Scott Brown's Comments

[Lord Falcon]

Does anyone here know about Scott Brown's racist comments the other day? He was debating Elizabeth Warren for control of the Senate, and he attacked her based on her ethnic background, claiming she looks too white to be Native American and that she lied about her ancestry. I consider my heritage to be very important to me. I am part French, German, English, Scotch, Dutch, Welsh, Irish, and, like Warren, Cherokee, and NO ONE will deny me who I am. Even worse, his aides were caught outside somewhere protesting Warren by doing "Tomahawk chops" and performing stereotypical Indian war whoops. He will not apologize for attacking Warren's family, and is creating ads basing his entire campaign around Warren lying about being Native American.

Discuss.

[Knife]

He's a douche, but it is really a non issue. That said, I'm hoping Warren gets the seat, she is a staunch defender of middle class and workers.

Now, you're silly. It's important to you that you're ethnically [insert 8 different nationalities/ethnicity here]. I mean, to each his/her own but, why?

[Lord Falcon]

Non issue? He's basing his entire campaign on racism. And they have another debate coming up on Monday. I wonder what they're going to stay about that there.

[weemadando]

Do you value all of your ancestries equally?

How about how that fits in with you as an American?

[mr friendly guy]

Considering some Native America tribes allow members who are 1/8, 1/16 and even 1/32 Native, this "too white to be a native" is bullshit. But then race is much more culturally influenced than by biology anyway.

[TimothyC]

Non issue? He's basing his entire campaign on racism. And they have another debate coming up on Monday. I wonder what they're going to stay about that there.

Source that his entire campaign is based on racism and not because he disagrees with her policies?

Tell you what, after you do that, I'll try and find something resembling a not-totally biased source that references the fact that Warren didn't have a law license in Mass while she filed various legal documents.

Remember what I said about getting info from a variety of sources? It's also a good idea to try and avoid confirmation bias. It's not easy, and it requires that you actually try and think, but it's worth it.

[Losonti Tokash]

Considering some Native America tribes allow members who are 1/8, 1/16 and even 1/32 Native, this "too white to be a native" is bullshit. But then race is much more culturally influenced than by biology anyway.

And for the Cherokee Nation, which is what Warren claims, all you need to do is prove any one of your ancestors was listed on the Dawes Rolls. I have no idea what tiny fraction you'd be if that's your most recent connection, but it's good enough.

[Simon_Jester]

Non issue? He's basing his entire campaign on racism.

He is? Really?

You wouldn't perchance be related to SpaceMarine93, would you?

[mr friendly guy]

He may or may not be basing his entire campaign around racism (I am a non American here), however it seems irrelevant to bring race into this issue in that manner. Sure Warren could have lied about her ancestry, but the way Brown supposedly tells (because she looks too white LOL) is so bullshit that anyone in a few minutes of google can tell its rubbish. Why would you bring it up unless you are either racist or wanting to play the race card in the opposite direction? As always, bullshit should be called out.

[Col. Crackpot]

While Brown's staff are carrying on like a buncg of racist cunts, There also is the real issue that Warren used minority status to further her career, a benefit that she may not have been entitled to. The local tv and radio stations here serve both RI and and SE Massachusetts/ Cape cod, and let me tell you the ads have become quite nasty.

Source

You have the head of the Cherokee Nation (who happens to be DNC Activist)calling Scott Brown a racist, yet oddly not disputing the actual claim that Warren is not a Cherokee. You also have Cherokee geneologists stating that there is no evidence that Warren is a Cherokee at all. If she falsely claimed minority status to get her job at Harvard, that makes her a piece of shit. Also i am pretty sure that is a crime.

Long story short, two douchenozzles throwing shit at each other. One of which may have committed a crime, and the other may be a racist fuck.

[mr friendly guy]

Is there any evidence that her minority status actually helped her career? I thought affirmative action was just something thats debated, and not applied yet. Even if it was, I thought it was just confine to universities, and certainly not in the "real world" that is the workplace.

[TimothyC]

Is there any evidence that her minority status actually helped her career? I thought affirmative action was just something thats debated, and not applied yet. Even if it was, I thought it was just confine to universities, and certainly not in the "real world" that is the workplace.

Yes, affirmative action is real, and her place of work in question was a university.

[Col. Crackpot]

Is there any evidence that her minority status actually helped her career? I thought affirmative action was just something that's debated, and not applied yet. Even if it was, I thought it was just confine to universities, and certainly not in the "real world" that is the workplace.

Harvard is an Affirmative Action employer. Because of that they are required to, in layman's terms give preference in hiring disenfranchised groups by actively seeking them out and removing barriers to their employment. When Harvard hired her, Harvard Crimson touted her as the "First Woman of Color hired by Harvard Law School". source What legal ramifications there could be if she was caught lying? Don't know...

[mr friendly guy]

I will withdraw my doubts about affirmative action.

A bit of further research also reveals this

this

The best argument she's got in her defense is that, based on the public evidence so far, she doesn't appear to have used her claim of Native American ancestry to gain access to anything much more significant than a cookbook; in 1984 she contributed five recipes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook published by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, signing the items, "Elizabeth Warren -- Cherokee."

