You Are Probably Black... at Least According to Elizabeth Warren's Standards
As I’m sure you could tell by my last name, I’m of Asian descent.
Or am I white? Or perhaps Mexican? Maybe a little Eskimo, as well?
If you’re going by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s standards of what constitutes your ethnicity, those could very well all be in play.
Warren, and some liberal outlets like The Daily Beast, took a victory lap Monday when it was “revealed” that the Massachusetts senator is, in fact, Native American.
Warren and her allies gleefully took that headline and ran with it, throwing it in Donald Trump’s face after the president’s constant needling of her.
Goofy Elizabeth Warren is weak and ineffective. Does nothing. All talk, no action — maybe her Native American name?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2016
Warren took to Twitter to gloat about her “victory.”
https://twitter.com/elizabethforma/status/1051783184390664192
The problem here, and it’s one that should offend anyone’s sensibilities, is that Warren’s DNA analysis found “that a DNA sample of primarily European descent also contains Native American ancestry from an ancestor in the sample’s pedigree 6-10 generations ago.”
According to the Boston Globe, Warren’s best-case scenario for her Native American heritage would be 1/64 Native American, or about 1.5 percent. But due to the imprecise nature of DNA tests when they go back that far, Warren could also be 1/1,024 Native American. That checks in at a whopping .098 percent — less than one-tenth of 1 percent.
If those are the flimsy standards Warren is touting, I have a co-worker whose DNA test showed that he’s 0.4 percent Asian and he may as well identify as an Asian person. The absurdity of it all is self-evident.
According to the The New York Times, “researchers found that European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American.” Based on Warren’s standards, tens of millions of white Americans can lay claim to being both African-American and Native American.
On a more serious note, Warren should be excoriated for her claims, not celebrated. Warren just effectively devalued everyone’s claims about ethnicity.
Whether or not people should place such importance on their respective ethnicity is another matter entirely. But it’s indisputable that many people do consider their ethnic background of great importance.
It’s no secret that Democrats love their identity politics. Warren’s outrageous claims fly directly in the face of those identity politics. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro perfectly pointed out the hypocrisy of it all.
So now we have learned from the media that having a Native American great-great-great-great-great-grandparent makes you Native American, but that having two X chromosomes does not make you a woman.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 15, 2018
Harsh, but a true criticism of the left’s identity logic.
Or, at the very least, a heck of a lot more truthful than Warren’s claims to being Native American.
Correction: This post was updated Tuesday to reflect a Boston Globe correction on the estimation of Warren’s Native American ancestry. The Globe originally reported her most optimistic claim through the DNA test to be 1/32 Native American. It should have been 1/64.
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