claimed to be from a Swedish – rather than German – family, right up until the eighties because he and his father didn’t want potential Jewish investors/renters to think they were racist/anti-semitic.
EVERYTHING with this brain-damaged Oompah-Loompah is projection, right down to claiming others change their ancestry to suit their careers…
My daughter and son are 1/4 Chinese and you can’t even tell, especially with my son. My daughter has a little around the eyes where if you knew you can kind of see it, but my son looks super white. On the other hand, their cousins who are also 1/4 Chinese look like they are at least 1/2. So this sort of thing can go any which way.
What I want to know is how many of the racist idiots supporting this agenda are at least part black. I’d bet most. And I’d bet they would deny it until their dying day, the prejudiced garbage that they are.
My sister and cousin look Asian. They look like each other and our British grandmother but not lying like any of our other cousins. When they were very young, people would ask us if there were adopted. My cousin had us all do DNA testing because nothing in what we knew of our background explained it. It turned out we’re Sami. Learning that and going to Scandinavia to meet with Sami people has helped my cousin and sister considerably. Although we still don’t know how that came into our bloodline.
A friend from high school was 1/4 Japanese, and it was the same – you could see a bit around her eyes, but otherwise she was a tall blonde with blue eyes – I’m guessing the other side of her family was Scandinavian.
People who have no background in genetics really have no idea how random chromosome assortment can be. It’s like people who assume black and white couples make perfectly tan-colored children every time when it’s just as likely they’ll produce very light skinned and/or dark-skinned children. My ex was 1/4 Cherokee (or Sioux, can’t recall exactly), but you’d never tell outside of the fact that her skin tone had a slightly olive tint to it.
“People who have no background in genetics really have no idea how random chromosome assortment can be.”
you ain’t kidding. I went to HS with two brothers; father white, mother Japanese. Older brother was ORANGE haired, I mean BRIGHT ORANGE, with blue eyes, pale skin and freckled from head to toe. younger brother had black hair, dark brown eyes, and had darker skin that got very brown in the summer. The two could not have looked more different, and yet…same parents. genetics are WEIRD.
@whatWHAT I knew a family like that. They were dutch I think, one son had the carrot red hair, the other son was white blonde with pale blue eyes and the daughter dark hair and eyes. It was bizarre seeing them all together!
Sorry, replied in the wrong spot.
Mixed race people often can have blond hair, blue eyes, lighter skin. You honestly can’t look at someone and accurately judge their whole heritage. Especially in America, many Americans are “mutts” and aren’t one solid race.
Yes, we had customers come in yesterday, a mixed couple. Mom is dark like Kanye and her husband white. Their baby has blonde curly hair, blue eyes and looks full Caucasian
I’m a quarter Native American, Iroquois, the rest Irish and Scandinavian. I’m an Uber white curly haired ginger looking guy – so white I sunburn if the moon is is full…I did get the amazing cheekbones…lol My sister is dark haired tall, slim, and looks like a full blooded Iroquois with emerald eyes. Who knows how genetics really work.
Good for her but Trump will never follow through on his ‘offer’ – he never does.
His idea of ‘charity’ is his bogus foundation=straight into his pocket. His promises, like his threats are nothing but hot air.
But republicans cherry pick what science to believe in anyway..
Just like they do with their Bible.
Kellyanne Conway has already said today that Warren is cherrypicking science on this.
So if she isn’t tested, she and her family for generations are lying. And if she is tested and an expert says the results are consistent with the family stories about a Native American ancestor – she’s “cherry picking the science”??? Interesting set of alternative facts there.
WTF. Although I should not be surprised they’re not “accepting” the results. In what way is she cherry picking, according to Kellyanne?
“Republicans cherry pick what science to believe anyway” “Republicans can’t face facts”
The delusion in this comment thread is hilarious.
So does that mean that she can ask him to donate a million dollars to Planned Parenthood now?
OMG THIS YES!!!! THIS WOULD BE THE MOST AMAZING THING THAT HAPPENED IN THIS DUMPSTER FIRE OF A PRESIDENCY!
That would be awesome! or a 50/50 split: PP and RAICES.
The “controversy” was that she allegedly used that claim to give her an edge academically and professionally. I believe that was debunked a long time ago but since when do facts matter to the right anymore? I am beside myself more than ever with this insane phenomenon. People will just claim these results are “fake.” Nothing matters.
Even on my local FB chatter page, a woman was (rightly) dragged for posting a piece of blatant propaganda as news. The discussion that ensued about what constitutes “fake news” made my blood boil. Basically anything favorable to the left is “fake news” to the right, no matter hoe throughly and meticulously researched it may be.