Warren, who graduated from the University of Houston in 1970 and got her law degree from Rutgers University in 1976, did not seek to take advantage of affirmative action policies during her education, according documents obtained by the Associated Press and The Boston Globe. On the application to Rutgers Law School she was asked, "Are you interested in applying for admission under the Program for Minority Group Students?'' "No," she replied.

While a teacher at the University of Texas, she listed herself as "white." But between 1986 and 1995, she listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Faculty; the University of Pennsylvania in a 2005 "minority equity report" also listed her as one of the minority professors who had taught at its law school.

The head of the committee that brought Warren to Harvard Law School said talk of Native American ties was not a factor in recruiting her to the prestigious institution. Reported the Boston Herald in April in its first story on Warren's ancestry claim: "Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn't recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.

"'It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn't mention it to the faculty,' he said."

He repeated himself this week, telling the Herald: "In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, the story continues to circulate that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed some kind of affirmative action leg-up in her hiring as a full professor by the Harvard Law School. The innuendo is false."

"I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned," he added.

That view was echoed by Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who voted to tenure Warren and was also involved in recruiting her.

"Elizabeth Warren's heritage had absolutely no role in the decision to recruit her to Harvard Law School," he told the Crimson. "Our decision was entirely based on her extraordinary expertise and legendary teaching ability. This whole dispute is fabricated out of whole cloth and has no connection to reality."

And that's the second arena where an absence of evidence should have some weight. If there's no easily located evidence that Warren has Native American ancestry, there's also no evidence Warren used her family story to boost herself into a Harvard job.

A huge tell -- beyond the flat denials of two of the men who brought her to the school -- is that Warren's ancestry was not touted in 1995 in the Harvard Crimson as the Law School's first Native American hire, despite the ethnic studies movement's gathering force on the college's campus at the time and continued controversy over the lack of diversity at the law school (as highlighted at a protest involving Prof. Derrick Bell and law school student Barack Obama in 1991). The Crimson article on Warren was titled simply, "Woman Tenured at Law School."

It seems Elizabeth Warren has family lore that her third great grandmother was a Cherokee. Apparently this is one of the common genealogy myths an American might believe, ie a native american ancestor. Even if that was true she would be 1/32 Cherokee (albeit not eligible to be a member of their tribe under their strict rules) and 31/32 white (presumably if no other intermarrying was going on). So she could list herself as a minority and white because of a mixed heritage.

In any event, according to those that hired her at Harvard, they did so not because of her heritage was not mentioned, until kind of after when they were looking for minorities on the staff and found out they already had one. In fact while enrolled as a student she did not take advantage of being a minority, and her job as a teacher at the university of Texas listed her as white.

Point two - the idea of a native american ancestry seems to come from Warren's family lore. As such its hard to say she consciously lied about it (as opposed to being mistaken). Given she would be 31/32 white, of course she would most closely resemble the ethnicity she has more ancestry in, so its not like she could look in the mirror and go, I can't possibly have a native american ancestor.

So it seems the best her opponent can throw up is, she believed herself to be 1/32 native american without checking the geneology, and used that minority status to get herself published in a cook book. Yep, a cook book. Whopee de da.

[Col. Crackpot]

<snip>

That is a little hard to believe when mouthpiece of her employer, one of, if not the most prestigious and respected Universities on the planet marketed her as "The law school's first woman of color" when she was hired. There is noting that i can find that she did to dispute that.

[Broomstick]

Considering some Native America tribes allow members who are 1/8, 1/16 and even 1/32 Native, this "too white to be a native" is bullshit. But then race is much more culturally influenced than by biology anyway.

Do remember that at least on paper (and, to be honest, often ignored) the various Native tribes in the US are nations. Some of them even issue their own passports and such. It's not just a matter of ancestry, it's a matter of who the group wants admitted. If the Cherokee, Ojibwa, Navajo, Zuni, Sioux, and any other Native tribe wants to admit someone they certainly can do so even if that person has zero Native ancestry. So one could, for example, be a full member of, say, the Seminoles without having any Native ancestry (and, indeed, it used to be that group had a fair number of people that applied to).

Some, of course, have much, much more restrictive membership rules. In some cases, there's a gender bais - historically the child of a Cherokee mother and a non-Cherokee father was automatically a Cherokee, but the child of a Cherokee father and a non-Cherokee mother wasn't (I don't know if that rule still applies or not, or when/if it changed).

The upshot is that there are people who can truthfully claim "I have a Native ancestor" when that ancestor might have actually been of European or African descent, that is, were a member of the tribe by adoption/naturalization. There are people who had a Native in their family tree four or five generations back. There are people who were told they had Native ancestry when actually they had African ancestry (have to account for dark skin somehow, right?).

Between the human proclivity to fuck anything of the same species and the fact various different groups have been living next to each other for several centuries a LOT of Americans who are identified as "white" or "black" or whatever have Native ancestry whether they're aware of it or not. Equally true, quite a few either think they have such ancestry when they don't, or know they don't but falsely claim it.

