Friday, May 25, 2012

Harvard Law Promoted Elizabeth Warren's Link as a Native American

The Boston Globe is reporting:
US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago.

But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet...

But the school had begun describing Warren as Native American in the media soon after she was hired.

In 1996, law school news director Mike Chmura, speaking to the Harvard Crimson, identified Warren as a Native American professor.

In 1997, the Fordham Law Review, citing Chmura, referred to Warren as Harvard Law’s “first woman of color.’’

In 1998, Chmura wrote a letter to the New York Times, saying the law school had appointed or tenured “eight women, including a Native American.’’ Three days later, the Crimson again touched on the issue: “Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American.’’...The current executive director of Harvard’s Native American program has said she has no memory of Warren participating in any of its activities.
Warren claims that it is "family lore" that she is part Cherokee, although she now stonewalls questions about her supposed Indian heritage,

21 comments:

  1. Maybe this will move the polls in Massachusetts—Nah, I doubt it!

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    1. Nothing to see here, just move along.

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  2. Whether or not she specifically meets the official criteria for being Native American, I think we can all agree that she her entire life must have been considerably more difficult because of her minority status. I mean look at her, there's just no way she can blend in among the majority. And all those aspects of Native American culture that she has practiced throughout her life must have truly shaped who she is as a person. All that time that she spent living on a reservation, or in a community of other Native Americans has truly changed the way she interacts with the world. There's just such a massive difference between her and most caucasian Americans that we need a term to advertise this difference, in order that people wouldn't be taken by surprise by it.

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    1. How was the family lore passed down? by fireside in the traditional Cherokee oral history style? Hmmm, why not record them now before it's too late. What does she have to hide? It's either true or false.

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  3. She took advantage of beneficial racial profiling.

    If she were working in the business world she most likely would be fired for this and rightfully so. If that were not enough to get her fired, her weak attempt at lying about not knowing that Harvard was promoting her Native American status should be enough grounds for dismissal. Could you imagine a (toxic) elite like her having to survive outside of government and academia without being able to fall back on her elitist contacts?

    IMO, she has zero credibility from this point on when it comes to advancing the left wings social justice canard\theme.

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    1. Actually, this would be an excellent opportunity to play the victim and claim harassment by right wingers. Isn't that how black politicians do it?

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  4. Scott Brown should invite the press to his family campsite fire to talk about his genealogy. It would make a wonderful ad. Perhaps invite any potential Cherokee relatives.

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  5. It doesn't say much about Harvard as an institution and as academics (faculty and students included) to have fallen for this. Did this happen on Lawrence Summers watch? I think DNA tests or birth certificates should be required.

    Iris Mack, what have you found out?

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  6. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/08/Elizabeth-Warren-Ancestor-Trail-of-Tears How about her real ancestors involvement in the trail of tears?

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  7. If she's this forthcoming now, then what will she be likely if she wins? The blind leading the blind or stupid attracting stupid.

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    1. Consequently, Warren should immediately apologize for her ancestor's mistake and make amends by working on (not from MA) the reservation with her husband providing legal aid gratis.

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  9. I think we should cut Ms. Warren a little slack on this issue. She is from Oklahoma and there are very few people in the state who don't believe they have some kind of tribal history. That comes with being raised in the state that was the dumping ground for all tribes east of the Mississippi.

    And the issue is more complicated than non-Okies understand. The official censuses for tribal membership in the late 19th century were done under the threat of the breaking up of the tribal governments by the Feds. Large numbers of tribal members refused to take part in the censuses for that reason. So there are families today in Oklahoma that are clearly tribal; you can tell by looking at them; but they don't have official citizenship in a tribe because their ancestors refused to take part in the governments destruction of their tribal government.

    On the other hand, I am a full citizen of the Choctaw nation, even though my "blood" is just 1/526. My children are all tribal members with a blood of 1/1052. My great-grandfather received 320 acres in the allotment after the forced break up of tribal government because his father (Irish) put him on the roles in the census. His mother was Choctaw, but far from pure blood.