It is total BS that she used it for advantage. Without a tribal enrollment it is very difficult to get any kind of affirmative action for being native. African Americans are not asked to provide proof of African ancestry, ditto for hispanics although they are almost universally mixed race european/native, and sometimes african, just like Natives in the US. Blood quantums were forced on the tribes by the US government as a way of limiting membership because many of the treaties included cash or food or cloth payments for every enrolled member every year. My white mother and her sister married enrolled native men but because of the matrilineal nature of the tribes enrollment none of their 1/2 native children are enrolled. That is 7 natives with no tribe. If it had been a blood quantum tribe then its a different story. Some tribes have enrolled members with very little native blood and others have people close to full blood but because their parents are from different tribes with conflicting rules they can’t be enrolled in either tribe. It really is a mess.
Interesting. I had a neighbor who actually used native ancestry (by her own admission a dubious and very distant link) to get her daughter into a selective enrollment high school, back when Chicago had quotas based on race. All she had to do was check a box. As far as I know they never followed up on a real background check. It infuriated me that she admittedly gamed the system but she and her family were not they type you’d want to cross. Nasty people.
My husband and I did 23andme recently. I actually had some Native Canadian show up – which only makes sense because mom’s side of the family is Acadian French. I also took my raw data and used it with other programs like GEDmatch (that’s how they caught the golden state killer haha) to compare the results and narrow it down more. It’s super interesting, honestly. I think the biggest surprises on mine were Iberian which is common in Latin American people, and a small amount of East Asian – neither of which were known by my living family members.
23andme are not that accurate so don’t take it too seriously.
Like I said – I took my raw data and plugged it in to other programs as well. I figure the more sources you use, the more you can narrow it down. It’s also had an update in the last year that has made it more specific.
Oh? Can you recommend a test that’s more accurate, JustSayin’? I did 23andme and would be very interested in comparing the results. 🙂
Source?
I’ve been researching my family and our DNA through GedMatch this past year, too. It’s fascinating to say the least. We’ve had a lot of ambiguity and adoptions and weird history so it was crazy to get my results done. Our oral history has always included recent Native American – and there is some – maybe at the Great-Great Grandparent level I would have a full blooded Native ancestor. But the real surprise came that I have much MORE recent Middle Eastern and West African DNA. My grandparents were very dark skinned and their histories were cloudy at best (my grandpa claimed to be native american, my grandma said the records hall burned down in her town so she didn’t have birth certificate) – the reality is that they were likely hiding their true ancestry.
Families are crazy things and our country has an awful past. It’s understandable that many people chose to claim Native blood rather than African or Middle Eastern. And to those who had the stories passed on to them – of course they take it at face value! She’s blameless in all of this and I’m saddened she’s even had to address it.
A friend seriously into geneology told me that it was very common at least in our area of the Midwest and where his family had spread for Native Americans to marry African-Americans. Nothing to lose for either because they both faced discrimination. He was relatively light-skinned but with obvious enough African features. He said when he was younger, he had not been allowed to visit a relative in Chicago who was passing for white. Only family who also could pass could visit. He was probably in his seventies back in the 1980s.
@jwoolman – Interesting – I’m in the Midwest, too, and my grandparent’s families of origin moved around quite a lot between Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
I hope she doesn’t run and I REALLY hope she isn’t the democratic candidate. I agree with her politically on just about everything, but I don’t think she has what it takes to win in a general election. We need to have a candidate who will WIN, not one that is necessary ideologically pure.
Love Liz but I agree 💯
I third that motion.
Yup, just wrote the same below! She’s… too civil? Like everyone who has thus far confronted Trump. They’re playing old school politeness politics while he is taking a dump on their doorstep.
She’d be more effective in the Senate, anyhow. One less seat up for competitive election in 2020 the better.
The sad truth is there is no one right now from the Democratic Party that would beat Trump. Maybe President Obama but he can’t run again and wouldn’t anyway. Cory won’t win. Liz won’t win. Kamala won’t win. There’s hardly any Democratic Governors. I despise what seems to be non stop campaigning but whoever was going to challenge really should have essentially started stealth campaigning right after Trump was elected; especially since Trump has endless rallies to shore up and keep his base rabid.
I firmly believe Biden/Kamala ticket would be a winner. I really hope Biden runs, I think he has what it takes.
why do you think this? he has support from a minority of the country. unless you mean because of voter suppression and russian interference again, which, yeah, that’s a big problem. But you seem to be saying we don’t have anyone who could beat him even on a level playing field. I don’t think that’s true.
@Darla
Personally I don’t think she can win because conservatives have had time to demonize her, like they have with Nancy Pelosi. A Warren ticket would motivate conservatives to rally behind Trump even if they don’t like Trump.
Oh God I had a moment imagining Obama announcing he would run again and even though I know he can’t, my heart leapt up in my chest. He’d DESTROY Trump.
