The fuss is that she was listed in a directory of minority professors, and she does have identifiable Native American ancestry?
I'm really not seeing who would be offended about what here.
I would think that if she didn't identify as Native American in any way except in seeking employment, more strongly identified Native Americans would have reason to be offended.
It's a goal of schools to have faculty bodies whose composition matches the breakdown of the student body, and it's extremely difficult to do this. Thus it's a problem if your faculty members are claiming minority status based on an extremely distant relative, one which would not in any way shape their experience as an American. (Of course, who's to say what the Native American experience in America really is?)
For another example, there are all sorts of grants available if you can show that you are a minority-serving institution. Diluting what it means to be a minority affects how money gets distributed.
But what does 'seeking employment' mean in that context? There's no suggestion I can see that she got any kind of hiring preference for being Native American, people just found her name listed in a directory of minority professors.
The school's standards for calling someone a minority might be screwy, but I can't see much evidence that she did anything other than truthfully state she had Native American ancestry.
you are a minority-serving institution
Stupid hyphen. Now I can't run my joke into the ground.
And her status is, from the article, based on two grandparents, so not crazily distant.
And her status is, from the article, based on two grandparents, so not crazily distant.
Oh, that seems perfectly legitimate. I thought it was hearsay from distant relatives.
If it's limited to listing in a directory, I can't see it as material to anything; as Heebie said, wrong but very common and understandable. If it was a factor in hiring, that's different, but I don't see any evidence of that.
Both Warren's grandparents on her mother's side had Native American lineage, her campaign said yesterday.Christopher Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogical Society, traced back Warren's family to her great-grandfather on her mother's side and couldn't find any proof of Native American heritage.
Not grandparent-recent.
According to the first article, two grandparents had "Native American lineage" but that doesn't rule out that the actual Native American ancestor was much more distant.
The Ivy League law school prominently touted Warren's Native American background, however, in an effort to bolster their diversity hiring record in the '90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male."Of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic," The Harvard Crimson quotes then-Law School spokesman Mike Chmura as saying in a 1996 article. The Crimson added that 83 percent of the Law School's students believed the number of minority women on staff was inadequate.
"Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said professor of law Elizabeth Warren is Native American," the Crimson wrote.
They're using it as PR.
I think in "her maternal [grand]parents were from the Cherokee and Delaware tribes", the "from" could refer to more distant ancestry. Especially since the word "lore" is used - that word tends not to be used when living memory can be drawn on.
If it was a factor in hiring, that's different, but I don't see any evidence of that.
It's not going to be a factor against hiring another person of a minority, because they're scrambling to hire them. The problem is that they're misrepresenting their diversity.
Is this really the best they can come up with?
As a campaign tactic, it does seem pointless. Sure.
Its the "is Barak Obama black enough?" controversy all over again.
16: Is it anything other than a campaign tactic?
In my mind the main part of the diversity rationale in hiring is that it is important for people to believe that they themselves can succeed. In important part of doing that is having successful people who look like them. Someone with a small fraction of Native American ancestry, is not doing anything in that respect. So it's pointless.
Don't really see much blame on Warren personally though.
An interesting case study in the one drop rule's continuing force and limits. If she'd had a black ancestor anywhere down the line, it would be different; but you can have a Cherokee princess ancestor and still be white.
At most, it's a little clunky of Warren to claim minority status. I do think it's worse for Harvard to leverage this claim into PR and marketing statistics.
Sooooo, the source for this is a Herald article, and a Volokh post linked to the Herald article and making further, unsubstantiated claims?
Oh and further evidence for the seriousness is that the Brown campaign is insisting she apologize?
Really, 19 gets it right. This is a half-assed smear pushed by a shitty right-wing paper.
Is this really the best they can come up with?
I think it fits what Josh Marshall called the 'bith slap' theory of politics. You keep hitting the opposing campaign with ridiculous slur after slur hoping that the campaign screws up the response and it becomes a long-running stew that soils the candidate.
This seems like a pretty good line of attack if they manage to catch the Warren camp flatfooted. It's a little personally embarassing to be inflating anything about your past, which makes the candidate less likely to respond effectively. Elite liberal faking minority status for Hahvahd, oy.
Also, remember when Madeleine Albright learned she was wrong about her ancestry?
Given that large parts of the federal government seem to want her to shut up and disappear because she might interfere with their campaign donors' efforts to make money, I think Elizabeth Warren counts as pretty Native American.
I didn't want to put this one on the front page, but it's equally clunky: my mom always points out all the people who are not white in her paintings. Every conversation, to anyone who is nearby.
Fucking up the details of one's heritage is more american than apple pie. This is a land where everyone and their cat claims connection to either European nobility or native nobility or some famous or interesting person or other. The only way this would be a big deal is if Warren had done serious genealogical research and deliberately falsified her ancestry. If she's working from the kind of pop-ish family genealogy where everyone is a distant relative of the Queen she ought to be excused with a 'try to be more careful in the future.'
This may have been news if the campaign were taking place in the 1990s.
Hell, a relative of mine traced our ancestry back to Uther Pendragon. Mind you, it's family consensus that he was pretty much off his trolley. And the records start to get unreliable before 1250.
Also, the dude from the genealogical society traced her ancestry back to her "great-grandfather on her mother's side"? That's the best he could do? I knew they were a shitty genealogical society (really! I applied for a job there once. Their IT is horrible) but wow.
Surely, some or even most of the claims made here are not entirely accurate/have been overhyped for effect. I could do the research and find out, but surely you guys have a rebuttal/caveat to each of those at the tip of your tongues. Can I rely on you to act as bullshit detectors?
A great-grandfather of mine (or possibly a great-great; I've forgotten) was both Native American enough to be offered some oil money from a well on tribal land, and principled enough in his racism that he refused to acknowledge his heritage.
