Over at Popehat, Patrick, the more flamboyant of the libertarian performance artists who blog there, has erected a harsh condemnation of Elizabeth Warren’s attenuated Native American pose, as well as her subsequent defense of it. A sample:
“The truth about Elizabeth Warren is that, when she chose to call herself a Cherokee Indian, she failed to consider that she might one day be called on her claims. The truth about Elizabeth Warren is that her decision to call herself a Cherokee Indian, at a time when she thought no one would ever call her on her claim, was more revealing of her character than all of her actions since becoming a politician in the spotlight. The truth about Elizabeth Warren is that she will lie about her background for professional advantage when she thinks that she can get away with it. The truth about Elizabeth Warren is that it is only now dawning on her that lying about one’s race in order to gain affirmative action benefits is considered, by many, to be no different from lying about one’s college diploma, or lying about winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. The truth about Elizabeth Warren is that she is no more deserving of a seat in the United States Senate than she is of a seat on the Cherokee Nation’s tribal council.”
I more or less agree with Patrick on all points, and the criticism of his post from commenters has reinforced that conclusion. For the most part, their protests boil down to “but she’s a liberal/Democrat/ ally of the 99% and running against a Republican, and that’s what matters, not her character!” If it hasn’t already become obvious, the official position of Ethics Alarms is that if the public chose its elected officials on the basis of demonstrated virtues like integrity, courage, honesty, fairness and responsibility rather than partisan affiliation, single issues and official policy positions, the nation would be far better served. Patrick’s post, however, following on the heels of my own, also sparked a flashback to a conversation I had almost 40 years ago, when I was working in the administration of Georgetown Law Center.
One of my responsibilities was to screen candidates for admission who had been tagged by faculty members or others as possible “special admits,” usually sons and daughters of prominent alumni who had the capacity to give the school a lot of money. There were a limited number of slots that were designated for these applicants (fortunately), and my task was to determine 1) if they were sharp enough to graduate or such mouth-breathers that we couldn’t hold our nose and let them in no matter how rich Dad was, and 2) if they were strong enough that they could get admitted without any assistance, clearing a slot for a tougher case.
One day I was called upon to assess the qualifications of a young woman who was the daughter on a very prominent GULC grad whom I had met a few times. She was, by the evidence of her transcript, easily qualified for admission, though without benefit of her father’s connection to the school it would be a close call. When she arrived to interview with me, I was surprised to see she was Asian-American. Yes, she said, her mother was Japanese, though there was no hint of her heritage in her name, transcript, courses or anything else. After we had spoken—I was very impressed with her—I asked why she didn’t flag herself as a minority candidate in the section provided. “I don’t think of myself as Asian, or even as a minority,” she told me. “I’m an All- American girl, in every way. I haven’t been discriminated against, and my family is wealthy. I’ve had every advantage. It seem wrong for me to take advantage of affirmative action policies that are supposed to help a completely different kind of student. I’m not sure I even agree with the concept of affirmative action.”
“I’m not sure I do either,” I told her. “But you should apply as a minority. Regardless of how you feel about it, you are a minority student according to how the University enacts its diversity policies. Your scores and grades are a little below average for successful applicants as a whole, but compared to the minority applicants, you’re a star. Once you check the box saying that you’re of Asian heritage, admission to the Law school is guaranteed. That’s the system. I think it’s a stupid system. I agree with you: you’re an All-American girl in every way that matters, and a system that gives you an advantage over other All-American students because your mother happens to be Japanese is illogical and unfair. Yet here’s the dilemma: either the affirmative action policy will work for you, or it works against you. There is no middle ground. Since you can make it work for you without being dishonest in any way, and since you are undeniably qualified to go to law school here, you should have no compunction about declaring your minority status and accepting the benefits of it. It is not your fault that Georgetown’s policy makes no distinctions regarding socio-economic status, or that it is based on the invalid assumption that being of minority heritage alone justifies a applying looser admission standards. You want to go to law school here, you are qualified to go to law school here, and if you truthfully let the Admissions Office know that your mother is Japanese, you will go to law school here. And you will still be an All-American girl. So do it.”
And she did.