Why do I think Donald Trump will get re-elected? Because he’s out there energizing his base and giving them what they want and meanwhile the Dems/Left still do not get it. Unless the economy tanks, we find ourselves in another mess of a war, or some other major event happens; DT is getting re-elected. People didn’t think Dubya would get re-elected either. Never under estimate the complacency of your fellow citizens. Most Americans aren’t being significantly impacted by DT’s policies (yet) in a bad way; and many have shown that they are willing to overlook his racism and ignorance – hell, they love it. So many will shrug their shoulders and say, he’s not that bad. And I’m going to blunt, White Americans aren’t ready for another Black President and they definitely aren’t ready to have a Black woman that close to the Oval Office. Hilary Clinton couldn’t even get the majority of White women to vote for her; they overwhelming voted for a Child Molester in the AL Senate race. I’m not naive enough to believe that they would suddenly be comfortable voting for Kamala.
Patty, I understand. I do not expect white women to vote dem, I agree they will continue to support trump, even while saying they do not. But…the economy IS going to crash. A whole lot of stuff is going to happen including natural disasters due to climate change. 2019 is going to be a very bad year. The tariff chickens are going to come home to roost too. Inflation, we will be lucky if we do not get hyper inflation. I take no pleasure in saying this, I am dreading it.
Why is it sad? It clearly was part of her family’s history and I don’t think she’s ever tried to claim anything more.
There’s nothing sad about her proving and mentioning her family history. She took the DNA test to prove she honestly had Native American ancestors which Trump bullied and insulted her about not having. If Trump hadn’t taunted her by calling her a liar and Pocahontas, this test wouldn’t have been taken, and her family history wouldn’t be discussed
Elizabeth Warren would make a great president. She does have what it takes.
I cannot believe people are saying she doesn’t have a chance because she may actually run in the 2020 election!
This SAME thing happened to Hillary Clinton!
People turned their backs on her and said they wished Warren were running instead of her back in 2016.
When will women start supporting women?
If Warren was the candidate I would vote for her, just like I voted for Hillary. I agree she would make a great president, but I don’t think she would win an election against Trump. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I believe that to be true. I could totally be wrong, she may pleasantly surprise me. Democrats need to be focused on running candidate who can actually win. Personally, i’m not just going to vote for a woman because she’s a woman. I’m going to vote for the most qualified candidate who can win.
Sadly I agree with this. I love Harris but don’t think she should be the candidate either. Unfortunately we have proved that the US is a huge misogynistic quagmire and I want someone who can win. It PAINS me to say this but we need a young shiny white guy. Beto if he loses in Texas or Young Kennedy. Urgh. I feel awful but I think it’s true.
Doesn’t have what it takes because she’s a powerful WOMAN?
Trump’s disastrous first term isn’t even 1/2 way over and the Mueller investigation isn’t finished, yet
alleged supporters of possible women candidates are already resigned to another 4 years of Trump.
Hillary Clinton didn’t lose the popular vote but things could have turned out differently if apathetic people would have voted instead of staying on their couches bitching.
Whether you like Clinton or not, she was the most qualified, prepared, experienced and skilled candidate to run in the last 25 or so years. She lost because she’s a WOMAN.
Women could have voted her in en masse but didn’t for their various excuses….are women threatened by powerful women? Hmmmmmm….
Now other women are potentially running in 2020 yet somehow they just don’t quite cut it.
Americans prefer a country in ruin rather than having a powerful woman leading it…
You realize women’s rights are slowly being stripped away as we speak…wake up!
Was this comment in response to me??
Effective ad. Sorry that GOP racism forced her hand. Watching those Trump clips is nauseating.
The idiots calling her Pocahontas and harassing her are vile, but it’s not really about whether she did or didn’t have a distant Native American ancestor.
She didn’t just say she had a distant Native American ancestor, she called herself a Cherokee and a minority. When she was at Harvard she was described as Native American in an effort to defend their hiring practices. None of that was at all appropriate given we’re talking about one single ancestor hundreds of years ago. Warren and her immediate family were and are 100% white passing and the story about their ancestor was just a story to them, not anything that actually had any affect on their lives.
Thanks, Jane.
This is the main reason why she will never get my vote
+1
For generations of my mother’s family, they said we had Cherokee and French ancestors, but we recently had our family tree studied, we discovered we had no kind of French or Indian ancestors. Elizabeth was probably just saying she was Cherokee because it’s what she was told by her family, and not everyone knows 100% correctly what they are, and sometimes get it wrong by accident
Again, it’s not that she claimed to have a distant Cherokee relative, it’s that she called herself a Cherokee when the connection, even if she had evidence the specific ancestor was Cherokee, is too far back for her to be a tribal member.
Talking about your Native American ancestor is fine. Claiming that you are a Native American because an ancestor born in the 1700’s probably was is something else.
That was a right wing myth from a single source that has been debunked over and over. Trump just latched onto the lie because that’s what he does. He lies about people he doesn’t like, and he doesn’t like anybody who criticizes him. Did you listen to the things he said about his primary opponents?!?
