Elizabeth Warren's Silly Indian Campaign

This article first appeared in New English Review.


Little White Dove-Note the High Cheekbones


Senator Elizabeth Warren is making herself look increasingly foolish in her campaign to convince the world she has a drop or two of Native American blood-1/32nd by her estimations. President Trump has unwisely, in my view, mocked her publicly as "Pocahontas". ( I myself call her "Little White Dove", but I'm not president.)

So now Warren has gone out and hired the services of some DNA expert who says that, indeed, Warren probably has a Native American in her lineage, probably 6 to 10 generations back. Big deal.

Let us not forget that Warren used this Indian heritage claim to help her get hired as faculty by Harvard, who still trumpets this "groundbreaking hire". As we speak, Harvard is being sued by Asian-Americans for discrimination in its student admission policy, a suit Harvard will surely lose if the same paperwork trail can be shown that has shown up in other universities.

Why Warren is so determined to convince us that she has Native American background is beyond me unless she wants to cash in on that million dollar "bet" that Trump threw at her to prove her claims. Frankly, she makes herself look silly. Doe she really think most Native Americans are watching this and rooting for her as one of their own? What does it really mean to be 1/32nd of anything? You might as well claim to be 1/32 Martian.

It may be fun to find out through genealogy that you have an ancestor who came from a country or ethnic group you were unaware of. I myself have done my own genealogy research, which has confirmed to me that I am nothing more than pure Anglo-Saxon (German on my father's side and English on my mother's). Not very exotic is it? On the other hand, how does it make you a better or more "qualified" person to have or not to have a Native American ancestor? At a certain point, as Warren has shown, it becomes nothing more than cheap identity politics. Warren used it to get hired by Harvard, who in turn, used it to enhance their diversity creds. Now Warren is using it, probably, to enhance her presidential ambitions. She will never get my vote because in my view she 32/32s leftist.

But when someone like Warren is digging themselves deeper and deeper with a meaningless issue, why take away her shovel? Let her continue, and, if she declares for president, let her make it a major campaign issue. Sensible Americans would rather vote for a conservative candidate even if he or she is 100% Native American. It's not your ethnicity that matters. It is your belief system. By that measure, Elizabeth Warren is not even qualified to be a tribal elder, let alone professor, senator or president.