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Spark: Popehat
Graphic: Shout Factory
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Elizabeth Warren did not lie about her heritage. She is of Native American descent. She no more lied about her heritage than people who tout being descended from some Founding Father, like Jefferson, who are far more distantly related in the past than she is to her great (add more “greats” as necessary) grandmother. To deny that she is, at least in part, Native-American would also be a lie. It isn’t as if she pulled a “Soul Man”, and darkened herself up to appear more Native American. To the naked eye, it is obvious that she is not a full Native American, so it isn’t as if she was fooling anyone. How much Native American blood would she need to satisfy her critics, and how much does she need to no longer qualify as Native American. The Cherokee Nation itself has no quantum blood requirements, only that one must be a direct lineal descendent. If that’s good enough for them….
That’s good enough for them because it similarly allows individuals to derive favored treatment and acquire benefits and status based on genetic trivia. 1/32 of Native American heritage does not make you a Native American, and for a fully white women to claim otherwise is indeed dishonest. Patrick is correct. The concept that one’s great, great, great, great grand parents determines one’s racial designation is absurd on its face, and the fact that “it’s good enough for them” is nothing but a variation on the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody Does It”—in this case, “The Indians do it, so it’s OK.”
But that’s the rub, isn’t it? She isn’t fully white. She has acknowledged her heritage, all aspects of it. It doesn’t have to be an either/or. She is both Native American and white, and she can choose to call herself whatever she wishes. If she was making up an ancestor, that would be lying, and thus unethical, but since she isn’t, where is the problem? How much more blood would she need to qualify? If under tribal law she would be accepted, and she accepts herself as such, where is our standing to tell her she can’t identify as such, and force her to identify in a way that would please us more?
She’s acknowledged a mythical heritage for personal gain. That’s all she has done.
Disingenous to call it “mythical” Jack. It is acknowledged that she has at least one Native American ancestor, of a closer relation than most people have with one of the Founding Father’s that they are oft so proud to claim as part of their heritage. If she gains by that, and it is true, so what? Perhaps more people should know their family history so they can take advantage of this policy, or because so many people begin to claim it, it becomes watered down, and eventually abolished.
What??? WHO claims that they are related to the Founders? You do realize that “fathers” is metaphorical, right?
1/32 isn’t even a drop in the gene pool. Saying you had a distant Native American ancestor (of dubious lineage herself) means..you had distant a Native American ancestor. That doesn’t make you a Cherokee, any more than having a distant American acrobat in the family qualifies you to join the circus.
” What??? WHO claims that they are related to the Founders? You do realize that “fathers” is metaphorical, right? ”
For some people “Founding Fathers” is not metaphorical, some people really are descendents of one (or more) of the Founding Father’s. And brag about it.
These people, http://monticello-assoc.org/about-us , for one. That’s for people who claim to be descendants of Thomas Jefferson.
This guy: http://henryadamsofbraintree.com/index.html , who claims to be descended from John Adams.
These ladies, whom you may have heard of, The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), where you can only gain admittance if your distant ancestor faught in the Revolutionary War. http://www.dar.org/natsociety/default.cfm
Why is that ethical, but claiming a relative nearer in time unethical?
Again, a particularly weak “Everybody does it” rationalization, the “A few pompous dorks do it.” Washington had no heirs,and the Adams’s and Franklin lines ran out. The “Daughters” are a joke. And even people who say that distant relatives were founding fathers, they don’t claim that THEY are founding fathers.
My point was, people claim distant ancestors all the time, for various reasons. It is an American tradition as old as apple pie. As long as it is provably true, it isn’t unethical, no more than taking pride in calling yourself a Mayflower descendant.
Elizabeth Warren has Cherokee ancestry. The Cherokee Nation rules shows that she could call herself Cherokee. Her ancestry isn’t mythical, but real, and traceable. If she wants, and the Cherokee Nation agrees, who are we to say no? You have thus far refused to answer what you feel the reasonable cutoff should be in your eyes, before you no longer qualify racially. It seems, based on your asian girl story, to be less than half, but more than 1/32. So 1/4, 1/8, or 1/16.? Or is it just about how she looks? If Elizabeth Warren “looked” more Native American, would that be enough?
As far as I am concerned, claiming distant ancestors with dubious proof isn’t unethical so long as you gain no benefits from doing so. For example, Sir Winston Churchill’s family lore held that he was 1/16th (or less) Native American, but he couldn’t prove it. As far as I am concerned, if he enjoyed the thought, then more power to him, given that, as far as I know, he didn’t benefit from his Native American ancestry.
