POLITICS MAY 8, 2012
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That Elizabeth Warren claimed in the 1990s that she is a Native American is, among other things, a sign that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had a point. When Roberts famously wrote in a 2006 opinion, “It’s a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” he was castigated by many liberals for not understanding that Race Matters—that race is at the root of considerable societal injustice, and the country must address the issue squarely.
But notice a certain embarrassment many of us feel at the recent revelation that Warren, the phenotypically and culturally white Senate candidate from Massachusetts, identified herself as a “Native American” in professional academic directories, and was thus subsequently identified as a minority hire by Harvard Law School. It’s a sign that Americans increasingly agree with Roberts' point—that the country’s preferred ways of thinking, talking, and dealing with race no longer are on firm footing. It’s unclear whether Warren benefited in any tangible way from her choice to claim minority status (Harvard Law did not hire her on the basis of Native American status), but what has undoubtedly come into sharper focus are the roots of her decision: the cultural cues of an era that strongly encouraged everyone to “affirm” minorities of all stripes.
Indeed, Warren is hardly the only white person in the wake of that era to “identify” as Native American on occasion. I’ll never forget a guy I knew at one elite school I have been connected with who proudly brandished his status as one thirty-second Native American on a regular basis and was even explicit that it must have gotten him into the school. In any meaningful sense he was about as Native American as Ashley Olsen, and one learned nothing from him about being anything other than the blond-haired, laconic stoner that he was.
In truth, given what we know about Warren, we should not be shocked by the revelation. Warren has come to be cherished for her passionate liberalism and even refreshing hipness— occasionally identifying as a Cherokee is very much part of the package here. It also fits in with the culture in which she was raised, and which is still formative today. After all, we all live in an America in which white people are fond of dismissing things and people as “too white” (a remark that 50 years ago would have been completely opaque to liberal cosmopolitans.)
Generally, modern Americans can be almost strangely flexible on setting boundaries to what a culture even is. On separate occasions, I have been criticized for describing black culture as including soul food, a particular kind of humor, and a way of speaking. As such, Elizabeth Warren’s notion of herself as Cherokee—as well as Harvard’s touting her hiring as the inclusion of a “minority” on their faculty—should be understood as simply a sign of the times.
But all of these painfully subtle and protean notions of identity are increasingly showing signs of strain in society. A certain degree of cognitive dissonance was present, of course, from the very beginning of affirmative action programs. Some blacks who had suffered little identifiable disadvantage would be exempted from serious competition. Some whites were going to use blacks as tokens of their good-heartedness. Some people of mixed heritage, mainstream Americans in the cultural sense, would be counted—voluntarily or not—as minorities and given preference in admissions programs and job searches. This was, fairly enough, thought of as collateral damage. Without explicit requirements to bring people of color into consideration for jobs and university slots, white America of the 1960’s and ’70’s would not have started doing so any time soon, if ever. The shove, in all of its crudeness, was necessary and just.
But today, when the black condition is so much better and so much more diverse than it was 50 years ago, it’s no accident that old-style affirmative action policies are on the ropes. The black middle class is enormous. Increasing numbers of mixed people are calling themselves biracial rather than black. There are now over a million African-Americans who were actually born in Africa. The old categories just don’t work anymore. And, in that way, it’s fitting that later this year the Supreme Court may strike down race-based affirmative action in university admissions entirely.
But we should be mindful that none of this was as true twenty years ago as it is now. Elizabeth Warren’s passing sense of herself as “a Native American” because her grandfather had high cheekbones and it’s what she “was told” is a snapshot of that earlier era. Besides, in the grand scheme of things, there is no reason to think she would be not be where she is today if she had never been listed as Native American.
Still, it’s a kind of thing we’ll see ever less of in the years ahead. I should note that I am technically one-sixteenth Native American. There are photos of my half-Native American great-grandmother to prove it, complete with her own high cheekbones and indigenous regalia. That means my new daughter is exactly as Native American as Elizabeth Warren. However, when she starts applying for colleges and jobs, I picture her neither getting special attention as a Seminole nor seeking any—and that’s the way it should be.
John McWhorter is a contributing editor of The New Republic.