[Broomstick]

Considering some Native America tribes allow members who are 1/8, 1/16 and even 1/32 Native, this "too white to be a native" is bullshit. But then race is much more culturally influenced than by biology anyway.

And for the Cherokee Nation, which is what Warren claims, all you need to do is prove any one of your ancestors was listed on the Dawes Rolls. I have no idea what tiny fraction you'd be if that's your most recent connection, but it's good enough.

[nitpick] There are actually three Cherokee Nations these days: The Cherokee Nation, United Keetoowah, and Eastern Band Cherokee. The two Oklahmoa groups – CN and UK – go off the Dawes Rolls. The EBC uses the Baker rolls.

The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma absorbed quite a bit of the Natchez Nation and the Cherokee Freedmen – the latter being composed of the former African-descent slaves of the Cherokee Nation and their descendants, that is, full members of the Cherokee Nation whose ancestry are mostly or entirely African in origin. There are a substantial number of black Cherokees, although it's unlikely Warren is claiming one of them as her ancestor)

Yes, this gets confusing. [/nitpick]

You have the head of the Cherokee Nation (who happens to be DNC Activist)calling Scott Brown a racist, yet oddly not disputing the actual claim that Warren is not a Cherokee.

Possibly because Principal Chief Bill John Baker's own claim to Native ancestry has been called into question. Which goes to show that yes, you can have a small sliver of actual Native ancestry and still be considered Native enough to be elected to lead a Native Nation. Even so, racial/ethnic politics frequently come into play in the US, even if not openly acknowledged. On the flip side, there are also instances where race really isn't considered in something like hiring although the issue may be raised later on by people with their own agenda (which might be what's happening here).

I'll also mention that “Cherokee” is the tribe most often mentioned by those claiming Native ancestry whether the claim is true or not, so much so that many now dismiss anyone's claim to be Cherokee. This has come up occasionally with my spouse's family, many of whom are blue-eyed and pale, despite the fact that that there are detailed names, photographs, and census records confirming their claim that they are related to the Eastern Band Cherokee. I'll also mention that his family has never attempted to access anything offered to Natives based on their ancestry, as they're most definitely fully assimilated into the mainstream. That's also not uncommon – a lot of people in the US who could legitimately claim minority status choose not to do so although some racists seem convinced everyone other than the “pure” folks are gaming the system.

There are several reasons that “Cherokee” comes up most often. For one thing, they've been in contact with Europeans longer than most other surviving groups, first contact occurring some time in the mid-1600's and intermarriage started happening pretty early on in the relationship. Thus, they've had longer to pass their genes around, and acquire those of other groups. The Cherokee Nation is the largest surviving Native Nation in the US, and in addition to that group there are two other Federally recognized Cherokee groups and numerous other ones that lack such recognition but are definitely Native. There are more Cherokee, so the odds actually do favor them being one's Unspecified Native Ancestor if you're from the Southeast of the US. In addition, the Cherokee were one of the Five Civilized Tribes and thus the white folks were more inclined to look favorably on a Cherokee than many other Natives, so a certain number of non-Cherokee claimed to be Cherokee in front of the whites for reasons similar to why very light-skinned black people would attempt to pass for white (or Native instead of black). Their assimilated descendants might have been told “dad's Cherokee” when in fact dad was something else (possibly a refugee member of a tribe officially designated as an enemy nation by the US - maybe dad wanted to stop fighting and settle down elsewhere, like a lot of other folks have done over the years). And finally, because the Cherokee have been mixing with whites for so long, it is much more plausible for someone who looks European to claim to be such than, say, part-Sioux because so many Cherokee are hard to distinguish from those of European descent (that's not uncommon with Eastern Natives – there are some blond-haired, blue-eyed Native Americans from the East Coast areas. Many tribes have friction between those who look Native and those who look like the invaders.)

[The Yosemite Bear]

I look all caucasion, but my scot-Irish ancestors well had sex with justabout anyone that moved, consequetly I do possess African and Indian recessive markers. Which means that a generation or two ago I could have been discriminated against as per the jim crow laws....

[Knife]

Non issue? He's basing his entire campaign on racism. And they have another debate coming up on Monday. I wonder what they're going to stay about that there.

Yes, it is a non issue. The only people who would remotely care are those that wouldn't vote for her anyways, due to political affiliations. There seems no indication that she abused any system with that information to get ahead. Nobody cares but partisans and stress monkeys.

[Ultonius]

Which goes to show that yes, you can have a small sliver of actual Native ancestry and still be considered Native enough to be elected to lead a Native Nation.

One of the most famous Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation during the 19th Century, John Ross, had a single Cherokee great-grandmother, but since Cherokee status is inherited through the maternal line, as you said earlier, he was still regarded as a member of her clan, because of the link through his mother and grandmother.

[mr friendly guy]

<snip>

That is a little hard to believe when mouthpiece of her employer, one of, if not the most prestigious and respected Universities on the planet marketed her as "The law school's first woman of color" when she was hired. There is noting that i can find that she did to dispute that.

The thing is, this is not even a case of "he said, she said." Its a case of no one relevant said. Until someone admits it, they got nothing but suspicion.