Before I talk about Elizabeth Warren’s DNA I want to point out the real story is the long racist, anti-woman screeds disgraceful president Trump has been off on since the announcement. He’s said a bunch of really despicable things and essentially has been the truly awful bully we’ve become accustomed to.
Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Ancestry Claims
She’s probably telling the truth. It’s not a huge number. Certainly seems to small to lie about.
My guess would put it anywhere from 6 to 8 generations back. So we’re talking maybe 1700s for the last full blooded native american ancestor. Lets split the difference and say it’s 7 generations back. That’s a generation when there’s 168 direct ancestors. Theyre may not a be a moment when they’re all alive at the same time either. It’s complicated!
So picture a room with 168 people in it. For fun imagine them in 18th century garb and remember its likely they’re not all that okay with each other on a bunch of levels. Many never set foot in America and live out their lives in Europe.
One is Native American.
Over 300 years they reproduce into a steadily smaller siphon of direct ancestors as we approach the present. Fast forward 2-300 years and you have Elizabeth Warren. It’s not quite that simple, but that’s not the craziest or least scientific way I’ve heard this put.
Whether her family story of anti Native American oppression is true is hard to say. Best case she’s just over 7 generations removed and the native american ancestor is an unwilling subject of the British Crown.
It’s also probably no longer important how native she is, she IS. I do not think she will lead with this and shouldnt. There’s a high likelihood we have already had a president with some Native DNA and simply don’t know it. Either Roosevelt is a decent candidate due to the long period of time the family had been in America. They were like 7th generation New Yorkers of the New Amsterdam Vintage! Thats a lot of generations. None of the 128 direct ancestors that make up the 7th generation back, or anyone they married on the way, was part native? How many Roosevelts lost a first wife to child birth and remarried to mix it up more? James Earle Carter may have something other than pure european DNA as well. How many generations in America for the Carter’s?
Of note; Warren has yet to release any kind of truly reliable or scientific percentage or number. The best number I’ve heard out there, specifically from CNN, is 1/ 164th Native American. This, I believe would make me 900 times more Native American, but don’t quote me.
Nothing Elizabeth Warren has ever done or said has been anywhere near as disrespectful as the repeated racists attacks Trump has launched against her. The president is simply a completely dysfunctional racist with no sense of appropriateness. It’s hard to say where this truly pointless national conversation will get us.
As far as a potential future president, while I tend to like Warren’s ideas I find stunts like this off putting. Its like 21 days til an election that she’s not running in. Bad team spirit by Warren sucking the oxygen out of the room for Democrats! Does NOT reflect well on her as a potential leader.
Back to Trump, who still doubts climate change, that the Russians hacked the election or that Gold Star Families deserve respect and basically is just a despicable guy. He’s disgraced himself a bunch of times making racist comments over this situation. Here’s one horrific example of Trump’s inappropriateness as he diminishes two American War Heros with a racist rant –
Well, Warren didn’t use a commercial test, so we can ask out loud if she ordered up the results ahead of time. So there’s going to be that asterisk. Trump will seize on it just like he seized on Obama’s Birth Certificate only to simply dismiss as fake all proof.
The president, of course, is an inveterate liar. Much more of a liar than if Elizabeth Warren were to have faked distant Native roots.
More to the point, if she were lying maybe a full percentage point would have been better? Seems like this is plain old true and, with a number so small, likely accurate. Who would bother to lie on a scale so minute when a simple verbal correction would not have upset anyone?
I do not think Elizabeth Warren is lying. I am confidant that odds of her actually having native DNA were pretty high just waking in the morning. The story was essentially true and we have some proof now. That the amount of DNA she actually has could be described as minimal is something we will hear about endlessly forever. I doubt she wins this, true or not. Trump’s just too effective a bully.
Of note- Trump is a liar to the core and is not going to make good on the ‘Million Dollar Bet’ against Warren having Native American ancestry no matter what. This is a guy who set up a phony charity that was so shady and such a money grab that our Trump and his family are SPECIFICALLY FORBIDDEN to form or be part of any charity in their home state of New York for fraud and ‘Self-Dealing”.
Trump also has claimed to not believe he was the person who was on the Access Hollywood Bus tape when all other people on the tape claim he was there and Trump himself admitted it was him. This won’t change. The guy is completely dishonest. He’s also a sociopath and a pathological liar who lies even to himself. You don’t need to be a geneticist to know the Trump Crime Family are the ones whose DNA you just don’t want!
Everything we’ve heard about the case of Elizabeth Warren suggests that she was right when she heard tales of distant native ancestry from her family. What seems shitty is the perception she used it to advance herself and that just another rich white lady looking for a “Minority Card.”
This is probably not a good characterization of Warren or anyone else because it seems that it was true and merely exaggerated or misunderstood by the people relaying the information. As far as I know there were no geneticists in Warrens family tree so we can’t really kill her for just simply being like as much as 1/3 of all North Americans.
Another absolutely impossible to ignore part of the conclusions is that white Americans are not really Europeans if they’ve been here any amount of time. And if we stop all immigration today we’re all still going to slowly become some kind of American Race of mixed DNA.
So bottom line? It’s really unlikely a 4th generation American could not be part native american. Spare everyone the dream catchers, acknowledge it’s the evidence of a Genocide that was only THOUGHT to be nerly complete.
Now we’re finding out that the popular view of Native Americans in pretty much every single Western Movie before The Outlaw Joey Wales in the mid 1970’s is actually personally offensive to us and we were somewhat racist against ourselves. I blame society on this one.
And that’s a lot to think about. And that’s why there’s this whole separate post from a ways back about when I tested my own DNA and discovered I had Native American DNA.
NOTE – this HAD to be hived off from the original post (the previous one). It got out of hand and developed a life of its own.
Advertisements