32 to the attack in the OP. Asking unfogged for anti-Obama talking points, while possibly likely to be successful, is also pretty weak, but that's a different topic.
I also really love the idea that Elizabeth Warren got hired at Harvard Law School because she was a minority. Does Scott Brown know nothing of Harvard?
35: Of course not; he's a man of the people.
This is a land where everyone and their cat claims connection to either European nobility or native nobility or some famous or interesting person or other.
Or alternatively, an outlaw. One of my paternal grandfather's grandfathers was chased out of (now) Germany for poaching on some nobleman's land. The story goes that when caught, he was given the choice of death or getting on a boat in nearby Hamburg.
Not anti-Obama talking points. Just critical views on a political marketing campaign from educated people who actually live in the country.
I'm so upset with this that I won't vote for either Brown or Warren.
I'm pretty much straight up outlaw Cherokee Princess titled nobility down the line.
Wow, this controversy appears to be even stupider than I'd thought when reading the OP.
Here's a more interesting question: What do we think motivates Shearer's hardcore racism? I'm saying it's 80% pure joy of trolling white people and 20% fear of getting beaten up by a strong black man. But I'm happy to consider other answers.
31: no, sorry John, it's all accurate. Those are accurate jobs figures and the analyses of the effects of the ARRA and the auto rescue plans are pretty good.
Hell, a relative of mine traced our ancestry back to Uther Pendragon.
I'm elder god on my mother's side.
43: Then I'm at a loss as to what exactly it is that motivates liberals' disenchantment with Obama. That he didn't turn the US into a nordic-style welfare state in four years?
Predator drones, Gitmo, lack of war crimes prosecutions.
Lizard people still here, robot sex slaves not here yet, too many states, printer still broken.
Not true. Everytime somebody stops commenting, it's because they got their robot sex slave.
26: I've only had limited exposure to your mom's work, but Mara is very appreciative of the little black girl in one of her pictures.
Oh, that's really nice!
(And I don't mean to undercut my mom - including diversity in her paintings is great and should be done intentionally. )
Campaign season is going to be so much fun. I'll let Paul Krugman provide the headline.
50: Yeah, I wasn't trying to undercut your story. It's pretty funny that she points it out as if she actually believes her viewers don't even see race!
Lee's birthmom has done a little of the competition over whose kid is gayest with one of her friends, it came out recently. I think the white partner plus adopted child pushed Lee over into a win, but I'm not sure of the details.
I don't think white people should claim to be Native American, especially not in the context of benefiting from affirmative action programs. There was a big scandal here some years ago, when it turned out that an absurdly large number of MFD firefighters were claiming Native heritage, because you got another couple of seniority points out of it. It was especially damning that most of them didn't realize they were Native until they had enough seniority anyway that the extra points started being really worth something in terms of early retirement or promotions.
At the same time, there are a lot of legitimately Native people with fair skin and hair. Blood quantum is about the stupidest, most racist thing the US has ever come up with to apportion gov't benefits. And many of the tribal governments play into the racists' by signing on to it. A former employee of mine was legitimately 50% Native, but her parents were each 50% of a different tribe, so neither tribe would/could enroll her. Luckily for her, she grew up middle class and made the most of her advantages, but there's a lot of Native people stuck in the same bind who don't have the money or connections to make it trivial.
Count me as extremely skeptical that Warren actually has any Native ancestry, but as a "scandal" this is obviously ridiculous.
I set my robot sex slave free, thinking the good liberal karma would get me more action in the long run. Now I'm stuck drunk dialing him in the middle of the night.
but her parents were each 50% of a different tribe
Those were some extremely small tribes.
Huh, it turns out Warren is from Oklahoma, which I had not known. That makes her claims of Native ancestry a lot more plausible.
Here's a followup story from the Herald in which she responds to their earlier one.
It's not really Obama specific (although it includes him), but basically the democratic party is right wing and worthless. When they had the largest majorities basically possible in the current system they failed to make any real progress on any serious problem we're facing, or to fix the economy.
As to the op: isn't this just another example of the danger if allowing racist white people to have say at all about what race people are.
Add to the (good) list in 46: Indifference to judicial and Federal Reserve appointments; willingness to cut benefits programs; mortgage relief clusterfuckery; belief that he sandbagged better approaches to universal healthcare; lingering racism; lack of confrontational tone; aforementioned softness on Lizard People issues; silly-looking ears.
Also, yes, this is a silly-season hit on Warren. Good job, Shearer!
35: You mean I can't exploit my possibly-existent Cherokee heritage to get tenure? Damn, that spoils everything.
Pivoting to the deficit, and thereby legitimizing the whole right-wing austerity framework, which has had disastrous effects both at home and abroad. Not throwing bankers in jail. Continuing policies to ensure that my kindergartner has no recess in school and 20 minutes of homework every night.
What 61 said.
||
I've just successfully used the let-the-email-sit-before-you-send-it method of avoiding little bitchery.
I'm still really, really annoyed at my co-worker but am taking some solace in having taken the high road.
|>
Time for some mitochondrial DNA testing!
On occasion, liberal people do clunky, tone-deaf things in their enthusiasm about equality and their desire to not be lumped in with racist white people.
I'm not sure it's just clunky or tone-deaf to claim a little slice of the oppressed-minority moral superiority cake for oneself. It's hardly worth stake-burning or anything, but it seems unfair to both the audience for such claims and the poor people who have actually suffered the burdens of such low statuses. Don't educated white Americans feel that they have enough power and influence without arrogating the guilt-inducing histories of the oppressed classes? Cough E.g., that white woman who was profiled in the NYT a while ago who made up a "memoir" about being raised in poor African-American neighborhoods cough.*
I doubt it reflects much on EW's scholarly or political character, though; it's something closer to the magnifying tales that freshman at selective colleges tell about themselves: "I started to read when I was six months old... I'm one-sixteenth Cherokee... My grandmother had a neighbor who hid Jews in her basement during WWII... I was the first person in my high school to ask the student council to sponsor a hip-hop concert...." Insecurity and status anxiety are terribly acute conditions in the U.S.; in a way, it is comforting to learn that someone as accomplished and admirable as EW suffers them as much as the rest of us.
