No, Elizabeth Warren Didn't Lie About Being Native American Or Use it To Further Her Career
No, Elizabeth Warren Didn't Lie About Being Native American Or Use it To Further Her Career
The Right Wing attack machine is in full swing after President Trump's disgraceful 'Pocahontas' attack on Elizabeth Warren at a White House event honoring Native American veterans.
The Right Wing attack machine was in full swing after President Trump's disgraceful 'Pocahontas' attack on Elizabeth Warren at a White House event honoring Native American veterans yesterday. Trump was supposed to be thanking the code talkers for their contributions to World War II, and had started out well by acknowledging that Native Americans “were here long before any of us were here." Incapable of acting decently for more than a minute at a time, the Commander in Chief then launched into a racist attack on Sen. Elizabeth Warren over her debatable Native American ancestry. "Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago," Trump went on. "They call her Pocahontas.”
Denounced as an ethnic slur by almost everyone, including Russell Begaye, leader of the Navajo Nation, the White House went into attack mode and pinned the blame on everyone not named Donald Trump.
“I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House press conference yesterday.
This outright lie is often repeated in right wing circles and must sadly be debunked. Again.
Firstly, there is no way of confirming Elizabeth Warren's ancestry based on public records, and there's no way of proving she is lying about her family history or what she was told as a child. The Sacramento Bee's break down of the ludicrous scandal provides the context:
Warren has been accused of using her Native American Heritage to get ahead in her political career, particularly in the 2012 Massachusetts race for senator, according to the Boston Globe.
In 2012, she was under scrutiny for her alleged Native American heritage as she listed herself as a minority in the directory of law professors, the Boston Globe reports.
Warren grew up in Oklahoma and was told by her family that she is part-Cherokee, according to NPR.
Genealogist Chris Child of the New England Historic Society looked into Warren’s background and found a document stating that she has a great-great-great-grandmother who is Native American, which would make her 1/32 Cherokee, NPR reported.
But Child told NPR that it would take more research to confirm that finding. Later, the New England Historic Genealogical Society has backtracked on Child’s finding, according to the Atlantic, saying there is "no proof that Elizabeth Warren's great-great-great-grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith either is or is not of Cherokee descent.”
Warren’s former opponent Scott Brown has requested that Warren would take a DNA test to prove her heritage, but that bioethicist Nanibaa' Garrison, a PhD in genetics, told the Washington Post that it “wouldn’t do any good.”
"It's really difficult to say that a DNA test would be able to identify how much Native American ancestry a person has," Garrison told the Washington Post.
To accuse Warren of not being Native American is one thing (many people find shocking truths about their ancestry), but to accuse her of lying about it is nothing more than a political hit job.
Secondly, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Warren's perceived Native American ancestry played a role in advancing her career. Reported CNN:
Harvard Law School in the 1990s touted Warren, then a professor in Cambridge, as being "Native American." They singled her out, Warren later acknowledged, becauseshe had listed herself as a minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory. Critics note that she had not done that in her student applications and during her time as a teacher at the University of Texas.
Warren maintains she never furthered her career by using her heritage to gain advantage
Huckabee-Sanders trotted this vicious smear out nonchalantly at yesterday's press briefing, offering no evidence but knowing full well no one other than Trump's diehard supporters will believe it. But then that's the point -- Donald Trump is not the President of the United States, he's the president of the minority of fanatics who still support him and his cabinet have given up speaking to anyone else.
https://thedailybanter.com/2017/11/warren-didnt-lie-about-being-native-american/
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related
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/politics/elizabeth-warren-native-american-pocahontas/index.html
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/warren-may-not-be-indian-trump-still-not-right.html
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It seems as if Elizabeth Warren remembers a family story she had been told as a child that she had American Indian heritage. There is no proof that she does.
How you go from that perhaps misunderstanding to fraud and intentional lying is something only the right wing fantasy factory can tell us.
I remember when I was a kid my great aunts and uncles used to tell the kids in our family that there was an Indian in our great great great heritage. While us kids found that interesting I never really thought a lot of it. I think many kids have been told that by someone in their family , simply because it lends an exotic touch, so to speak, to old family stories.
There is no evidence Warren ever used her belief maliciously or that she ever received preferential treatment for it.
The amusing part of it all now is that a pathological liar who is known to have lied to the public thousands of times has the gall to get all high and mighty about what appears to be benign story telling by one of his political rivals.
she never ran for office claiming she would be "the first Massachusetts senator with native american heritage"
never happened... cough cough .
When one uses quotation marks, it would behoove one to ACTUALLY QUOTE the statement, especially when accompanied by a video that PROVES that the one MISQUOTED the statement.
Truncated 'quotes' are equivalent to lies.
Sounds a lot like Trump repeatedly claiming that his father is from Sweden, when he is actually German. People who live in glass houses...