I think there is a problem where someone claims a certain ancestry to benefit themselves. If Ms. Warren’s claim to being a Native American gave her an advantage in getting a job, into school or anything else, then she would be taking advantage of a program that is clearly not meant for her. It may be that, as far as the Cherokee nation is concerned, she counts as a Cherokee, but I don’t think a preferential system for Native Americans was meant to apply to her.
Exactly. We don’t have an aristocracy. If some boob thinks its cool that John Hancock was his great, great, great, great uncle twice removed, all power to him. He’s not getting hired as an insurance company exec because of it.
If he was, it might explain why insurance companies issued so many credit default swaps. Maybe they were hiring people based on their connection to Hancock (judged based on their ability to write their name in really big letters) rather than based on their ability to evaluate risks.
In my understanding, the percentage of “blood” is not a relevant requirement for membership in the Cherokee Nation, but you must be able to track your lineage to an ancestor listed on the Dawes Rolls – O.C. Smith, the purported ancestor of Elizabeth Warren is not listed on that Roll according to a genealogist I read.
Additionally, the 1/32nd we read about is probably incorrect as well since the father of O.C. Smith was clearly not Cherokee – again, according to the genealogist. This would make her at most 1/64th, if indeed her (Smith’s) mother was a full blood Cherokee. There appears to be significant doubt about this as well.
Having said all that, this all seems like nit-picking to me. The ethical issue appears to be that she made a claim to a racial heritage that gave her a significant leg up based on no more than family “lore” by her own admission. No attempt to track down the true heritage was ever made until it appeared she needed to have some proof for this claim when running for the U.S. Senate. So she was willing to request and accept real academic benefit (leading to financial benefit later) based on a family legend.
Affirmative action has always seemed fundamentally un-American to me given E Pluribus Unum. I had never considered the moral hazard that is also baked into it for this type of false declaration of minority status.
PJK
Oh, and how sad that the student referenced in your post thought that “All-American” and Asian were polar opposites. I hope that we have progressed since then.
What? Progress is that Americans are Americans, and don’t feel the need to define themselves with hyphenated mutations. She was the one who was progressive and logical, identifying herself by the culture she belonged to and lived with.. Your position is archaic and divisive. We’ve RE-gressed, to the extent that your attitude is adopted by schools, government, or anywhere else. I’m 50% Greek, but I’m no “Greek-American.”
It was sad that she thought idenifying with her Asian background was the opposite of being All-American, that only identifying as white would she be considered All-American. Why can’t one be both black and “All-American”, or asian and “All-American”?
50% (whte) Greek and 50% something else white is considered…white. Two white ethnicities generally speaking still produce white children, who still qualify for the “All-American” title. Throw race in the mix, and you get quite a different result.
No you don’t. Being half black should mean no more than being half-Greek—nothing at all.
Should mean, and do mean are two entirely different things. Black, visible Hispanics, and Asians generally don’t qualify for the “All-American” title, at least until extremely recently (maybe last 2-3 years or so). The “All-American Girl” show, the “All-American” was being used ironically.
I’m not sure why being Greek means nothing at all to you, but that is a choice that you make, that you cannot make for others. In “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, the author thinks that being raised Greek made her different than other girls who were raised in the white, middle-class Protestant culture. I know that the Greeks in my area tend to marry other Greeks, and celebrate cultural milestones together. If a half-Greek person wished to do the same, I don’t think that would be wrong, nor if they wanted to call themselves “Greek-American” to note their ethnicity. And if they wanted nothing to do with their Greek heritage, I don’t think that would be wrong either. I do think t would be sad however, if they were to do that in a bid to be “more American”. American should embrace all of that.
A visible minority might feel even more apart from WASP culture and traditions, or not. Black history is full of black people who could have “passed” into mainstream culture due to their lack of visible minority markers, but chose not to do so. So it is more than just looks as well.
The voters of Massachusetts have a choice between a woman who exaggerated her minority status to take advantage of a policy she agreed with, or a hypocrite who would take advantage of a law he would vote to repeal in order to insure his twenty-something daughter. If they compare the policies of the two, they would be smart to vote for the one who speaks out against economic injustice.
Ultra-lame, Jan. A state health insurance plan and a national system are two different animals, no matter how much they resemble each other. There is absolutely nothing hypocritical about taking advantage of a popular, duly-passed, affordable and constitutional state plan while opposing a national plan that is arguably none of those things.