Warren simply mentioned her Native American ancestor when asked, as an interesting part of her family history. It would make her at most 1/32 Native. She never claimed to be a minority and she never used that remote ancestor to get a job or financial aid as a student. The connection was too remote to matter anyway. These are not matters of opinion but actual facts that can be checked. There is no reason to call her or her entire family (who confirm hearing the same stories about their ancestry involving two tribes in the area) liars. When my mother told me what she knew about her ancestry, I believed her. It was only a few generations ago, within living memory of the people in Warren’s family telling the stories.
Be careful about sources before you pass on such things. Repeated lies tend to sound like “common knowledge” after a while because they begin to sound so familiar. But this stuff is just all lies perpetuated by the Liar-in-Chief.
This. It’s scary how often I see well-meaning liberals repeating RW lies. Also, the idea that we wouldn’t vote for a capable presidential candidate because of something as inconsequential as her DNA makeup is Peak 2016.
Have we really learned nothing?
I honestly know nothing about that whole controversy because I ignore everything coming from the right. But maybe I shouldn’t because things do get into your unconscious anyway.
And I will vote for anyone, anyone, who wins the dem nomination. Warren is not my pick in the primary but all of that ends the minute the nomination is secured, no matter who it is.
Thank you @jwoolman and @kitty. Exactly.
@ jwoolman Thank you!! It’s upsetting how these repeated lies make their way into the national consciousness.
It hasn’t been debunked.
She called herself a Native American and a Cherokee in multiple 2012 interviews whilst campaigning. Not ‘I have a Cherokee ancestor’ but ‘I am Cherokee’. She tried to dial that back later, but the way she’s handling this DNA test suggests she never understood the problem.
She listed herself as a minority in a teachers directory in the 90’s, and in 96 she was described as a Native American in The Crimson when she was at Harvard. No qualifiers, just Native American. In an article talking about Harvard’s (lack of) diversity. That’s not one of Trump’s lies, the records of both things exist.
Maybe take a look at how actual Native Americans are reacting to this. They way she talks about it makes a lot of people very uncomfortable.
Jane, do you have links to video or transcripts of any of the 2012 interviews where she actually says this verbatim? I’m not being snarky, if she has made statements implying tribe membership I would genuinely like to know, and I would like to see the interview context if possible (i.e., whether it was clear in the context of the conversation that she meant “I’m part Cherokee”, or if she seems to be making a bigger claim). I’ve seen various commenters make claims about these Warren interviews, but I have yet to find the evidence myself, and I would like to see it if it’s out there.
That’s not true.
This is demonstrably false.
Snoop dog has quite a lot of native american ancestry but you don’t see him going on about it.
Snoop must have mentioned it sometime or else you wouldn’t know about it. Not uncommon for African-Americans to mix with Native Americans, though.
Warren isn’t “going on about it”. She is responding to a persistent smear campaign by Trump and his supporters against her and her family. He uses the insulting name Pocahontas to refer to her repeatedly, which is also an insult to the real Pocahontas but I guess that’s the only Native name Trump knows, thanks to Disney cartoons.The man even referred to her as Pocahontas during a ceremony honoring Native Americans who used native languages to baffle spies in WWII. Completely inappropriate.
Even if it had turned out she was wrong about her family history, the casual racism of Trump and his supporters when speaking about Native Americans is vile. How can politicians get up on TV and make war whoops etc. It’s so unbecoming of an adult let alone a political or president.
How do you know he has “quite a lot of native american ancestry”?
Because he took a dna test on george lopez show
Um, not the same thing 🙄
At one time it was quite common in certain parts of the country for many Americans (black and white ) parents and grandparents to claim NA heritage , sometimes it was just a romanticised myth that passed down from generation to generation , other times it was a more palatable way to explain that Grandma with the wavy hair that tans too easily (who was very often mixed with some black )
Either way I never saw her claiming NA as deliberately malicious, she was just going with what folklore had been passed down in her family for generations in this instance there is some truth to it
Yep. I wish I could remember who the professor was who taught sociology and he would ask his incoming freshman classes each semester (mostly white upper class and upper middle class kids) how many of them have heard that they have NA DNA? Most every kid raised their hand. Native Americans just did NOT have children with THAT many white people. It was (and IS) a cover story for the West African DNA in their family line. My “white” grandmother didn’t even look white when she was young. Only once she got silver hair did she really look like she could be a white person. Did my DNA and there’s West African DNA in there.
I thought it was in fact quite common for the early settlers to marry/have children with Native american women. This would have been the early settlers, before slavery started in the US. So , quite possible for many white people to have NA ancestry..just further in the ancestry, like EW.
A friend who pursued geneology (he had me make copies of some of the documents and newspaper articles he found) discovered that in our area of the Midwest, it was common for African-Americans and Native Americans to intermarry. There is no benefit to African-Americans to make up such stories to cover up an African in their ancestry… My genealogy-obsessed friend was African-American himself.