* I remember really, really enjoying the rapidity of her liberal admirers' shift from admiration to meta-questioning to get around the question of fraud: "Why did she feel the need to invent such a history? What is it about the oppression of women that necessitates such fictionalization of experience? Is it incumbent upon privileged authors to announce their usurpation of the 'Trickster' role in public culture?"
57: Huh, it turns out Warren is from Oklahoma, which I had not known.
She should have just claimed this.
Harvard's conduct was bullshit, and Warren should have called them on it. Story will be nothing but a joke by mid-May, and much less by Labor Day.
Yeah, actually, Harvard comes out of this story looking way worse than Warren or anyone else.
68: Like anyone would have believed that.
There's a funny inbetween spot here, where it's perfectly possible that everything Warren has ever said about her family background is true (and to be clear, I don't know precisely what she's said about her background to whom, and also don't know what her factual basis is for whatever she said) -- that her maternal grandparents were both meaningfully Native American (as able to identify ancestors without European ancestry and having some personal connection to a tribe), but it's still also true that she's culturally 100% white and has never had any experience of oppression or exclusion related to her NA ancestry.
If that were the case (and it seems like a plausible possibility) I'd say Harvard and the prior school were somewhere inbetween wrong and clunkily tonedeaf to claim her as minority faculty, but I can't see much wrong in her truthfully describing her own family. If she's wrong about the family history, then it gets into culpability; if she were getting any kind of benefit out of it that was meant for someone more meaningfully connected to their Native American heritage, that would be culpable. But if her maternal grandmother was Delaware, she was Delaware, regardless of how white and privileged Warren is herself.
72: I assumed this would get her over the corrupt politician bar in your eyes so you could support her unequivocally. </channelling James>
[I]t's still also true that she's culturally 100% white and has never had any experience of oppression or exclusion related to her NA ancestry.
Wasn't something like this one of the right-wing subsonic drumbeats about Obama in 2008? "He isn't really black! Not American black, anyway."
I loves me my corrupt politicians. Actually, this is reminding me of the Connecticut guy who was in the Marines during Vietnam but not in Vietnam -- same kind of "Condemn the phony" not closely tied to anything the politician themselves said.
I will not rest until everyone who falsely claims to be Irish on St Patrick's day is in a SuperMax prison cell.
Also, there was at least one Cherokee Princess who was obviously a total whore.
There have never been any actual Cherokee Princesses.
What we need is an end to this multiple-choice self-identification of race and ethnicity. (Screw you Census, with your multiple categories baloney.) From now on, we'll have the government make assignemnts and track it. Can't go wrong.
In fact, one thing that makes Warren's claims at least somewhat more plausible than most is that she doesn't seem to have claimed anything about princesses. The Cherokee bit is a little worrying, but again actually being from Oklahoma makes it much more plausible.
75: Richard Blumenthal. The Times took the honors on that hack job.
Since I have never claimed to have any non-WASP ethnic content to my ancestry whatsoever I'm pretty sure I'm the most moral person on the planet.
74: Right, and that's an odd difference between black/white racial issues in the US, and other racial issues in the US. If you're black in the 'one [visible] drop' sense, such that someone who didn't know you would identify you as having any recent African ancestry, you're going to have some of the experiences associated with being African American, regardless of how you grew up or what your class background is. So that argument was really bullshit applied to Obama.
Assimilated Latino, or Native American, or Asian, particularly with white ancestry as well, it's possible depending on class background to have very little of the experience of being non-white. Someone like Warren describes herself, with a genuine connection to Native American ancestors, is still socially white in a way that someone with any visible African ancestry isn't.
78: But Winston Churchill was a Kentucky Colonel.
My wife and I, or rather our address, was randomly selected for the American Community Survey (akin to the old Long Form census) and filled it out this weekend. I had a very difficult time with their ancestry/ethnic origin question, where they want one or two entries. I don't normally think of myself has having an distinct ethnic origin in the senses that they seem to mean. I could come up with a list of five or six, going to my grandparents or a little further back, but I can't meaningfully distill down to one or two.
I have never claimed to have any non-WASP ethnic content to my ancestry whatsoever
And yet you also claim to not be a WASP yourself! A puzzle.
I will not rest until everyone who falsely claims to be Irish on St Patrick's day is in a SuperMax prison cell.
Being one-half Irish-American, I just roll my eyes at the drunken revels of St. Patrick's Day. "Call me when you've spent a dozen unhappy Christmases eating lousy food with grandparents, uncles and aunts who all hate one another," I say to a' that.
I smugly decline to wear anything green for the day.
"That Warren allowed Harvard to hold her up as an example of their commitment to diversity ... is an insult to all Americans who have suffered real discrimination," Brown campaign manager Jim Barnett said.
Because, you know, Republicans are the ones who are really concerned about discrimination.
I will not rest until everyone who falsely claims to be Irish on St Patrick's day is in a SuperMax prison cell.
Wouldn't it be easier just to designate the United States as a SuperMax prison for the duration of St Patrick's day?
Obama's surprisingly black, in the american cultural sense, given that he was raised by white people. He married a black woman, went to black church, likes black music, is friends with black celebrities, and his body man was a black basketball player. He's way more culturally black than say my black younger brother (who, like Obama, was raised by white people).