48 comments
If you're so eager to see the Supreme Legislature invalidate affirmative action, I'd like to see them also uphold integrated busing and race neutral school attendance (across district lines). Because even though it's all very nice to point to the ridiculous extremes of American society continuing to perpetuate race even though there's no good scientific need for it as a construct, equality under the law and even fair access to what the Supreme Court was too afraid to recognize as the right to ecucation is still very much first a racial and then a class issue. I will not tolerate the Supreme Court's invalidation of affirmative action unless they also invalidate the continued redlining and balkanization that allows neighbouring suburbs to be 95+% white and 95+% black. That's not fair, it's not even market-based, and it's one of the longest-lived cankers that the country still has not addressed. Has not solved yet, even, although affirmative action was an attempt to do this at the university level. Your hallowed Chief Justice Roberts is the same person who said "[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race". I'm sure he lives near Anacostia and sends his children to public schools whose racial composition reflects the melting pot that is DC. Oh. Oh yeah. I thought not. It's not true that the way to create a just and equal society is to legislate equality, but I suppose it's a decent enough goal to have and it's best to realize that various intermediate steps must be taken to get there. Perhaps Roberts should have came clean in his Senate testimony and said "the way to stop the Supreme Court from becoming the most conservative in 100 years is to stop appointing conservatives to the Supreme Court". And its corollary, "the way to get Americans to realize they aren't as ultraconservative as the Court's conservative vanguard is to show the justices' political opinions for what they are, rather than pretend they are apolitical/centrist demigods".
- chaitless
May 8, 2012 at 12:39am
*education; *should have come clean
- chaitless
May 8, 2012 at 12:41am
To me this seems like a lot of dissembling about an obvious lie. I think most people really do understand what the "race" section of college/law school/whatever applications means -- they understand that it means the race with which you identify. Does Warren identify as Native American? I seriously doubt it. And if she does, that raises much larger questions that can't be dismissed by simply saying that America has moved into some sort of "post-racial" era in which race can't be easily defined and so we just need to adopt a really complicated outlook on the whole thing -- I agree that, yes, race is a complicated subject and how it is formed and constructed isn't something so simple as the color of your skin or what language you speak, but if you move outside of academia/publishing/high society, I'm sure you'll find that race is still something that matters a great deal, and its definitions are pretty concretely defined by society at large. I don't think that any supposed new inability of young, white, middle-class adults to fully understand what being "Native American" or "black" or "Hispanic" means is evidence of the erosion of racial categories in American society. I think it's just another example of white America's routine inability to see past its own boundaries. That this comes in the form of a white female "Progressive" isn't really surprising, either. An interesting feature of "whiteness" is its supposed mutability and neutrality. To be "white" in American racial thinking is to be something "un-ethnic." You're a blank slate onto which you can assign whatever categories you wish -- it's easy when you don't think of your own racial identity as being something concrete and real. Had a Cherokee great-grandmother (or even a great-grandfather who might have "looked Indian")? Just put that down on the form, no big deal! It doesn't matter because it's just a costume, after all. But I think when we get out into reality, it's clear that it isn't just a costume. Being white (especially white and not poor) is something very concrete in average society, even if it doesn't carry the same privileges and meanings it once did. Same goes for being black or Hispanic or Asian or American Indian. Does that mean that Affirmative Action is a good idea or that it is still necessary? No, those are much larger economic and cultural issues. But it does mean that Warren's decision twenty years ago betrays either ignorance, callousness, or profound cynicism.
- zuludown
May 8, 2012 at 2:47am
One can dsagree with Warren's claim but in some ways it means nothing more than, at worst, a desire to game a stupid system. The real problem is a deeper one: in the U.S. colleges and universities have been held to an ideal of treating all students equally that American society isn't prepared to meet before those kids leave high school. The corrosive reality is, as chaitless describes, the covert segregation of K-12 education and the fact that people who come out of a dysfunctional milieu are then handed on to higher education to fix them up when in fact the schools and the parents are the poisonous issue.
- ironyroad
May 8, 2012 at 3:36am
Stick a fork in her. Blacks needed affirmative action because they are, well, black. I may not know Ms. Warren is native American, but I know Mr. McWhorter is black. If the Court does strike down affirmative action for blacks, I suggest we at least give them the same advantage as we give native Americans: permit blacks to own and operate gambling casinos.