This might have happened with some European-Americans, but it depends on where the family was when the Native American joined the family line. Some frontier areas had many opportunities for such genetic mixing between whites and Natives but little to no opportunities for mixing between whites and African-Americans. However, people in either case would try to pass for white or else their children would have limited opportunities.
@jwoolman
Oh I agree that there are white and black americans with NA ancestry, however the occurrence is often overstated overall, for instance a lot of families(black and white) who swore that they were have significant NA have DNA results showing they have none i.e 0 or less than 1%
As for black peoples motivation it varies NA are romanticised by both black and white (even if not always respected )in American Folklore so there’s that
There are some black people who also romanticise being anything other than black so there’s that as well
Also way back then a lot (not all ) of the sexual interaction between black women and white men were coercive (even after slavery ) with an imbalance of power if not out right rape, who knows it may be a lot more palatable and safer to say Grandma and em was Indian than admitting she was product of rape
She needs to run for Senator…and that’s it…cause she is NOT getting my vote if she runs for POTUS in the primary…and I’m letting her and the WHOLE WIDE WORLD know that right now…
And she should not even have dignified Tramp and his basket of deplorables’ horrific stance regarding this situation by taking that test and releasing the results…she just played herself MIGHTILY on that one…If she don’t know that for Republicans, facts will NEVA matter, then she doesn’t need to run for POTUS…cause she ain’t ready…
She isn’t going to be the nominee. She will have the same problem bernie has in the south. Neither has put in the work. Our base isn’t old white people, but the media is, so these narratives get formed. Until they face reality.
Unless Warren can make a time machine and go back into time…ain’t enough work that she can EVA put in to make me cape for her as POTUS…because what she did in my book is betrayal…you don’t betray the folks that gave you your come-up, because you too much of a political p— to make a definitive decision so you try to straddle both sides of the street…and end up…ONCE AGAIN PLAYING YOURSELF MIGHTILY!
I don’t play those types of games…PERIODT!
Are you trying to claim that Bernie gave her her political come-up? Not that’s just historical revisionism. President Barack Obama and yes, the establishment wing of the Democratic party had more to do with her election than Bernie did. She ran for the primary in MA unopposed and had every Dem under the sun supporting her. Heck, if anything, her rise to democratic prominence had more to do with President Obama naming her to set up the CFPB in 2010 than anything Bernie ever did, which was next to nothing outside of the usual political endorsement.
No CK, I wasn’t saying or even implying any such thing.
I don’t know what is meant by the come-up talk. I do remember long before Obama seeing Warren on tv talking about the history of predatory finance charges on credit cards. I didn’t know anything else about her, but she was so clear and so accurate about the whole evil situation. She was very impressive to me.
But I want her to stay in the Senate because we need good Senators like her. I feel the same about Harris.
Hopefully Trump will be in exile, in prison, or in a psychiatric facility by 2020 and we will have paper ballots because people finally realize how vulnerable those machines are to vote-shifting attempts and that mandatory hand recounts are absolutely essential. No more Republican lawyers going to court to shut down recounts. If you think votes were counted accurately in 2016 (or anytime this century), I have a nice bridge to sell you.
My apologies, Darla. I should have @the other poster. I had to reply to you for it to appear under the post it was directed due to the commenting system here.
@Jwoolman “come up” is in reference to her political ascent and the frankly disgusting notion that Bernie Sanders had anything to do with it and that she “betrayed” him by choosing not to endorse anyone in 2016.
I realized that after I posted my answer. At first i was just like what! because the idea of my crediting bernie with anything is hilarious, if you know me. But then I realized you weren’t talking to me, sorry about that. 🙂
Her problem is she is a woman. This country is too sexist at this point to vote in woman POTUS. Years ago my Dad told me there would be a black President before a woman President, thought he was fruit loops at the time. This many years later, he was right.
@LaLa the people who gave her her comeup? Who would that be? She appeared in MY state as a Senate candidate who had worked with Obama to protect consumers from the banking industry. She ran against a vain, shallow, lazy incumbent. I and tens of thousands other Massachusetts residents gave her her political power, not Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders doesn’t tell me what to do
Oh Lala I do agree so much. I’ll give Liz a pass because she’s amazing in Congress but No pass for Bernie!
I am hoping against hope that she does not run for president. She is my senator and I love her but we already know the GOP has no problem dismantling and discrediting professional women. She will be labeled shrill, men will tune her out, and we will be stuck with another 4 years of Trump. That’s not to say I think there shouldn’t be women candidates (please please please Kamala Harris) but Warren already has a giant target on her back and there’s too much riding on this election.
Trump just said “who cares ” and denied he ever said he’d donate a million dollars if she took the test and proved she was Native American
I mean, he also said “rouge people” assassinated Khashoggi. The latest version of his “400 lb guy in jersey”.
I agree, this was pointless.
There must be a video or screenshot of a tweet somewhere showing that The Donald did indeed promise a million dollar donation. It’s time he was held accountable for such things.
