Elizabeth Warren’s DNA Test Contradicts Her Previous Stories About Native American Ancestry

 

Elizabeth Warren recently released the results of a DNA test which she claims proves that she is of Native American descent.

The claim in the report is that it is likely that Elizabeth Warren has a Native American ancestor from 8 generations ago. If we assume that a generation is 25 years, and given that Warren was born in 1949, that would this Native American ancestor was born sometime around 1749, well before the founding.

Let’s assume for a moment that this analysis is correct. How does this square with previous claims about Warren’s heritage? Her brother said in 2012 “[Our] grandfather is part Delaware, a little bitty bit, way back, and [our] grandmother is part Cherokee.”

If that’s the case, wouldn’t wouldn’t we expect to see a lot more Indian DNA, and much more recently?  It implies that there should be Indian DNA as late as 4 generations back, which is significantly outside the range (between 6 and 10 generations) estimated by the DNA analysis as to when she had a Native American ancestor.

How does she explain this contradiction? I mean, either brother is wrong about whether his grandmother is Cherokee, or the conclusion of the analysis of the DNA test is wrong about when her Native American ancestor lived. If the test actually demonstrates that her brother is wrong about what she said, then wasn’t she still wrong when she claimed to be a Native American, since she used that story as the basis for her claim?

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  1. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    It makes about as much sense for her to claim Indian heritage as it does for any one of us to claim Cro Magnon.

    • #1
  2. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    They said part. So the explanation is the same. Her grandmother was part Cherokee (like 1/64th) and Elizabeth is like 1/256th. Simple math. Now stop picking on the poor woman for her public statements about her ancestry. Its not like she was ever used as an example of minority hiring, or wrote a chapter in a recipe book based on her scant ancestry. Or ever made absurd claims about her cheek bones or something like that. 

     

    • #2
  3. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    https://hotair.com/archives/2018/10/15/Okay, Let’s talk about Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test

    • #3
  4. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    It makes about as much sense for her to claim Indian heritage as it does for any one of us to claim Cro Magnon.

    The initial draft of this post was going to be the simple, flippant observation that if you go back enough generations, we’re all black.

    • #4
  5. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    or maybe:

    • #5
  6. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    Valiuth (View Comment):

    They said part. So the explanation is the same. Her grandmother was part Cherokee (like 1/64th) and Elizabeth is like 1/256th. Simple math. Now stop picking on the poor woman for her public statements about her ancestry. Its not like she was ever used as an example of minority hiring, or wrote a chapter in a recipe book based on her scant ancestry. Or ever made absurd claims about her cheek bones or something like that.

     

    Nope, she’s just “okie down to her toes.”

    • #6
  7. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    Columbo (View Comment):

    https://hotair.com/archives/2018/10/15/Okay, Let’s talk about Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test

    You know, if they’re ever on the debate stage together, he should get his own DNA test done and then bait her by claiming that she is more white than he is.

    • #7
  8. cdor Member
    cdor
    @cdor

    It makes perfect sense for Warren to claim her American Indian ancestry. How else was she to be hired as a professor…on her own merits? Don’t be ridiculous. 

    • #8
  9. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    David Harsanyi has a piece on this today at The Federalist.

    In truth, we learn, it’s possible that Warren’s great-great-great-grandmother was partially Native American. This would make her around 1/32nd American Indian, a far cry from any reasonable threshold to embrace minority status for a job. That’s exactly what she did starting in the 1990s, before walking back her claims when it became politically expedient.

    Then again, being 1/32 (and really, the math says 1/64th) Native American is the high-end possibility. It is just as possible that Warren 1/1,024th Native American. (The story intially claimed it was 1/512th.) So maybe her great-great-great-great grandmother was part Cherokee.

    Maybe.

    Whatever the number is, there’s little genetic data available from Native Americans because of fears of exploitation (Warren’s case might be good example of why). There is no way to break down the DNA into region or tribe. The DNA tests merely rely on some guesswork by referencing the DNA to people from South America.

    . . .