- rayward
May 8, 2012 at 8:55am
What I want to see is a state passing a statute to the effect that, "For purposes of college, university, graduate and professional school applications, each resident of this State shall be entitled to describe himself or herself as 'Pacific Islander.'"
- Mikelawyr22
May 8, 2012 at 9:08am
I find the ending hilarious: That means my new daughter is exactly as Native American as Elizabeth Warren. However, when she starts applying for colleges and jobs, I picture her neither getting special attention as a Seminole nor seeking any—and that’s the way it should be. So because McWhorter possesses skills, attributes, and a financial wherewithal that puts him into the higher echelon of society feels he no longer thinks his own child should pursue any advantages based on race or ethnicity thereby no one should? Even the full blooded native American who grew up poor on a reservation MUST be treated exactly the same as a pampered princess who happens to be a minority. Is it really so effing hard to use a little bit of judgment when using affirmative action? Of course a poor Navajo child requires an extra hand up administered federally because no one at the state level out there gives a damn. And yes a poor white kid growing up in Texas also deserves a hand up as well but lets face it in our society if those two children have exactly the same kinds of abilities the long term path to acceptance and respect in America is naturally afforded the white kid. Look at Rick Perry. Could a native American who is as much of a shithead as Perry is ever be elected Governor of Texas? When minority shitheads have an equal proportion of attaining electoral success as white shitheads then I am all for getting rid of affirmative action.
- blackton
May 8, 2012 at 9:52am
Another sensible article from Mr. McWhorter. I'm glad TNR has him as a contributor. As to the other commentators, it should be noted that one could both possess the belief that disadvantaged families should be provided extra help and that colleges should not provide preferences simply based on ancestry. The extra help needs to come much earlier in students' educational careers, and eliminating ancestry preferences should include both race-based privileges (which, as McWhorter points out but commentators don't address, don't make sense when there's a large African-American middle class and recent African immigrants) as well as legacy admissions and donor advantages.
- polcereal
May 8, 2012 at 10:32am
Postscript: I do believe Mr. McWhorter is too lenient on Warren. Yes, her "identification" (a checked box on a form) was a product of the times, but that doesn't absolve her of the moral implications of claiming a Native American ancestry when it's apparent both that it was implausible and that she didn't need it. Once she obtained a doctorate and a job as a (female, i.e. minority) law professor--regardless of her later career arc--she can and should be held to a high standard of conduct.
- polcereal
May 8, 2012 at 10:53am
...will not tolerate the Supreme Court's invalidation of affirmative action unless they also invalidate the continued redlining and balkanization that allows neighbouring suburbs to be 95+% white and 95+% black... ...the covert segregation of K-12 education and the fact that people who come out of a dysfunctional milieu are then handed on to higher education to fix them up when in fact the schools and the parents are the poisonous issue... I guess I'm not understanding some of this. My understanding is that in the school redistricting cases, where I think McWhorter takes the quote from Roberts who wrote for the majority knocking down the Seattle and Loiusville plans, there was no finding of de jure segregation. Therefore people, like my brother in law in Seattle, who had moved into good neighborhoods that supported good schools were not subject to their kids, like his son, randomly being forced to go to less good schools in the interest of a diverse student population. So I'm not sure what the redlining and Balkanization is referring to. Is it meant to convey some mode of illegality? And I'm not sure what's "covert" about pevolunteer facto living where they do. And regardless of whether that is covert, is there some illegality involved here? And regardless of whether there's some illegality, what's to be done about de facto segregation in the context of K-12? Finally, on a lesser note, what difference does it make where Roberts lives and where he chooses to educate his kids?
- basman
May 8, 2012 at 11:53am
Jettison "pevolunteer". I don't know how it stayed in there.