I'm all for people having more nuanced views of black cultural experience beyond naive notions of "race." (My neighborhood has american blacks, french west africans, and dominicans. Americans would think of them all as "black" but there's a lot of cultural differences there!) But Obama's not a particularly interesting case from this point of view, because he's culturally very american black, even though he got there in an unusual way.
Wouldn't it be easier just to designate the United States as a SuperMax prison for the duration of St Patrick's day?
Pick any SuperMax prison. There is a one-to-one mapping of points inside the prison to points outside the prison, and so WLOG we may define the outside to be the inside.
Wouldn't it be easier just to designate the United States as a SuperMax prison for the duration of St Patrick's day?
That's every day for me, you know, man? I'll tell you about love what the real crime is, man! GE has a secret lab in Costa Rica where they invented a car that runs on hemp and it totally gets like eighty hectares to the furlong. It's a cool, crazy, beautiful world, man, and the corporations and the politicians are just messing up my life, man. I can't deal with their "algebra" and "soap," man!
There have never been any actual Cherokee Princesses.
Wikipedia, however, has an entry on Jewish Princesses.
92 reminds me of that one list of how to catch lions.
I'm sure I'm missing something, but this is basically EW grew up with family stories of Delaware and Cherokee ancestry, she filled out one of those demographic forms checking "Native American" along with Caucasian, Harvard used that data to indicate that it had one Native American faculty member, and there's now a controversy because people can't find evidence to back up her family lore? I mean, if she checked a box for "do you qualify for special treatment as a Native American?" I could see an issue. But this? If she didn't check the box, would the issue be whether she was a racist ashamed of/hiding her native heritage?
went to black church
This in particular has been seized upon by relatives of mine as evidence of Obama's conniving nature, with the idea that his choice of churches was a calculated political move. Because you know, white people never choose their churches based on things like 'community' or anything except pure doctrinal agreement.
I would suggest that passive-agressive resentment for perceived slights in the distant past is more fitting than hate in 87. But otherwise, yes.
92: By the fixed point theorem, any mapping you come up with will have at least one point in the prison mapping back into the prison, and the dude in that cell will have to wear orange and be spat upon. Do the crime, do the time!
I'm struggling to understand what Warren is accused of here. Her narrative seems to be that two of her grandparents had some amount of Native American ancestry. Nobody has contradicted that.
I know a guy who is very, very serious about his Armenian ancestry, despite the fact that he's half-German. This is America, folks. People do that sort of thing all the time, and it's mostly a good thing.
102: Some point on the boundary, perhaps. Are you thinking about the same impaled escapee that I'm thinking about?
101: The passive-aggressive holidays were the happy times. Much of the rest of the time the "party" broke up when somebody threw somebody else out of the house.
Are you thinking about the same impaled escapee that I'm thinking about?
The one who fell into a vat of Hop Stoopid?
I'm struggling to understand what Warren is accused of here. Her narrative seems to be that two of her grandparents had some amount of Native American ancestry. Nobody has contradicted that.
The argument appears to be that nobody has proven it either, and that it is therefore false.
Christ. Given that this is a campaign stunt on Brown's part, it's so tempting to highlight, yet again, his background as a nude male model. Cripe.
I'm pretty sure 108.last does not have much traction.
108: But did he misrepresent the authenticity of anything in that endeavor?
There are accusations of stuffing.
Has Scott Brown's campaign put forward any positive argument for re-electing him? Is there any such argument, with or without Saint Elizabeth in the opposite corner?
It would be pretty awesome if Warren responded to this by going and actually getting her mitochondrial DNA tested, and it turned out to belong to one of the Native American haplogroups. That's unlikely for several reasons, though.
If you can stuff, then you aren't really modeling in the nude.
114: Or you have a high tolerance for pain.
It's true, "cripe" is an outmoded term that only fuddy-duddies use.
118: Talk to Blume: she's the one who said the term doesn't have much traction.
I do not think that Blume meant that "cripe" as a term lacks traction, though I admit I'm not sure why she specified "last".
Taking a quick look at Ancestry, EW seems more likely to be a descendant of slave owners than of Natives. Not that a quick look is remotely conclusive of anything.
120: I'm fooling around.
I too am interested to hear from our resident Massachusett..ians any answer to 112's Has Scott Brown's campaign put forward any positive argument for re-electing him?
From afar, it just looks as though Brown is presenting himself as a populist (who poses nude if he has to, in order to make ends meet, and who hasn't been there, huh?), while Warren is an elitist liar. I haven't heard whether there's anything actually substantive being said.
though I admit I'm not sure why she specified "last"
Yeah, me neither.
53.1: I think I've said here before that a cousin, named, approximately, John Patrick Francis O'Flaherty, was applying to be a fireman and ticked off the "Native American" box. He was thought to be lying! Until they saw him, of course. His mother is 100% Ojibway and he looks like her, rather than my whitey Irish uncle.
EW seems more likely to be a descendant of slave owners than of Natives
Not mutually exclusive groups at all, especially given the context.
I think if anyone should be shamefaced, it's Harvard, for shenanigans related to diversity. But I don't think Warren's done anything worse that I would if I checked a box that said I have Sicilian ancestry.
119 is priceless.
113 -- If the lineage posted to Ancestry is correct, her earliest known female line ancestor was Jennit Young (1777-1847) of Tazewell County, Virginia.
OT: Speaking of Massachusetts, I'm not really the target audience for this video (posted by an old friend on FB, of course), having escaped the referenced region as fast and as permanently as I could, but some might find it amusing.
125: I forget if Sarah Vowell*'s ancestor who was in Quantrill's raiders was from her Indian ancestry or not.
*Also Oklahoma, but northeastern. Being at least a little Cherokee in northeastern Oklahoma is about as rare and remarkable as being a Michael Jordan fan in Chicago.
The number of ancestors several generations back is large. There's no reason to expect that the earliest one is representative.
