May 22nd, 2012 The truth about Elizabeth Warren

Well, I don’t have it, so if that’s what you came for, sorry. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, catch up by reading this (and if you don’t know who Warren is, read this). The short version is that at some point she claimed Cherokee heritage and her opponent Scott Brown decided to make it an issue by claiming that she doesn’t. Frankly, I don’t think it’s likely that she does. So many people claim Cherokee heritage that mostly we Cherokees just laugh it off. Her “high cheekbones” remark is about par for the course in my experience. The phenomenon is a constant irritant, but basically we have more important things to do than worry about all the wannabes.

But let’s go back to the controversy. I want you to think about why it would matter whether she’s Indian or not. I honestly couldn’t begin to tell you how many people in the US actually believe they have Indian blood, but I do know that a substantial quantity claim it.  As for why, I’ll let that be addressed by other people. In itself, the idea that a white person is erroneously claiming Native heritage is not surprising. Many White Americans have a legend of a Native ancestor, and quite often it’s specifically Cherokee. As to why it’s that particular tribe, it’s impossible to say for certain but there’s a decent answer posited in this book. So it should be clear that it’s really not even uncommon for Whites to claim Indian blood that they don’t have. Most of the time, this does not become the source of a huge controversy, and yet this time, when that claim got mixed up with politics, it did. I have nothing to say about the woman’s heritage, but if you want to read about the current status of the controversy on that, look here.

Again, the question is why it’s a source of controversy. It’s not that the conservatives who object to Warren would like her more if she was Indian, nor would they like her less (since that’s impossible). No, it stems from the fact that they believe she used a false claim to further her career. But do you notice what that assumption says? It rests on the other assumption that being a Native American confers special privileges. I can’t even begin to say how wrong that idea is. On the bare face of it, if Affirmative Action could elevate moderately talented and intelligent public school graduates to Harvard professors, I’d be a Harvard professor! And yet the conserva-wackos firmly believe that racial politics would somehow cause an American Indian to be elevated far above their station. I’ll leave this link here and you can read that idiocy for yourself if you want to, but let me summarize it for you: “Minorities get unfair promotions, preferential hiring, and are treated like gods by stupid liberals”.

I can assure you that such privileges do not exist, but let me go back specifically to Warren. From this article in The Atlantic:

The head of the committee that brought Warren to Harvard Law School said talk of Native American ties was not a factor in recruiting her to the prestigious institution. Reported the Boston Herald in April in its first story on Warren’s ancestry claim: “Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn’t recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.

“‘It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn’t mention it to the faculty,’ he said.”

He repeated himself this week, telling the Herald: “In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, the story continues to circulate that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed some kind of affirmative action leg-up in her hiring as a full professor by the Harvard Law School. The innuendo is false.”

“I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned,” he added.

That view was echoed by Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who voted to tenure Warren and was also involved in recruiting her.

“Elizabeth Warren’s heritage had absolutely no role in the decision to recruit her to Harvard Law School,” he told the Crimson. “Our decision was entirely based on her extraordinary expertise and legendary teaching ability. This whole dispute is fabricated out of whole cloth and has no connection to reality.”

And that’s the second arena where an absence of evidence should have some weight. If there’s no easily located evidence that Warren has Native American ancestry, there’s also no evidence Warren used her family story to boost herself into a Harvard job.

Now that’s a defense of Warren specifically, but in general, the fact of a person’s ancestry never does play any role in whether they get a job that they “don’t deserve” (although it’s for damn sure a factor in making sure they don’t get jobs they do deserve). The irony of this situation is that in fact, Harvard hired yet another White applicant, when they actually could have been performing some affirmative action and been out there recruiting a Native American. I can’t understand how the conservatives who are up in arms over this “scandal” can’t even see the idiocy of their position. They’re arguing that via affirmative action, a woman who falsely claimed Native American status was hired when the fact that Harvard hired a White woman basically proves that they weren’t even looking for a Native American! That’s how ridiculous it is to believe that she got an unfair advantage over her White competitors!

I don’t think I can reiterate this point enough: our race does not gain us preferential treatment. It simply does not, unless you count preferential treatment in being hired by The Cherokee Nation to work at a casino. If it did, would we not be in more academic positions we hadn’t earned? Would we not be executives in more corporations? I sure wish I knew how to take advantage of this privilege of mine and get rich without earning it!

PS. The Local Crank has written a great speech Elizabeth Warren can use for free that would help her extract herself from this situation more gracefully.