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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?
Published in Politics
Actually, no one is a pure blood of any race because there is no genetic standard for any race. People aren’t like dogs, cattle, or even most agricultural crops. No population of humans no matter how remote is inbred enough to be considered by genetic standards to be pure breeding. You would need 10 generations of back crossing to achieve a pure bred line of any organism.
This is why the whole racial theories of the early 20th century were ultimately unscientific.
guess just multiply by 12,000 to get the conversion.
The whole thing is a crock. How many tests did she take before she got the results she wanted? What is the accuracy? Articles like this make me wonder:
https://www.insideedition.com/investigative/21784-how-reliable-are-home-dna-ancestry-tests-investigation-uses-triplets-to-find-out
And with the races mixing by marriage, it’s harder for their children to identify with any one race.
How embarrassing for her.
Funny thing is having some sort of fake family lore about your ancestry isn’t really that unusual, or unbelivable. People think they know so many things that aren’t so. It isn’t even that wrong to tell people what you think to be true. Sure it helped her career (to some hard to place degree more than zero but certainly not so more than her own hard work. A kind of diversity cherry on top of her self made accomplishments). Then at some point in life you run a DNA test and find out your family legend is just that? Oh well… it happens to the best of us.
But, man she stuck to her guns on this one and now she will be reduced to a single punchline. Or maybe not. Why not brazen it out?
Politically I say she should double down on this. If Trump claimed he was half Indian he would be wearing a feather head dress every day because he knows his political supporters forced to choose between the obvious truth and his lies will pick his lies. Why would the Democrats do differently with her? Stick to the lie make it bigger, and promise ever more economic pipe dreams as part of your political platform.
Go Elizabeth do it. Be bold, like your ancestors of old. Sitting Bull wouldn’t take this lying down.
Unicorns aren’t horses.
Yea sure. My son did his in his 40s, my wife is Colombian, so he had all my Anglo/german french, Scot Irish line and her Iberian, North African and tiny bits of Inuit and Central American. I don’t think he qualifies for Native American, but then that Iberian would have worked for him had he used it. The issue isn’t whether there is something there, it’s that she used a fraudulent process dishonestly. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
There was a TV commercial for one of the DNA testing places that really annoyed me. Showed a guy wearing kilt talking about how proud he was of his Scottish culture, then he took the test and found out he was actually German. Final scene shows him wearing leiderhosen.
Like the fact that his genetics were off changes his “culture”.
The fact that my ancestors came from Germany 4 generations ago has exactly zero to do with how I live my life.
Close enough.
How!
Oh My God! I hate that commercial with the passion of 10,000 burning suns too. For exactly the same reasons. It perpetuates the very core of racism which is that culture is genetic.
The funny thing is that your ancestors being German does matter, but not for genetic reasons. You grow up in a community, learn habits, customs, etc from them. That history matters, but none of that is genetic. It correlates with genetics but genetics isn’t causal of it. If you were adopted and grew up in that community you would still get all of those customs, and habits too.
I hate that one too! And the latest one, with that woman saying she always thought she was hispanic (she is) until her DNA chart came back, and now she knows she’s “Everything!” And now, on forms I check ‘Other’!” I want to slap her silly. My poor dog, because every time she comes on my TV, I shout “No you’re not you’re from Ohio you idiot” and I startle Pepper.
Yes they are they. Looking at them morphologically they are totally horse. I mean they would probably be their own species so yes technically not a horse. But at least the same genus.
Ancestry is not destiny, but I’m convinced that our ancestors have a greater effect on us than we might know. I just need Time Travel to prove some of my theses. But you guys know I’ve been working hard on that.