- basman
May 8, 2012 at 11:58am
Basman, according to the Citizens United decision, it would be legal for me to spend $10 billion and buy the election for Romney. That would not make it right. In fact, it would make you question the entire regime of law that the court decision is based on. And that has nothing to do with the fact that if you looked on the ground at what happened in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s--across the country, in the South and in the North--white families specifically moved away from towns as black people moved in, strengthened their zoning regulations to keep that from happening again, and that the Supreme Court and Executive Branch specifically decided not to keep people from de facto perpetuating segregation that civil rights laws were supposed to end. I mean, it's not like "A Raisin in the Sun" was written in a vacuum. It obviously doesn't make a difference where Roberts lives, but it obviously highlights the point that if Roberts wants to make claims about how the country ought to operate, he needs to see how far it is from that ideal every waking day and fetishize the gap.
- chaitless
May 8, 2012 at 12:05pm
Chaitless, I'm trying to make a different point. I'm not saying that just because SCOTUS decides a case and therefore its decision is law that the decision can't be criticized. Legal doesn't entail right or good. I'm just trying to point out that the distinction the school redistricting cases turned on was between illegal and legal separation. I know there was white flight. I'm not aware that any zoning laws which had the proximate effect of keeping blacks out of white neighborhoods could legally stand. If so, I'm interested to learn about them. ,,,and that the Supreme Court and Executive Branch specifically decided not to keep people from de facto perpetuating segregation that civil rights laws were supposed to end... What were the instances of this? I'm not asking you this confrontationally but wanting to know what you refer to. Remedying the direct effects of de jure discrimination, while it has its attendant problems, is one laudable and necessary thing. "Remedying" the reality of de facto separation is a whole other can of difficult worms.
- basman
May 8, 2012 at 12:38pm
basman: I'm not aware that any zoning laws which had the proximate effect of keeping blacks out of white neighborhoods could legally stand. You did not need laws. The first black person who ever moved into my middle class white neighborhood was former Heavyweight champion of the world Larry Holmes, it literally took someone of his caliber to break that barrier. And I live nearby Philadelphia. The Philly in Pa. and not Miss. Personally I want there to be bussing, but set up in a situation similar to that of China. It is one of the reasons it is the highest achieving school districts in the world. Now, of course, in China there is no diversity by race but tremendous diversity by class. Now unless you believe that 95% of whites are inherently superior to 95% of blacks then rationalizing segregation by neighborhood (and class) is fallacious.
- blackton
May 8, 2012 at 1:21pm
I know a 17-year-old of mixed race who recently got a full scholarship to a NYC college only because she is of mixed race (approximately half white and half black). She was a C student in high school, and her family is rich. Her folks simply gamed the system to save themselves money. They're long-time, successful gamers of the system in other areas, too. That's one of the ways they got and stayed rich. I agree with blackton that the disadvantaged of all races should have a leg up on the more fortunate. You never know if someone who wasn't given an opportunity would have turned out to be special. We're lucky Obama was given a leg up when he was young. I like my 17-year-old acquaintance. She's a good kid. But I think her family should pay for her out-of-state, double-tuition college education. You can be sure there is a kid in NYC who's an A student and who was aced out of a college education by gamers in this instance. Elizabeth Warren sounds like a gamer, too. This half-, quarter-, and eighth- racial stuff reminds me of the "octoroon" classification of certain slaves in the Old South. It would be funny, if it weren't sad.
- magboy47.
May 8, 2012 at 1:22pm
At least if we get rid of gender, ethnic or racial preferences, college admissions will be a pure meritocracy, without any advantage to legacies or the children of wealthy contributors. Because we know that those that decry affirmative action in any kind seek no advantage or privilege.
- gator27
May 8, 2012 at 1:56pm
And we know too that if, I say IF, there are such preferences given to children of alumni or wealth contributors, they would be perfectly natural and legitimate, as opposed to affirmative action preferences that everyone knows are simply perverse and ideological attempts at social engineering.
- ironyroad
May 8, 2012 at 3:02pm
re: basman See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desegregation_busing_in_the_United_States Of course, this was one of the reasons that people increasingly decided to send their children to private schools or move to the suburbs in the first place.
- chaitless
May 8, 2012 at 8:35pm
What she did was phony and wrong. If a repub did this TNR would be screaming from the rooftops.
- trinity225
May 8, 2012 at 11:19pm
I doubt it, trinity. The rooftop screaming would only take place if that Republican had made a career out of anti-affirmative action polemic before the secret was discovered. Warren didn't do that. You can accuse her of cynically gaming the system back in the day, but not much more. She didn't then go out and sneer at "affirmative action students" the way Republicans have tried to do with Obama.
