Elizabeth Warren: I Declare I'm 1/32nd Cherokee

Via Hot Air, is Elizabeth Warren's "family lore" accurate?

Desperately scrambling to validate Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage amid questions about whether she used her minority status to further her career, the Harvard Law professor’s campaign last night finally came up with what they claim is a Cherokee connection — her great-great-great-grandmother.

“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. Smith is an ancestor on Warren’s mother’s side, Child said.

1/32nd? She's as white as I am.

The premise behind "diversity hiring" -- I'm not agreeing with it; I'm stating the premise behind it -- is that those with different experiences and backgrounds can contribute intellectually to a group in ways that whites can't.

But Elizabeth Warren is white. She has not been mistaken for anything except Anglo-Saxon all her life. She has lived in white culture. She has never once had anyone look shiftily at her due to a suspicion that she was a minority.

For her to claim she's "minority" is an insult -- or ought to be -- to anyone who believes in the "diversity"/minority voices theory.

Because universities (especially universities!) make a special fetish of hiring minorities -- Elizabeth Warren's claim to be a minority, and her self-claimed status as such, and her listing of herself as a minority in directories, displaced an actual minority who would have had her position.

Some think this whole racial quota system is ridiculous. I tend to agree. But at least a black guy who gets a position partly due to his minority position is doing so honestly (even if I disagree with the theory behind the special racial advantage).

Elizabeth Warren gamed herself the best of both worlds -- she's actually white, and so has never faced any degree of Outsider Status in her life.

But she claims minority status in order to benefit from institutional preferences for minorities.

1 out of 32 parts.

And yet someone with 32 out of 32 parts of minority heritage was displaced so that Elizabeth Warren could get her promotion.

posted by Ace at 12:04 PM

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