I just saw the video of Trump making the million dollar offer at a rally this summer. There’s always a tweet, interview, or speech that contradicts and comes back to haunt him
But now he will deny, deny, deny (and as Beth says there is . . . CNN has the video). Of course it does not fit his agenda so he says “Who cares”.
There is literally video footage, but Trump doesn’t live in the real world.
I mean, I took it for sarcasm when he said it and wouldn’t have expected him to follow through, but it goes back to the fact that he’s just that f*cking ridiculous that he can’t even own up to saying it in the first place despite video evidence.
Maybe the republicans just objected to her use of that “family story” to advance a political objective slash claim a heritage or sense of victimhood to which she has no right?
Where are these right wing narratives coming from on this forum? Did you all do keyword searches and zero in on us or what? None of these claims are true. They are just part of a smear campaign which has a single right wing source, started while she was running for office, and perpetuated by Donald Trump because she is articulate and critical of him and his policies.
Except she never did any of those things
…or maybe they are acting like drinking from the pond scum they drink from on a daily basis. The party of Trump is just like him: hateful sexist & bigots.
1.) That’s a right wing narrative that doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny.
but also
2.) lol @ the idea of the current Republican calling anybody else out for using “identity issues” when the entire thrust of their movement is weaponizing white male victimhood as a key rallying point.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mccarthys-in-laws-made-millions-off-dubious-native-american-heritage-claim
Meanwhile, this has happened (sorry if someone else already mentioned).
Good, I’m glad she did this. Tons of white families have family stories about Native heritage but you really have to have your DNA analyzed to know for sure. My mother has claimed since as far back as I can remember that she had a “full-blooded” great-times-five grandmother who was a Cherokee (of course–notice it’s never any smaller, less-well-known tribe? LOL).
Anyway, she did her DNA and guess what? Nothing. She DOES have 1% West African DNA, though! She’s an old racist white lady and was PISSED OFF and claimed the DNA test was WRONG, LOL.
Meanwhile, I DO have some Native American DNA. Through my father. Ooooo she’s still mad.
But yeah, for the longest time, I thought “why doesn’t Warren just get a DNA test?” I’m glad she did. Puts the question to rest. I never understood why Trump had a problem with it in the first place.
I grew up being told that we had Native American and that my great, great grandmother was Cherokee. It was really common where I grew up for people to say that, and I honestly never knew that that was considered a cliche thing to say until a few years ago. My dad has alzheimer’s disease, but is still high functioning. A few years ago, we gave DNA tests to the grandparents as a Christmas gift. I was terrified after the fact that he wouldn’t have any Native American and would be crushed. Luckily, he does! When I told him that, my light eyed, formerly redheaded, pale as anything, freckled father looked at me like I was crazy and wondered how I could have doubted him.
I like Elizabeth Warren, but I hope she doesn’t run for president. I know Hillary won the popular vote, but I think there are still too many people in this country who won’t vote for a woman. Then again, I never dreamed Trump had a chance in hell at winning, so I’d love a happy surprise for once. I’ve mostly been burying my head in the sand since Kavanaugh.
Because he desperately needs something to use against her and his buddies Scott Brown and Howie Carr have been pushing this for years.
Everybody is Cherokee if you just ask lol. I live in the PNW and people even here will claim they are Cherokee but never the local tribes here. It is a head scratcher why so many people claim the myth of Cherokee.
The DNA tests suggested she’s anywhere from 1/32 to 1/512 Native American. That’s a percentage so low she doesn’t really have a right to claim to BE a Native American or contribute to Native cookbooks and say her hiring was diverse like she has. Elizabeth doesn’t even meet the percentage requirements to join most tribes (1/16). It’s literally so small I don’t understand how she’s not mortified. She’s just another white person claiming an ancestry that she never grew up in and has had no part in contributing to.
I don’t like the racial gatekeeping that white people apply to Natives. Tribes were FORCED to adopt a blood quantum or other enrollment rules by the US government or loose their funding. My father is an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe. It is a matrilineal tribe. So even though I am 1/2 native, and look it, and was born on a reservation, I am not tribally enrolled. I am however the product of a family devastated by the historical trauma of colonization. Alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence, diabetes, depression, broken homes, and whatever else you can imagine. My grandparents and their 6 children, including my father, were forcibly removed by the US Army when a dam was built that flooded their reservation so this is not ancient history. Please checkout IdentifyNative2020 and see the movement to encourage hispanics to reclaim their native identity. More of us survived than white people want to admit.
I’m Latina and did a DNA test and it turns out I’m 12% NA. I figured it would be low because I’m Dominican and our native population was practically wiped out, with about 96% of our native population dying. So 12% is high for where I’m from, but low in general for many Latinos. My question is: can I “reclaim” this identity? And what does it mean to reclaim when it’s a low percentage. I also am 22% West African and feel I can’t claim being black.