- ironyroad
May 9, 2012 at 12:42am
Warren gamed the system the same way (but less intensely) than Ward Churchill did. That is one problem. The worse problem is that her initial reaction to the emergence of the story was to lie about it, and claim she never claimed Native American heritage (though Harvard unbenownst to her did crow about it). It is now obvious that she did overtly claim it, since she listed herself at the proper "minority faculty" places. The "gaming of the system" is one thing: it was twenty years ago. The lie matters more: that was last week. The first
- ProfEthan
May 9, 2012 at 10:44am
There's no comparison, Ethan. Churchill built a whole academic career on identity politics centered on a dubious claim to that identity. Warren did nothing of the sort and, as McWhorter notes, there's no evidence that she ever benefitted from such a box-check other than a kind of buzz from a sense of not being just a white bread American Protestant.
- ironyroad
May 9, 2012 at 11:25am
There is evidence, Irony: she set herself up as a minority faculty on various minority faculty websites in the 1980s. After she came to Harvard, Harvard proclaimed her "minority" status in publicizing the law school--she may not have prompted this, but she didn't protest it either; moreover, it is an indication (not proof, but a pretty big clue) that her "status" was known at the university before she came.
- ProfEthan
May 9, 2012 at 12:28pm
That's not evidence that she ever benefited, Ethan. But even if she did, I still think an Elizabeth Warren-Ward Churchill parallel fails the proportionality/common sense test by a generous mile.
- ironyroad
May 9, 2012 at 1:08pm
"You did not need laws. The first black person who ever moved into my middle class white neighborhood was former " There were Federal housing policies set up in the mid-30s, euphemistically called 'Red Lining' in which the FHA identified "residential security maps" to identify white neighborhoods and deny guarantee loans or funding if non-whites were allowed in certain neighborhoods. This was most prevalent in metropolitan areas, cities like Chicago, Philly, PA, and Cincinnati. Blacks specifically could not get loans for houses in certain middle class neighborhoods and were forced into certain neighborhoods, primarily lower class minority neighborhoods and bought homes through transactions called "bond to deed". Essentially you paid the deed owner "rent" equal to the agreed purchase price. As long as you kept up the payments and paid off the deed, you owned the home. If you missed a payment, the deed holder would typically evict the family and the payments paid to date lost. The deed holder would resell to someone else and repeat the process. As a result of that predicament, the minority family would be forced to rent out rooms to make the payments, neglect the property because they feared missing a payment and the property would fall into disrepair. Thus the perception that blacks/minorities don't 'keep up' their houses and live cheek to jowl, thus we can't have them living in this neighborhood prevailed, and the perception became self-fulfilling. Redlining didn't stop being a Federal policy until the late 70s. As for the Balkanization of neighborhoods in America, this is still predominately happening but along socio-economic lines buttressed by self-segregation along ethnic and racial lines depending on the city you live in. Prince George's County in Maryland is an example of the Balkanization of the upper and middle class black community in the Washington DC area segregating along class lines from the bordering "Southeast DC" district of Wash. DC.
- singlspeed
May 9, 2012 at 1:23pm
Irony, there are two issues: 1. If Warren wasn't trying to benefit why did she list herself on those "minority faculty" websites? That was a conscious and proactive action on her part. Did she just want to join a cool club? The evidence is indirect but substantial that when she was hired at Harvard, the administration crowed about getting a "minority" faculty on the law school rolls. She didn't protest, or even demur. This isn't rocket science. 2. Whatever the history of her relationship to her alleged 1/32 or less "Cherokee" minority status in the past, it is clear that last week she and her staff lied about her never having made a proactive claim of minority status. That's not 20 years ago, that's last week. And it took an assiduous researcher to discover the evidence that it was a lie. As for the comparison with Churchill, aside from two whites masquerading as Indians, I don't think the University of Colorado ever claimed that Churchill got tenure or later promotion to full professor because he was an "Indian"; in that sense, Harvard--in trumpeting a "minority" appointment--was more honest (at least by implication).