Wrong. He is continuing her coverage under his congressional insurance plan, not a state one. True, he supports that provision of the Massachusetts insurance plan, but he apparently would deny it to anyone who lives in a state that doesn’t require it. Like Missouri, where I live.
So what? The argument that officials are being hypocritical by taking advantage of laws they have every right to take advantage of—and didn’t vote for—even if they criticize them, is untenable, and an absurd “gotcha”—maybe the worst. I think that the government needs to end the home mortgage deduction, but as long as its the law of the land, I’m taking it, and I have no pangs of conscience at all. It’s like saying Warren Buffett should pay more taxes than he’s required to. It’s a ridiculous point of attack.
My point is that one person is an exaggerator (is that a word?), and one is a hypocrite. And he is indeed hypocritical if he takes advantage of a law that he believes is unconstitutional. I don’t believe either offense rises to the level of being unfit for office. Gotcha politics in both instances, if you will. The worst kind? I don’t think so. You may not believe you are hypocritical if you take advantage of the home mortgage deduction, but I believe you are. Smart, within the law, but hypocritical.
Like about 95% of the public, you seem to misunderstand what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy would be if I advocated that people should not accept their home mortgage deduction, and yet took advantage of it myself. Obeying or taking advantage of a law one disagrees with or believes is unwise is not hypocrisy by any definition of the word. Following laws one disagrees with and obeying laws one disagrees with are no different. You would not accuse someone who obeyed a speed limit he thought was too slow a hypocrite. I may think an open carry gun law is unwise because of other people who will take advantage of it, but if I am trained and responsible and choose to carry my own gun under that law, though I would prefer to see the law repealed, that is not hypocritical. I would love it if liquor could be banned, because of all the harm it does, but it’s not hypocritical for me to buy my one beer a month. There are a million examples.
You have a valid argument. I discussed this with my husband at length tonight, and to call you (or Scott Brown) a hypocrite was probably extreme, so I apologize. The point I really wanted to make is that neither of these people has done anything that disqualifies them from holding office. Elizabeth Warren took advantage of a a perfectly legal opportunity to advance her academic career. Scott Brown took advantage of a perfectly legal way of insuring his daughter. Please, Massachusetts, vote on what they would do after being elected, based on what you know about them now.
1/32 was enough for her to be classed as non-white in many states of the Union in the days of Miscegenation laws.
^ Pauli Murray, ed. States’ Laws on Race and Color (Athens, 1997), 428, 173, 443, 37, 237, 330, 463, 22, 39, 358, 77, 150, 164, 207, 254, 263, 459.
This is within living memory. It’s not antebellum, it became worse, not better. Racial discrimination in the USA was far worse in 1930 than in 1830.
My take on it – anyone who would have had the disbenefits then, should have the benefits now, to remind us of how sick and twisted the whole thing is.
“anyone who would have had the disbenefits then, should have the benefits now, to remind us of how sick and twisted the whole thing is.”
1. “Disbenefits”?
2. This is the “two stupid principles makes a right” fallacy. No way.
That’s the (perfectly valid) argument against “Affirmative Action” though, not one that says who should benefit from it if it exists.
Personally, I see “Affirmative Action” as being possibly in some limited circumstances a least-worst short-term kludge. It should never last more than two generations though. You fix the underlying issue instead, otherwise instead of a band-aid to promote healing, it’s a bandage on a gangrenous wound.
Elizabeth Warren presumably did not have the disbenefits (a cromulent word, according to some online dictionaries) then because she was not alive in the 1930s. Affirmative Action programs, if they are legitimate, should attempt to alleviate existing disadvantages, not make up for old ones.
What embiggened you to use “cromulent”?
It’s the sort of word that does not deserve avoision.
I am a Scot, because my mother said she was 1/32 Scot, or, as she put it, “There was a Scotsman in the woodpile way back then.” And here all these years on Paddy’s Day I’ve been claiming to be 100% Irish. Also, her grandmother was supposed to have been a distant cousin of Ulysses S. Grant. I guess this makes me and my brothers somebody really special.
Wait — it gets worse: my mostly Irish daughter is 1/4 Chinese, so I guess she’s a “minority”. (But she got into grad school on her own, without affirmative action.)
For an amusing take on just how ludicrous this whole ethnicity business is, read the last few chapters of James Michener’s novel, “Hawaii”.
Race is an invention of Man, not of God.
Jack Marshall, you TOTALLY rock!