    I don’t much care about Warren’s ethnicity, but she is not, in any genuine sense, a racial or ethnic minority. Not in blood. Not in experience. Under her standards, how many Americans would qualify as Native American? Or put it this way: is being 1/1,024th African enough to claim “minority” status in a professional setting? I’m asking for the liberals who believe race-based hiring is an important means of facilitating diversity and ensuring fairness.

    We don’t fully know how important Warren’s claims were in her career. There is, however, much evidence that her self-driven minority claims in the 1990s were helpful. Warren, who once maintained her family had “high cheekbones like all of the Indians do,” was listed as a “minority faculty member” by The University of Pennsylvania. She had the school switch her designation from white to Native American. Warren self-identified as a “minority” in the legal directory, and Harvard Law School preposterously listed her as one of the “women of color” the school had hired. On job applications, Warren was very specific in claiming that she had Cherokee and Delaware Indian ancestry.

    That’s the real story here. That she used questionable minority status for career advancement. Much like Obama used “I’m a foreign student from Kenya” and slightly altered his name in order to lend a bit of exotic cachet to his resume.

    Then of course, there’s the media’s role here to be discussed:

    • #9
  10. Jim McConnell Member
    Jim McConnell
    @JimMcConnell

    You are all missing the point here.

    She is a Liberal Women, so she must be believed! End of discussion, don’t you see?

    • #10
  11. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    Had she just screenshotted an AncestryDNA or 23andMe report showing 3% Native American DNA, she would have been OK. At 1%, mocked, but probably OK.

    Something tells me that such a test would have shown 0% or otherwise within a noise level. Thus, this exercise.

     

     

    • #11
  12. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    Joe P (View Comment):

    RightAngles (View Comment):

    It makes about as much sense for her to claim Indian heritage as it does for any one of us to claim Cro Magnon.

    The initial draft of this post was going to be the simple, flippant observation that if you go back enough generations, we’re all black.

    Are we though? I guess that makes some strong assumptions about original human melanin, though I guess to be fair most if not all African great apes have black skin. So presumably early hominids might have been the same. It’s actually even darker than human black skin. Though I wonder why, since fur should provide plenty of solar protection? 

    But with respect to “Native Americans” because of the original colonization of the new world at the end of the last ice age. The last common ancestor for European and American Indians would be some 20,000 years ago in central Asia. When the human population there split one going east into Mongolia and China and the other going west into Russia, Ukraine, and Europe. 

    So you would have to go really far back (by human terms) to find common DNA markers for European and Native American populations. Of course even a small amount of interbreeding in early colonial days and since then actually means many more people carry traces of the genetic markers. After all one guy in 1740 could easily have hundreds if not even thousands of decedents today. 

    • #12
  13. PHenry Inactive
    PHenry
    @PHenry

    The whole Fauxcahantas tale shows the irony and stupidity of the race based identity political game.

    If Warren’s 1/256 or whatever drop of Indian blood makes her a native American, then the vast majority of the white people in America are not white.  And extraordinary few of us are pure blood of any race.  It would be hard to find a single third generation American without a drop of blood from some race besides white.

    If so, then we are all, as per Warren’s model, minorities!  White privilege can’t exist, because there are so very few whites.  We all qualify for racial set asides, of whatever race, because we all can find a hint of that blood in our DNA.

    It’s all way too baked in ignorance to ever make sense.  It always was, but DNA analysis has finally proven it beyond doubt.  Go back far enough, and we are all every race.

    I know I’m a mongrel.  Every generation has intermarried to some extent, as far back as I can gather information.  For me, race has never held any identity.  I’m an American.  I consider that my ‘race’.

    • #13
  14. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    Jim McConnell (View Comment):

    You are all missing the point here.

    She is a Liberal Women, so she must be believed! End of discussion, don’t you see?

    No you believe victims of rape not liberal women. Now if here great, great, great grandmother claims to have been raped by a Cherokee, then we would have to believe her. And ergo believe that her ancestry is part Cherokee. Assuming progeny was produced from that assault. 

    • #14
  15. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    A couple observations:

    The whole “DNA testing” for genealogy purposes is a bit of a misnomer. They’re not looking at your DNA and then finding a “match” somewhere. They’re finding characteristics that may compare to certain other ethnicities. In her case, the researcher couldn’t even use Native American DNA because there’s so little of it in the databases. He had to use Peruvian, Colombian and other South American types, because you know, they all came over the land bridge from Siberia lo those many eons ago.  So it’s just an “educated” guess.