- ProfEthan
May 9, 2012 at 4:12pm
I know the Democrats are excited about Elizabeth, but they really are not looking at her and seeing how weak she really is. This kerfluffle over her preferences is just the start. She dumped her first husband so she could marry her professor a couple of years later. Maybe she got her Harvard Job through her husband's connections? And doesn't everyone from Oklahoma have a little Indian Blood in them? I wasn't surprised she claimed that, I was more surprised that anyone would think that was special.
- CRS9TNR
May 9, 2012 at 7:33pm
Oh come on! -- it seems to me that Warren has been a successful law professor who has written a lot about the decline of the ordinary American middle class and whose ability to reach out and communicate with regular people is a plus in her campaign for the senate. Churchill is an identity-politics academic poseur whose relationship to the "identity" he was purportedly representing was also tenuous, to say the least, and who would have about as much chance of reaching out to ordinary American voters in a U.S. senate election I have of receiving the Nobel Prize in physics. Again the comparison fails the proportionality/common sense test.
- ironyroad
May 9, 2012 at 8:10pm
"as I have," I meant in that penultimate sentence.
- ironyroad
May 9, 2012 at 8:11pm
Sure there's a difference between Warren and Ward Churchill: Ward Churchill wasn't running for high public office and lying last week about ever having made claims to "Indian" blood.
- ProfEthan
May 9, 2012 at 9:59pm
You really think that's the only difference? I find that difficult to believe (or even comprehend, to be honest).
- ironyroad
May 10, 2012 at 12:27am
I was being sarcastic, irony. Both Churchill and Warren gamed the system in order to end up full professors at very good places. Sure, Warren is an actual scholar, not a fraud like Churchill: it's a big difference. But Warren did pro-actively advertise her "minority" status, and Harvard crowed about it when they hired her (which she knew was going on), and last week she lied about doing it. So another difference here is that Churchill (a) isn't running for high office and (b) did not lie LAST WEEK about having made claims to "Indian" blood.
- ProfEthan
May 10, 2012 at 7:43am
I don't know -- it seems one would have to have some personal-type animus against Warren to see it that way (after all, we wouldn't be talking about Churchill here if he hadn't made that perverse "little Eichmanns" remark ten years ago, so drawing that comparison strikes me, first of all, as a gross slur against Warren). As McWhorter says in the article, Harvard Law didn't hire her because of her claim of Native American ancestry. Anyhow, I hope this is a teacup-sized storm, as I'd like her to win in November.
- ironyroad
May 10, 2012 at 12:19pm
Irony, to repeat: the problem is not so much what she did in the past but that she instantly lied about it last week. I have no personal animus against her (although I do no ACTUAL Native Americans); but that to me is cause for concern.
- ProfEthan
May 10, 2012 at 3:14pm
For me the problem is, once more, your analogy with Ward Churchill. I think it's preposterous.
- ironyroad
May 10, 2012 at 9:29pm
Also, what is it that she lied about last week? It's not become quite clear to me as McWhorter doesn't say anything about lying and I couldn't find anything on a web search except a drumbeat of GOP accusations that she got her Harvard Law job on the basis of her ethnicity claims, which appears to be nothing more than Scott Brown's attempt to paint her as an affirmative-action hire like they do now and then with Obama.
- ironyroad
May 10, 2012 at 9:59pm
Irony, her campaign denied that she ever pro-actively claimed minority status , though it admitted that Harvard crowed about it. Well--and how did Harvard know this "fact" about her, then? How did the University of Pennsylvania Law School also "know" about it--for Penn too also identified her as a minority professor (we now know). You think they engaged in a DNA test? Or independently conducted genealogical studies of her great-great-great grandparents? In any case, her assertion of passivity was disproven by her membership in various "minority women's" organizations she joined. That was a voluntary act on her part and constituted making a pro-active claim. As for the parallel with Ward Churchill: one parallel is that she has as much claim to being an Indian as he does--namely, none. She gamed the system, like he did. Not as badly, because she wasn't an academic fraud--which would be irony's point. And she didn't do it all the time. But for me, that is balanced by the proven lie from last week. Take a look at "Close Read" in the New Yorker, for a balanced view of the issue.