If the lineage posted to Ancestry is correct, her earliest known female line ancestor was Jennit Young (1777-1847) of Tazewell County, Virginia.
Pretty unlikely to have Native mtDNA, then.
The number of ancestors several generations back is large. There's no reason to expect that the earliest one is representative.
True, but once you get back to the eighteenth century you're past the point where Cherokee or Delaware ancestry is likely to have appeared. Other tribes, maybe, but the probability is pretty low.
Has Scott Brown's campaign put forward any positive argument for re-electing him? Is there any such argument, with or without Saint Elizabeth in the opposite corner?
Warren had an ad running a few months ago introducing her in a very apolitical way ("I was born in Oklahoma and got married and went to college" kind of stuff), but that's disappeared and there hasn't been any television presence from either campaign since. I think both candidates are in "pop into the greasy spoon with the local congressman/mayor/state legislator" mode right now, so it's hard to get a real sense of the issues being discussed.
I suspect Brown's appeal will be roughly the same as it was last time: he's a regular truck-drivin' broski who loves the Sox and hates welfare, and he's no far left loony like Pelosi, but he's not a crazy teabagger either. The main difference is that now he's got a record of McConnell-approved party-bucking votes to prove his independence.
After Deval Patrick's 2010 win, which looked almost impossible as late as August or so, and considering that (1) a special election like what won Brown the seat has odd turnout patterns, and (2) this year's a presidential election, I doubt very much that Brown will win.
I'm confused. There's just no way any statement about one ancestor tells you about your ancestors who weren't descended from that ancestor.
There's just no way any statement about one ancestor tells you about your ancestors who weren't descended from that ancestor.
Of course. I'm just talking about the mtDNA angle.
What, so you can tell Wat/terson and offer to sue me on his behalf for copyright infringement?
Gary La/rson hasn't sent me any cease and desist letters yet.
133: Thanks, mark f. My brother's in Mass., and last time I talked to him, he'd barely heard of Warren, which slightly alarmed me.
Pretty unlikely to have Native mtDNA, then.
Doesn't rule it out. Tazewell County is in southwestern, VA, which I believe is in the vicinity of the original Cherokee homeland.
Doesn't rule it out. Tazewell County is in southwestern, VA, which I believe is in the vicinity of the original Cherokee homeland.
More or less, yeah, although I think the center of Cherokee population would have been somewhat further south at that point. I think intermarriage between Cherokees and settlers would have been quite unusual at that time, though.
134: Mitochondrial DNA is passed down without alteration (other than mutations) in the maternal line. So regardless of Warren's percentage of NA ancestry, if her mother's mother's mother's mother... wasn't NA, which with an Anglo name in the eighteenth century she probably wasn't, Warren won't have NA mitochondrial DNA.
But yeah, it's possible. I don't want to argue too strongly against it.
How far back does Ancestry have her other branches, Charley?
138: No problem. The Boston tv market is pretty expensive, plus you don't want to annoy people this early. Warren hasn't been consistently ahead in polling but that she's not always behind despite low name recognition and Brown's personal popularity gives me hope.
139 -- You'd want to know more than appears in the simple record, but the notion of hidden native ancestry in the 18th century, especially in one drop country, is pretty far fetched.
A person who really wanted to do so might well be able to find out who her mother was: in New England it would be a piece of cake, but Virginia is tougher. She is said to have had 10 kids, so another angle for finding out whether Jane's mother was Cherokee would be to see if they or their children encountered racism.
And Teo is right: I only mention Ms. Young because of the suggestion that mDNA would be probative.
Also, there was at least one Cherokee Princess who was obviously a total whore.
Don't talk that way about my grandfather's grandmother.
I think intermarriage between Cherokees and settlers would have been quite unusual at that time, though.
Probably less unusual in the isolated hills of Appalachia than elsewhere in the colonies. Especially given that its the Cherokees we are talking about, who were among the more Anglicized tribes and frequently took Europeans names.
142 -- I think the raw material is there to take nearly every line to 1800 or so. It's done back to the 1850s, so you have to piece together a couple of generations in each line to get to 1800. It's mostly southern, though, so you start running into real trouble with record keeping before that. Which is consistent with Native ancestry, to be sure. I think you'd expect to find it among her TN branches, not the mDNA line.
146 -- [something bigoted about Scots-Irish people of the time period]
[something bigoted about Scots-Irish people of the time period]
Yeah, I was thinking it. My Scots-Irish ancestors of that era in the hills of PA were noted for having a portion of the family tree that didn't fork much.
(And I don't mean to undercut my mom - including diversity in her paintings is great and should be done intentionally. )
Relatedly, I bought a board book the other day that is actually quite irritating -- featuring a young African-American girl and her mom in a story that heavy-handedly tries to preach how great libraries are. (You'd think I would be the target audience for such a book, but the truth is I loathe badly written children's books even when the topic is dear to my heart.)
Anyway, I bought the darned thing because there are SO FEW books, still, today, that I can give as baby presents if I want to in any way reconize a non-white baby's racial/ethnic heritage.
I consoled myself by also buying a much nicer board book with a black father/son. I will post the title when I get home tonight, in case anyone else is looking for one.
Yeah, actually, Harvard comes out of this story looking way worse than Warren or anyone else.
Oh man, that is SO true.
But if her maternal grandmother was Delaware, she was Delaware, regardless of how white and privileged Warren is herself.
I basically agree with all of 72, but feel the need to be obnoxious and point out that "Delaware" is a corruption of an English noble's name (Lord De La Warr) and the actual name of the tribe is Lenni Lenape.
FWIW I remember one of her kids saying twenty years ago that she had Native American ancestry on her mom's side.