The family histories are pretty clear that she is 1/32 Native. Her grandmother was one source and the ancestor was her grandmother’s grandmother. So basically we’re being asked to doubt that Warren’s grandmother knew her own grandmother or that her grandmother’s parent knew his or her own parent. Makes more sense to assume the family histories are correct. We are not talking about so many generations that living family members in Warren’s childhood did not have direct experience with that ancestor. The family stories are confirmed by other relatives and the DNA testing is consistent with them. Warren has never claimed anything more than that.
DNA tests are difficult to interpret at that distance. The databases are most complete for European genetic markers but even for European ethnicities the low percentage indications are iffy and different testers will report different percentages. All markers are not necessarily passed on to a given individual. We only receive half our genes from each parent and which ones get passed from parent to child is unpredictable all the way down the line. It was smart to get a real expert involved rather than just using a commercial service, but as a scientist myself I can tell you that we all hedge because we know the problems with such testing. Hence the range of possible percentages. Any reliable tester will tell you to combine the DNA results with family histories to try to see what is likely and what is not.
She listed that she was a minority (not specifically Native American) in a teacher directory and the Law School, not her, used it to claim that their hiring practices were diverse. It’s honestly not surprising how many people take the GOP claim that she used it to further her political career as truth. She’s only been elected Senator. If she had used it, we’d have ample evidence given her run was in 2012.
Second of all, Whiteness has and would have done more to further her career than any claim to minority status ever would have.
Thank god. Someone under 75 with a shot at the presidency.
The more I think about this, the grosser it feels. I wish she would have just left it alone.
lol, this is so f-cking dumb. The world is literally burning and this woman let this fat idiot goad her into taking a DNA test because he calls her Pocahontas. Democrats irk the hell out of me.
The media will run itself weary on the smallest GOP lie. It’s better that she just got this over with before this became “her speeches” or “her emails” in 2020.
I would’ve done the same thing as her. She’s been bullied and called a liar for saying she has Native American ancestors by more republicans than just Trump, and Trump still brings it up at his crazy rallies. He claimed he’d donate a million to any charity she wants if she’d take the DNA test, so there’s a good reason, but…..now that she proved she’s not lying, Dump denies he promised a donation
Warren has called on Trump to donate to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.
I grew up in the South and it was quite common for folks I knew to claim Native American ancestry. It’s very romanticized but also very rare. As far as black folks go, Henry Louis Gates said most of the ones he’s encountered doing “Finding Your Roots” have talked about “that one great aunt with the high cheekbones” but Native American ancestry is rare among them as well.
The point is, I’m happy for Elizabeth Warren! lol
Alot of these family stories are just wrong.
It’s not rare among white people whose white ancestors settled in Oklahoma before statehood, though. Which describes Senator Warren’s family. I have documented NA heritage through the Oklahoma side of my own family, and it is not unusual for that specific scenario. Tribe members enumerated on the Dawes Rolls received land grants, making the young female tribe members attractive marriage prospects for white farmers looking for wives. The specific tribes that were relocated to Oklahoma via the Trail of Tears also had a long history of occasional intermarriage with whites even before that.
I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing. My Granny was from Oklahoma and used to claim Native American heritage but none showed up in my DNA. Her family was in Oklahoma a long time but I’m not sure if they settled there before Oklahoma attained statehood. Anyway again, thanks for sharing. 🙂
That is where I got part of my NA DNA- the Cherokee nation. The other part came from the Hopi in NM. The rest of me is Hispanic, Greek, Anglo Irish with distant connections to Scandinavia, Finland and the Sami people especially. Also there is that Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA way, way back.
My mother is Puerto Rican but I take after my Eastern European father. Let me tell you, I’ve heard some racist ass crap looking 100% white. Literally, I’ve told people I’m Puerto Rican and had them reply, “no, you’re not.” Um…ok then.
Recently I told an older white liberal lady that I was Puerto Rican. I said that my grandmother grew up with 13 brothers and sisters in a small shack. White lady’s response? “Good, you need to hear that.”
Yes, because I appear mostly white, I could not possibly understand the plight that MY OWN ancestors have been through. I could not possibly have spoken with my grandparents, or visited Puerto Rico. I need lessons from some blue-eyed b***h about how to feel.
Another thing is, people will talk trash about Puerto Ricans in front of me not knowing my identity. It’s aggravating because you can see they are just pathetic white boys getting their self-esteem by hating on minorities. Like, cool, have going out into the workforce and trying to interact with people who aren’t like yourself. I’m sure you’re really going places in life with that level of ignorance.
Should be more discussion about Native Americans in the MSM. They don’t get discussed as often as they should.
Not remotely a political comment, but since people here are talking about being 1/4 or 1/8 something, for reference, 6-10 generations means she’s 1/64th to 1/1024th native.