- ProfEthan
May 10, 2012 at 11:07pm
Sorry Ethan, but I don't believe there's a real "issue." And if you are looking for people who claimed some minority status to gain some foothold somewhere as a parallel with Warren, then why pick Ward Churchill, a well-known and disliked figure from post-9/11 days ten years ago -- it wouldn't possibly be just to smear Warren, right? That would be a million miles away from the real motive, wouldn't it? And doesn't it occur to you that if Warren had been seriously exploiting some fraudulent status in her life, we might have heard about it during the months of her campaign? I mean, she'd be milking it for all it's worth, right? But apparently not.
- ironyroad
May 11, 2012 at 12:19am
1. I'm not smearing Elizabeth Warren, irony: she has smeared herself. The claims were made both at Penn and at Harvard. 2. Then she dropped it (perhaps because she no longer needed it, or it was embarrassing, or she realized it was ridiculous: which also accounts for the claim's absence from her campaign). 3. She lied about what occurred, as I believe I've shown--and she lied about it LAST WEEK. This is not a Republican campaign tactic. This is what she did. 4. As for Ward Churchill, he's the most famous example of what she did. His case was worse. BUT (a) he's not running for public office, and (b) he didn't LIE about it last week. I know of another obscure case--a woman at Arizona State who as tenure-time came looming and she had limited publications "discovered" she was an Apache, and changed her name to an Apache one, and...got tenure. Oh, yes, this was worse than Warren too. But would you want HER running for high office? Her Dept didn't: after she was granted tenure, they demanded that she be moved elsewhere in the University. They had more integrity than either Harvard Law or Penn. But that was an obscure case in an obscure place, involving people who are not public figures.
- ProfEthan
May 11, 2012 at 7:28am
The work that she's done all her professional life suddenly doesn't count, right? Now that's what I call a sense of proportion. I still don't see the lying -- it may be one great-grandparent or whatever but if something is passed on in family lore there's no reason for anyone to automatically disbelieve it (again, it may be something that becomes more advantageous in one era than another, but that's hardly a crime).
- ironyroad
May 11, 2012 at 12:51pm
Irony, as I've said repeatedly, it's not the lying about her alleged "Indian heritage" a la Ward Churchill (there's no proof even of 1/32, but that was the family story). It's her LYING last week that she didn't pro-actively assert "minority status". She did assert "minority status": both at Penn and at Harvard. How else did they "know" she was an "Indian"? Do you get it now?
- ProfEthan
May 11, 2012 at 2:43pm
Checking a box is not "pro-actively asserting" something: when I check M on a form I'm not "pro-actively asserting" my masculinity. Certainly there is, as McWhorter says, something of the 1980s "cool" identity politics about her checking Native American (a relatively new thing back then), and as someone noted, Oklahoma for obvious historical reasons is actually full of people with some Cherokee DNA. There's nothing unlikely about that family story. Firstly, there is no evidence that she got any job on the basis of anything except merit, and if that's the case, and she believes that's the case, then NO LYING is involved in saying that she didn't "pro-actively assert" minority status, and secondly the comparison with Ward Churchill just doesn't hold water for the reasons enumerated earlier. The only reason this is still in the news is Brown's need to find ways to suggest Warren is weird in some way while he's a regular guy. That's the way I see it, at least.
- ironyroad
May 11, 2012 at 8:17pm
Irony: Warren checked the box and she did so twice (first at Penn and then at Harvard), she actively sought membership in "minority women's" groups, and she allowed both Penn and then Harvard to crow about her as a "minority hire". OF COURSE that is indeed making a proactive claim--come on! If you check M, you are actively claiming to be a male (YOUR example). And she did much more than check a box, as I've just shown. And that makes her denial last week of any making of a proactive claim A LIE. And then the issue becomes, SHE IS A LIAR, and not 20 years ago but LAST WEEK. Of course, there is in addition NO specific evidence that this blonde and blue-eyed person actually IS even 1/32 Indian. The argument about her being from Oklahoma as "evidence" is, frankly, absurd.
- ProfEthan
May 12, 2012 at 12:03am
If we were to be all condemned for some minor fudge on our record or having used some small edge the system made available, none of us would get anywhere. I think this is just . . . . I can't think of the right word. Warren has done sterling work for years and years as a law professor, nobody apart from the Republicans seriously claim that she got anything from her purported minority status, and you're taking this stuff seriously? Honestly, I don't get it. I find a very punitive and condemnatory spirit abroad in the land, and I don't think it's good.