The racial vs. ethnic categorization of a group can be rather strange. I grew up thinking of myself as about as Jewish as I was a peasant - i.e. half my ancestors were one, half were the other, and I was neither. That tended to be the viewpoint of people I knew, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Then I moved to Poland where Jewishness is a racial category, and not just for the racists.
Whoops, 150 was me. I own up to my obnoxiousness!
I had a very difficult time with their ancestry/ethnic origin question, where they want one or two entries. I don't normally think of myself has having an distinct ethnic origin in the senses that they seem to mean. I could come up with a list of five or six, going to my grandparents or a little further back, but I can't meaningfully distill down to one or two.
Most people, in that case, write "American." I've known a few who were really strident about it.
The Oklahoma Lenape actually seem to prefer the term "Delaware" (or at least to use it in reference to themselves), so I think it's appropriate in this context.
Here's how the pros do it, Shearer: Newsbusters lede: Elizabeth Warren's avowed Native American heritage -- which the candidate rarely if ever discusses on the campaign trail ...
My dad once spent some time really working out our ethic ancestry (classic melting pot), presenting us with a stack of index cars for each ethic group and the relevant fraction.
Needless to say, it didn't add up to 1.0.
My ancestry is quite vague, especially since my last name (per my pseud) is German, but that was an adopting step-father's name, and the actual father was "a drunk Irishman" named Hester, which apparently isn't actually an Irish name.
Anyway, English, Irish, German, and small fractions of other stuff. No Cherokees, no war heroes, no Mayflowers. Except that thing about Hester, I couldn't tell you a single meaningful, verifiable fact about anyone predating my own grandparents. The idea of heritage and extended family is very alien to me.
That's my paternal ancestry -- as far as I can tell, which isn't far, Northern European mutt. The last name's Welsh, there was some English (including the guy who kept on trying to introduce the pork pie to Queens and going bankrupt in the attempt), my grandmother's father's name was German but no one has an immigration history. The other side's Irish immigrants for both grandparents, so presumably I could look up parish records if I wanted some history, and there are buckets of cousins who we're not speaking to since they cheated Mom out of her eighth of the family peat bog.
I will not rest until everyone who falsely claims to be Irish on St Patrick's day is in a SuperMax prison cell.
Fucking yes. A workmate [Canadian, but his Mum is Scottish] is mildly annoyed that I don't buy his claims to be 'Scottish'.* But yes. If you grew up in a place, you've a legit claim to be from that place, if not, fuck off. My friend A whose family are Punjabi back for hundreds of years, who grew up in Glasgow, went to a Scottish school, and University, and has the right accent -- she is Scottish in a way that some person whose grandparents were from there, and who has visited once, is fucking not.
* he's a cool guy, it's a bit of a mutal wind-up, rather than actual niggle.
(I'm not kidding about the bog. It's a genuine bog.)
I'm half-Irish and half-Italian. If anybody from actual-Ireland wants to get all wound up about it, I just remind them that we (Americans descended from Irish ancestors) outnumber them by a fairly large number. If anybody from actual-Italy gets upset about it, I probably won't understand them.
My Irish ancestors were too poor to have a peat bog, but according to recorded family history, they formed a portion of an armed posse chasing Native Americans away from the land they (my ancestors and their neighbors) purchased from somebody who wasn't one of the Native Americans.
My entirely-Anglo-that-I-can-tell patrilineage has a colorful story in various places online about an intrepid servant girl throwing a bunch of hot coals in the face of a Native American invading through the window.
My anglo lineage has a story of King Phillip burning their house down after accepting their hospitality.
Mind you, "historians" will tell you King Phillip was 100 miles away at the time the settlement was burned, but what do they know, anyway?
If anybody from actual-Italy gets upset about it, I probably won't understand them.
Tonight I heard someone say "I've noticed that Italians speaking English have a hard time not putting vowels at the ends of every word" as if it was an original observation.
Some subsequent discussion that had me thinking snide thoughts about provincial some people present were made me realize that I expect a degree of cosmopolitanism from people that is totally unrealistic in most settings. Which is itself kind of provincial of me.
Even the actual Italian words I learned from my grandma (she was born here but her parents didn't learn English until after she was grown) turn out to be not actual Italian words but some obscure Sicilian dialect that Sicilians dumped after they got a radio.
WASP Tales. I've come to an interesting point in my research. Check out the story about Willard Pruden in the upper left. The handsome Brooklyn girl, and thus her child, are related to me, and within the scope of my project. No idea how long it will take me to find the child's grandchildren (if any).
This is the story of her older sister, who ended up in Australia (whence I have Aussie relations).
It's amazing what can be found nowadays.
I should try something like that for my family but it gets hard because we all use the same 10 first names.
I've been thinking of recruiting Flip to run down the various writings of the father of the two girls.
I like to imagine that 164 meant that speaking in obscure dialects was the only way Sicilians could entertain themselves before radio.
165 - Life is a mystery here in Waspburg! (It's a wasp blur!)
159: I'm half-Irish and half-Italian.
That's convenient! You can just use the same flag for St. Patrick's Day and Columbus Day, with grommets on each end.
156: including the guy who kept on trying to introduce the pork pie to Queens and going bankrupt in the attempt
He's lucky the kings didn't find out -- he could have been beheaded!
162: Whereas biologists will tell you that he was just there for the grape soda.
It appears Warren does have some Native American ancestors.
Well gosh. And the Boston Herald article you link in 174 is one of the most cowardly pieces of shit I've ever seen. Shit even for a shit newspaper. "Lizzy's great great great escape"? Go Fuck yourselves. Escape from the fake bullshit you ginned up and not one word of apology or remorse.
some obscure Sicilian dialect
They're still pretty proud of their dialects here. You know, only 20% of the country spoke "Italian" when the country was unified 1501 years ago.