The New York Times shot down Elizabeth Warrens Native American claims. They show that the average EUROPEAN American is 0.18% Native. Warren’s “test” shows she’s 0.09% Native. Meaning the AVERAGE EUROPEAN AMERICAN is twice as Native as Warren. Yet she listed herself as a minority in order to profit.
As someone who works with teaching faculty (love them!), I know that if you can get them to actually agree on something and to praise someone so effusively for their teaching and scholarship then that person must be amazing.
Well, I don’t know enough about the politics of Native American communities to really weigh in on this, but I did come across this, in which the Cherokee Nation released a statement that the DNA test was inappropriate and wrong:
http://time.com/5425427/cherokee-nation-responds-elizabeth-warrens-dna-test/?xid=tcoshare
This makes me wonder – was she ever claiming tribal citizenship in the Cherokee nation, or was she just saying she had a Native American ancestor? Is there a meaningful difference between the two? I can understand how the Cherokee nation has a vested interest in protecting their own system of determining who does and does not have tribal citizenship, but my (admittedly vague) understanding is that the systems were at least partially imposed upon Native American communities by white people (as others in the comments have indicated), and that there are a lot of people with Native American ancestry who are left out, and some people with one very distant Native American ancestor who have membership (I think I heard this about the father in the Baby Jessica case), so it’s a complicated issue. If Warren does run, it will at least be educational to see it play out.
She has never claimed tribal citizenship.
Yes, the politics of tribal citizenship are very complicated for many (probably most) tribes. To get a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, which is one of the things you need in order to enroll in a federally recognized tribe, you have to provide documentary evidence (birth / death certificates) of descent from tribe member(s). DNA results are not accepted as a substitute for these documents. Some tribes have so-called blood quantum requirements and others do not (the fraction of your ancestry that is Native as documented on your CDIB), and there can be other requirements as well — each tribe sets its own rules. Tribal governments are extremely wary of any scenario where people start demanding membership based on DNA results, or trying to get tribe members disqualified based on DNA results. So, anytime a lot of attention is given to the idea of DNA proving someone’s Native ancestry or lack thereof, or showing how much Native ancestry someone has, tribal governments go on alert.
It’s further complicated by some tribes having enslaved African-Americans, and the fact that their mixed-race descendants with Native ancestry are typically not eligible for tribal membership under existing rules (due to having to trace your ancestry back via documents to an index tribe member who was listed on government rolls, something that is most often impossible for descendants of enslaved persons to do). This is a whole quiet scandal for several tribes now based in Oklahoma, and not something tribal leaders are eager to have examined through the lens of DNA testing.
Oh come on, 6 to 10 generations ago there was a Native American that identified as white?? Then we are all something else! 6 to ten generations I had an African American in my family so am I able to identify as African American???
Thank you so much for the depth of this article.
Elizabeth Warren is 1/1024 or 0.0009765625 native American. The Boston Globe corrected the math a updated it. The Cherokee nation have disavowed her claim and its turning into a farce. Trump rightly ridiculed her again tonight. Bad start to a campaign.
I really like Elizabeth Warren. I wished she would have been on the ballot instead of Hillary Clinton last go around. Warren is smart and fearless. I have been sickened to hear Trump make such racist remarks about Warren. There is something very seriously wrong with him. I’ve never had my DNA tested because I’m too suspicious. Lol! So I don’t know if I have any NA in my background but my life long best friend is NA and when I hear Trump make racist remarks about Warren I feel as though he is saying it to all NA’s and esp to my best friend and it cuts right to my heart. It is hate speech. There is no defending it. There is no walking it back. If you are reading this and share my feelings please VOTE next month for candidates who will restore America as a beacon of hope to all who seek, a country that leads by example in human rights.
If Warren had claimed to be Cherokee, then all of the outrage here would be entirely justified. But she didn’t. That’s a Republican talking point, i.e. a lie. Her claim was only that she had Native ancestry on her mother’s side, which she just proved was factually correct.
Claiming to be something that you’re not is cultural appropriation. Claiming to be something that you actually are is a statement of fact.
She never applied for jobs or roles on the basis she had some NA ancestry but she’s being attacked for it. She got the job at Harvard and then one of her colleagues saw a family pic and asked about her grandmother. That’s how they found out about it. After that Harvard boasted about having a NA professor on their books. Also she checked something on a professional industry group membership form so she could get in touch with other academics with NA ancestry. Culturally she did grow up with a grandma who identified as NA, but she has said again and again she never claimed to be NA and respects the criteria laid out by NA groups.
She is a legal legend in her own right – one of the most cited if not the most cited in bankruptcy law. Her work in consumer law sets her up well for POTUS etc. Her only “weak point” for me is foreign policy. I believe she’s into regime changes and aggressive FP like the corp Dems (eg HRC). Also, her consumer law background + the fact she’s left of corporate Dems (HRC, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, etc) makes pro-corporate outlets like Washington Post no-likey Elizabeth very much.