    Tribes never considered "blood" percentage to be a sign of tribal membership. Until the censuses, if you considered yourself part of the tribe you were part of the tribe. The Commanche, Apache and Kiowa tribes have quite a few princesses with blonde or red hair and blue eyes because their ancestors were stolen as children.

    The blood percentage thing was nonsense adopted by the federal government in the late 19th century to identify every citizen by racial percentage, black, white, asian, tribal, etc. But for some reason it stuck only with the tribes. It was imposed on the tribes and was never a tribal method of counting membership. There was always infighting between the full bloods and half breeds, but the full bloods never considered the half breeds to not be part of the tribe.

    After the censuses, the eastern tribes adopted the policy that you had to trace your heritage back to a family member included in one of the censuses in order to be a member. But there are a lot of people with a high percentage of tribal "blood" that aren't on the rolls.

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  10. PS, my great-grandfather, the Choctaw Indian, always called himself white when asked for his race because there was a lot of discrimination against tribal people back then. Today most Okies are proud to claim some kind of tribal heritage as Warren does, but at the turn of the last century few people had that pride. So just looking at what someone said their race was a century ago doesn't mean a lot.

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  11. PSS, I'm afraid I have been guilty of claiming to be white. When I apply for a job, I'm white. But when I get the job, I have informed HR of my tribal membership so that the company can score points with the EEO.

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    1. Did your HR take your word for it or did they require proof? I guess it doesn't matter since it's all how you view yourself depending on which way the wind is blowing? Not to begrudge you since even Abraham and Isaac lied to protect themselves when Abimelech's subjects lusted after their "sisters". The end sometimes justifies the means.

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    2. Sorry, but your reply to Roger implies that he "lied".
      I believe he can be "white" but also retain tribal membership.
      That is, tribal membership only requires a trace of NA blood, but if you're 99% white, it would be silly to NOT claim you're "white". I don't think ANY of us "white guys" is 100% white.
      So no, I don't think he lied.

      P.S. I would LOVE it if I found out one (or more) of my ancestors were non-white! Gets me off the "white guilt" hook.

      And Roger, thanks for the history lesson!

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    3. I can only go by what Roger said. He said one thing then another. Sarah was the daughter of Abraham's father but not of his mother so he correctly in his mind claimed her as his sister, albeit technically half-sister. So did Abraham in fact lie? He said one thing then another. Who's lied? Which statement was true?

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    4. If you have a drop of black, then you could be 99% white but still be considered black. At the end of the day, it's all just silliness to claim to be both black and white because we are mixed (up) anyways. How about a new standard based on DNA and not self-identification would be more truthful? But don't ask me to contribute my DNA any time soon.

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  12. The tempest over Warren's ancestry is intended, it seems to me, to add to the distractions from the more important issues. Tribal enrollment is only one aspect of being Indian. I've got cousins whose blood quantum is the same as mine but their grandparents and parents didn't see to it that they were enrolled, and so they are not members of my tribe (Cowlitz), but that does not make them less Indian than me.

    When I tell people both my grandfathers were from Europe, nobody disputes that I'm part-European. But when I tell them that both my grandmothers were American Indians, look out! Fortunately, I have a tribal enrollment card to prove my ancestry. Interesting, though, that the only Americans who are called upon, as a demographic, to prove their ancestry are Indians.

    This began with federal government's efforts, in the 19th century, to eradicate Indians. It included defining Indians out of existence by stipulating that anybody who was less than one-quarter blood quantum was no longer Indian. History is what it is, and I see little point in judging actions from a bygone era. But this is one policy that has no place in the present.

    There are millions of Americans who, were we to apply the same standard that applies to African Americans, would qualify to call themselves American Indians. And I think it's time that we did. So while I disagree with Warren's politics, I accept her at her word when she claims Indian ancestry.

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  13. Affirmative action is a scam? I am shocked... She is a leftists nut period.

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