From the link in 174:
"She would be 1⁄32nd of Elizabeth Warren's total ancestry," noted genealogist Christopher Child said, referring to the candidate's great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, who is listed on an Oklahoma marriage certificate as Cherokee.
I'd like to know if she appears on the Ancestry tree Charley found.
By even asking that you've aided and abetted the terrorists.
177 -- Yes. Nothing about her ethnicity, though. She's in the 1860 census as white (the choices were white, black, and mulatto). Born in NC, as were her parents, married in 1819 in Tennessee.
Poking around in the 1860 census, it looks like her brother -- well, a person thought to have been her brother -- married a Native woman.
This Ms. Smith -- thought to be the daughter of a white man who fought the Creeks in the war of 1812 -- married a fellow who volunteered for the Army to participate in their local part of the Trail of Tears. He ended up going down to Florida to fight the Seminoles, got sick, and died when he got back to Tennessee. She applied for a land grant, in Tennessee, as a result.
I wouldn't imagine Native heritage being an advantage in that process. And that it might well have been a different thing altogether when her son was marrying a gal in Oklahoma more than 50 years after the husband died.
175: Same author for both pieces. I doubt that her possibly embattled journalistic career, now that some have accused her of writing shitty articles mired in sleaze, will ever lead to a position with a newspaper less obscure than the Herald, which many outside of Boston have never heard of and will never read - and which some locals have characterized as a "right-wing rag" [editor's note: may not be actual quotation] - so there's little reason to fear that Chabot could be harboring a hidden political agenda that might further distort national political reporting.
the headline on the piece this morning has become, "Elizabeth Warren's embattled campaign: Cherokee tie found 5 generations ago". I think this should be left to the real arbiters: Boston sports radio hosts.
Due to an editing error, the apology was omitted from comment 174. It will be published separately any... moment... now.
turn out to be not actual Italian words but some obscure Sicilian dialect
Some five or six years after I first learned German, I remembered a couple of songs my grandfather had taught me when I was a kid. I'd always assumed they were mangled beyond recognition -- he didn't speak German, so they must have been learned from his grandfather or from other local old people -- but I realized they were pretty pure Plattdeutsch.
This is an awesome lead-in to the new scandal of Warren covering up her NA heritage:
Child said he plans on further verifying the records today. "There is a possibility that their Native American ancestry could have been hidden at one point," he said.
85: I got that too. My Canadian BF is pretty much straight up British descent. One of his grandfathers was born in London to a British soldier whose widow married a Canadian. But his last name is Welsh.
My Mom's family is pretty much straight up English with a bit of Scot in there maybe via Ireland. There may be some Huguenot blood in there.
I have a French last name, but my Dad's family is from Alsace, so I'm sure that there's a bit of German somewhere. It's hard to tell, though. One of his grandfathers had a German last name, but he was adopted.
But if I were going to make it simple, I'd have to say that I'm of English and French origin. Nobody in my Dad's family speaks much French. My Mom's family all studied it in school and had French friends and speak it better. I think I wrote down English, but I'm really just a mutt.
We're all mutts if we go back a few generations (which is why I find the American obsession with identifying with their greatn-grandparents' nationality a bit trying, tbh). In the case of EW, if it can be shown that she tried to exploit her "Native American ancestry" for power or money, there's a story; if she merely believes or believed that she had a couple of Native American ancestors, then anybody who cares whether she's right or wrong wants taking out the back and shooting.
Mr y believes she had a Native American great or great-great grandmother too. She's never checked and never will, but it seems more likely than not, and she occasionally mentions it in conversation. Suppose she's wrong? Should we buy TV ads to call her a liar?
In this case, it's all about diversity/affirmative action. If you start from the premise that affirmative action is an injury to deserving white men who should get all the jobs because they're better than the rest of the untermenschen out there, and that it's also an always self-conscious scam, then a woman with a prestigious career who can be shown to have said something about her family history that might conceivably have caused someone to give her a hiring preference is exposed as a scam artist who has no actual professional accomplishments. It's not so much an argument, as sort of magical contagion.
I did some playing on ancestry.com this weekend and we were able to find one of Lee's great-something-grandmothers who was born in 1850 in our state, though she's the last of any of the family to live there until Lee did. The part of genealogy where you say, "And do you know if she was born a slave?" is not exactly fun, but interesting.
Yeah, there's a likelihood that on my Mum's side of the family there's a remote link to Welsh royalty, but I can't imagine ever being arsed to really find out. Iirc, given enough generations, pretty much every bugger in the UK has some sort of ancestral connection to royalty or the nobility. I'd guess in the US, a significant part of the population which isn't solely descended from recent immigrants will have some distant connection to native americans, given some level of intermarriage far enough back.
(which is why I find the American obsession with identifying with their greatn-grandparents' nationality a bit trying, tbh).
I think a bunch of it isn't exactly about the nationality, it's about the immigration stories. Most of them are some kind of adventure, at least they were for the people involved, and most Americans who aren't Native and who aren't descended from slaves have an immigration story along every line of ancestry -- the impulse isn't exactly "My great grandfather was Italian so I am", but "There's a story about my great-grandfather going through a process of transformation from an Italian to a guy from Albany."
192.1: So, can you call spirits from the vasty deep? I understand that's the test.
194. Why, so can I and so can any man. But do they come when he does call to them?
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn*
* first line of the Welsh national anthem.
190: In this case, it's all about diversity/affirmative action.
That's the great "Aha!" that I keep forgetting but then get reminded of when I scan the various right-wing media ledes on this. It's in line with why "teleprompter" continues to be a dog whistle when used with regard to the manifestly very well-spoken man who is the current president of the United States.
196: Better than "Attention K-Mart shoppers".
very well-spoken man
You're supposed to say "articulate."
JBS seems remarkably unfurious, even after all these years, about George W. Bush's Hispanic phase. (Remember that?)