- ironyroad
May 12, 2012 at 1:00am
If she would come clean about, as you put it, "fudging her record", then the story would be forgotten. But she denied she did it, irony. The point isn't the lie long ago, it's the coverup and the lie last week. Now the lie from last week has been exposed: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20220511liz_went_native_at_penn_too_school_listed_warren_as_minority She may be a good legal scholar but she has failed to understand basic politics: it's not the lie it's the coverup. This hurts her because she was a previously unknown quantity in Massachusetts politics, has never run for office, and is running for a large post like the Senate immediately. Arrogant and entitled. And now we know she did proactively claim minority status, and twice--not only at Harvard but earlier at Penn. Both universities trumpeted her as a minority faculty hire. That makes the lie last week even worse because there was more to lie about this. And then there's the lie from April 26, when she proclaimed pride in her "Native American heritage": http://bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20220428liz_has_no_reservations_on_native_status Irony, she's 31/32 white. We do not know about the other 1/32, but for sure she never did any research to find out about it. She used it, though. Your lawyerly efforts to say she never was proactive in the claim have failed. We do know she's connected at that generation with a white Tennesee militaman who herded Cherokees along the Trail of Tears, though. Maybe that's the actual connection. I agree that the nasty political tone is a bad thing, in Massachusetts and in the country. But both sides are contributing to it, not just one side.
- ProfEthan
May 12, 2012 at 8:13am
Ethan, from your link to the Herald piece: "At Rutgers School of Law, where she graduated in 1976, a form asked if Warren wished to apply for admission under the Program for Minority Group students and she wrote, 'No.' An application from the University of Texas School of Law, where she worked from 1983 to 1987, asked which 'racial category or categories' she identified with most. Warren checked off only white." You're confusing two things -- one, listing oneself as belonging to or identifying with a minority, and using that identification for formal advancement academically or professionally. The score is, in Warren's case, limited evidence of the former, zero evidence of the latter.
- ironyroad
May 12, 2012 at 2:03pm
1. Yes, sometimes Warren did not list herself as minority (early in her academic career), sometimes she did (for Penn and then for Harvard). You can't get away from it. You can't get away from the fact that both Penn and then Harvard trumpeted her as a minority hire, and she did not protest. You can't get away from the fact that the only way they knew this blonde blue-eyed person was a minority hire was because she checked the box. Their knowledge would have been affirmed by her failure to protest their trumpeting (in not one university but in two!) that she was a minority hire. These are repeated affirmative assertions of minority status. Yes, irony, sometimes (early on, but not later) she didn't do it. But that very fact makes her later repeated assertions of "minority" status all the more suspect. Whether or not she was consciously lying when she checked the box (and that depends on whether she was 32/32 white..or merely 31/32 white!), she certainly checked the box (among other things). And thus she was certainly lying last week when she denied she didn't affirmatively assert her minority status. She did. Heck, irony, on April 26 of this very year she asserted it again--saying she was proud of her Native American "heritage". What heritage is that, exactly? The only thing we know for sure is that an ancestor of hers was a Tennessee militia-man who *herded* Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. You can't get away from it, irony, and she can't get away with it, and her lies about it only dig her in deeper and destroy the public's trust in her. Surely you can see this. Of course, no law school is now going to say that Warren's "minority" status had an impact on their decision to hire her. Right--anymore than did the fact that she was married to a prominent law professor at Harvard itself was a factor in her being hired at Harvard Law. Come on, irony: we're both academic veterans and know how this works! The denials this week from the law schools in any case prove nothing in the face of their past trumpeting of, precisely, this "minority" hire.
- ProfEthan
May 12, 2012 at 2:46pm
I'm sorry Ethan but I can't see this as much more that what McWhorter describes, a 1980s/90s cultural tic that has faded and is more of a modern historical oddity than anything, with the Brown campaign trying to milk it for what it's worth. Nobody has offered any evidence, to the best of my knowledge, that she has achieved any position on grounds other than merit.
- ironyroad
May 12, 2012 at 11:39pm