    Second, Elizabeth Warren’s great-grandfather shot an Indian:

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2012/10/elizabeth-warrens-white-great-grandfather-shot-an-indian/

    And, my Grandma was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1901. Just call me Braveheart!

    See the source image

    • #15
  16. Valiuth Member
    Valiuth
    @Valiuth

    OldPhil (View Comment):
    He had to use Peruvian, Colombian and other South American types, because you know, they all came over the land bridge from Siberia lo those many eons ago. So it’s just an “educated” guess.

    If I recall my paleolithic migration correctly I thought the South American Indians represented the earliest migration. While North American actually were decedents from the last migration. The New World having been colonized in several migratory waves during the last glaciation periods. 

    • #16
  17. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    https://static.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-10-15-at-12.05.46-PM-600x411.png

    • #17
  18. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    Valiuth (View Comment):

    OldPhil (View Comment):
    He had to use Peruvian, Colombian and other South American types, because you know, they all came over the land bridge from Siberia lo those many eons ago. So it’s just an “educated” guess.

    If I recall my paleolithic migration correctly I thought the South American Indians represented the earliest migration. While North American actually were decedents from the last migration. The New World having been colonized in several migratory waves during the last glaciation periods.

    Many eons ago = many moons, I guess.

    • #18
  19. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    I just want to declare that I am 100% native American. I was born in California many moons after it became a state in the Union. So, there.

    • #19
  20. EDISONPARKS Member
    EDISONPARKS
    @user_54742

    Based on Warrens DNA test results Trump should pay $3,906.25(1/256 x $1 million) to Warren’s chosen charity and in a gesture of goodwill pay the remaining $996,093.75($1 million -$3,906.25) to a charity of Trump’s choosing.

    • #20
  21. Hugh Inactive
    Hugh
    @Hugh

    Shallow thinking.

    Staff:  here is the result of your ancestry tests

    Warren: does it say I have native american blood?

    Staff:  well……technically yes.But its a very small amount.  We should talk about how to present it to the public,

    Warren:  Run it

    Staff: But…..

    Warren:  Run it! Now! 

    Staff: (Puts on Blowback helmet)

    • #21
  22. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    What part unicorn is she?

    • #22
  23. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    The take away from this?

    It’s time to end the entire racial spoils, affirmative action scam.

    We should judge people on merit, not their genetics.

    • #23
  24. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Hang On (View Comment):

    What part unicorn is she?

    The rear half.

    • #24
  25. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    What Warren originally claimed:

    So her mother was so Native American that her parents had to elope to escape racism. And then Warren claimed late in her career that she was Native American: according to The Boston Globe, Warren “had her ethnicity changed from white to Native American at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she taught from 1987 to 1995, and at Harvard University Law School, where she was a tenured faculty member starting in 1995.”

    • #25
  26. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    Joe P: “[Our] grandfather is part Delaware, a little bitty bit, way back, and [our] grandmother is part Cherokee.”

    Note that the claim does not specify how much Delaware their grandfather was supposed to be, or how much Cherokee their grandmother was supposed to be.

    • #26
  27. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    It is amazing to see the Democrats revert to their “One drop of blood” rule

    • #27
  28. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):

    Joe P: “[Our] grandfather is part Delaware, a little bitty bit, way back, and [our] grandmother is part Cherokee.”

    Note that the claim does not specify how much Delaware their grandfather was supposed to be, or how much Cherokee their grandmother was supposed to be.

    Somehow I doubt Warren’s mother had measured it out to the fraction when she made that statement to her brother (assuming it ever happened).

    • #28
  29. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    It is amazing to see the Democrats revert to their “One drop of blood” rule

    Progressives have always been racist.

    • #29
  30. Jeff Hawkins Inactive
    Jeff Hawkins
    @JeffHawkins

    I can already see the post-mortem

    “Her Campaign Trail of Tears: How the Patriarchy Worked Against Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 Presidential Bid”

     

    • #30
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