193 -- And stories in general. The older landscape architect in the office next door came by to chat a couple weeks ago, and in passing made some reference to his grandfather, who'd come from New Hampshire (to Nebraska), but no one knew anything about him. I said well, let's have a look. Easily done, and we figured out that the man's father had been in the Civil War. In a certain unit from Maine that played a huge role at Gettysburg, and mostly ended up dead or in Andersonville.
He'll work out more details on his own time.
My (great-?)great-grandfather got his land in Nebraska for service to the GAR.
Maybe he should have tried harder.
196: it does look Welsh, now you mention it. Also, "Rhyl", "R'lyeh", there's not much distance between them.
200
JBS seems remarkably unfurious, even after all these years, about George W. Bush's Hispanic phase. (Remember that?)
What are you talking about? Did GWB claim to be Hispanic?
If you are talking about GWB's open borders immigration policy I believe I have expressed disapproval on a number of occasions. Similarly for his home loans for everybody housing policy.
And I disliked GWB's overall performance in office sufficiently to vote for Kerry and Obama. Which I would say reflects a certain level of displeasure if not fury.
Everybody knows the Welsh National Anthem is really: "My hen laid a haddock, one hand oiled a flea..."
133
After Deval Patrick's 2010 win, which looked almost impossible as late as August or so, and considering that (1) a special election like what won Brown the seat has odd turnout patterns, and (2) this year's a presidential election, I doubt very much that Brown will win.
Somewhat to my surprise Intrade agrees, Warren is at least a 2-1 favorite. Not much trading volume yet however.
Did GWB claim to be Hispanic?
I don't have any recollection of this. He's a descendant of Sancha de Ayala.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nwa/sancha.html
Given that it's now clear that Warren was telling the truth about her ancestry, I can see that I was wrong for leaping to the conclusion that she was lying, and for insinuating that other Unfoggeders might try to defend her lies. It's also become clear to me that the whole story is a fairly shabby attempt to drum up a scandal out of nothing, and I feel embarrassed that I was taken in so easily.
Sorry about that, everyone.
My grandfather's cousin literally wrote the book on reparations. Just died a few years ago. Unsigned to avoid linking my pseud to his last name which is the same as mine, but LB is both a lawyer and FB friends with me so she can confirm what I'm talking about.
Although among lawyers I think he may be better known for his work on tax law.
210 -- The way I would say this is 'now that it's clear that Warren was telling the truth about there being an old family story, Harvard's conduct was bullshit, and Warren should have called them on it.'
211: I have a (second) cousin (once removed) who shares my last name and does very interesting work on the post-Reconstruction south, but I can't talk about it publicly for the same reason. But she's awesome!
213: That still seems right to me. Also, your Twitter got hacked again.
Yeah, the Harvard angle reflects rather badly on them. Outside the heat of this or other political campaigns* it is an angle worth discussion.
*For instance the stupid racist motherfuckers with and their Obama/Derrick Bell bullshit.
216 -- Right, back to 'Only Nixon Could Go to China' again. You can't have adult conversation, much less policy, in the presence of a particular species of howling moron.
210
You are eliding the difference between claiming to have Native American ancestors and claiming to be yourself Native American.
211: If the book in question was published in 2001, I don't think I have any FB friends who share the last name of the author.
220- No, try 1972. Very early in the reparations discussion.
219: continuing to defend a clearly indefensible position founded on baseless and politically motivated lies would make me look a bit of a fool - not to mention a shameless hack with an axe to grind against Democrats, minorities, women, affirmative action or all of the above - so I'm certainly not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to apologise gracefully and move on.
Signing "Not James B. Shearer" is an annoying and passive aggressive way to make a point.
Mmm. It would be less annoying with your 'real' name or the email you usually use in the email field -- what makes me agree with Moby is the anonymity of the attack. Anonymous sniping sucks.
In my usual quick scan/miss many salient distinctions reading mode, until 219 I thought 210 really was James.
Shouldn't 226 be by 'Not "Not James B. Shearer"', not by 'Not Not James B. Shearer'?
Unless of course it is by James B. Shearer.
Or perhaps "Naughty, naughty, James B. Shearer!"
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Man alive! I am not as young as I used to be! Just marching from Lake & Nicollet to Powderhorn Park really took it out of me. Back in the good old days, I could have done all that, and then walked to the bar and had 12 drinks. Today all I wanted to do was get home and lie in bed.
Pretty good march. I'd estimate in the 1,600-1,800 range, but it might have been more than that, as I never got to see the entire crowd all at once. OF COURSE, as usual, I got stuck carrying a goddamn banner for 90% of the march. Thankfully, I managed to avoid twisting my ankle in any potholes, as happened to me in '09.
Lots of militancy! The anti-capitalist block was a big chunk of the entire march. Also, the Aztec dancer have added significantly to their numbers -- I remember when there were only like 5 of them, and now there are more than 15! Good for them. One of my favorite parts of May Day marches & parades.
Also, my friends' baby is SOOOO BIG! She's just 2 weeks shy of 6 months, and weighs around 18 pounds and has a tiny tooth coming in already! She tried to eat my hand, but couldn't finish, owing to the fact that it is hard to chew someone's hand off with only one tooth.
All in all, a happy and revolutionary May Day!
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That's about 1.5 miles of marching, according to the capitalist pigs at google.
Closer to 2 miles, including going around the block to get onto Lake St. and taking Bloomington down the the park. Of course, if it had just been walking two miles, I would not have been nearly so tired. It's the walking plus the frequent stops (which aggravate my sciatica) that is really pushing it. I walk a mile to work and back most days after all.
Also, there's the whole just-getting-back-on-my-feet-after-surgery-and-gout aspect.
Stopping does suck, especially if you aren't someplace where you can lean or if you get stuck in the sun.