Like I said I don’t even think you she used it fraudulently. Why would you doubt your mothers story? You have your oral family history. You believe it you tell it to people. They ask you a question on your employment application “Are you part Native American?” and you say “Yes, my mother told me I was.” No one (thank god) runs a blood test on your claim. It all becomes a self enforcing loop. The problem though is now, far removed from the employment where her family history served some sort of benefit (how ever small) she just can’t admit she was wrong. No one in Massachusetts elected her because they thought she was part Indian, or because she ran on that, and as misguided as her political opinions she doesn’t hold any of them on account she thinks or thought she was part Indian. Its literally just false pride at this point. Kind of like Trump admitting he isn’t worth 10 billion dollars or that he didn’t just inherit most of his money from his dad.
Well Hispanic is even worse a genetic category than black or white. Because it is literally just a language group. Technically any Spanish and Portuguese speaker (how did they get lumped in?) counts as Hispanic. From the blondest of Galician Gauls to the darkest of Afro Brazilians.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with saying you’re a Hispanic Ohioan. The two are are completely independent terms like saying your are a Female Astronaut.
I think in reality we probably should all be in the habit of checking Other on these forms out of shear contempt for false racial categorization. Of course even this act helps to perpetuate its overly large role in the collective psyche. I think we just have to live through it best we can. We aren’t so far removed from the days of open legal racial discrimination. I don’t think you can actually pivot away from centuries of false racial consciousness this quick. It’s sadly not something you can just go cold turkey on. Still. To the extent you can openly call it for the BS it is you should take the opportunity.
The funny thing is this. It never seems to work the other way around? I want to see the commercial of the African American woman finding out she is 1/8th Dutch, and deciding to be all in to waffles, tulips, and wooden shoes.
It’s just one more reason why our side should stop calling the other side “liberal”.
Heck, they shouldn’t get to be called “progressive” either, unless 19th Century German Racial Theory counts as progressive.
That is beautiful.
Ugh.
Because the white people making the commercial don’t think that black people are really like them, but a poor, beknighted race that constantly needs help from them.
It would never occur to them that this scenario you suggest is just as likely, if black people are actually their equal. This is the most pernicious, subtle form of racism – actual racism.
Having read this thread I declare you all to be 1/1024th correct.
Yay! Rainbow Poo!
When you can plainly see that she’s Mexican, Guatemalan, or maybe Puerto Rican but you can’t know which, “hispanic” is the clearest way to convey what you mean, which it the purpose of language. I’m not writing an ethnological paper, and anyway she refers to herself as hispanic. I’m aware that the term has been criticized, and so has “Latino,” but I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say anymore.
SO true re the black lady and the tulips haha! Because it’s just more accurate and neater to go by the way someone looks. I mean I can find out that Cuba Gooding Jr. has a Dutchman in his family tree, but I’ll still say that’s a black guy.
I also wanted to say that even though I’m 100% native American, I’m also 1/1024 Thracian, so I may be more Spartacus than Senator Booker.
Well I don’t think black people though would view having some white ancestry as relevant to their blackness either. The roots of this being the legacy of racial thinking in the 19th and 20th century. Where whitness was viewed as a kind of refined recessive trait. Whites (then they meant “Nordic” whites Anglos and Germans) were the product of exclusive selective breeding in Europe repressenting a kind of special breed. Think of dogs. If you start mixing dog breeds you end up generating dog species that trend towards the traits of their wild ancestors (they all start looking lupine). Same with whites in their view. Whites needed to breed with whites to maintain their whiteness (ie. their culture). If they intermixed they would revert to the wild human mean (some sort of African bushman in their opinion). So if you are thinking of pure breeds you are either pure bred or not, hence the one drop mentality. Though to be fair one drop was more a thing for the uneducated racist masses, the more scientific of the racist would probably split hairs about 1/16 or 1/32. So I think Elizabeth Warren would pass the white test given her 1023/1024 th level whitness. Which might actually make her more white than the average white American. Though if you count Jews as none white infiltrators (and you can’t be a good racists if you don’t) then maybe she fails the test on that count I don’t know. I guess there is hope for her yet.
What would be funny is if Trump took the DNA test and wound up more Indian that Warren is.
I like how you think.
I still chuckle at Obama and his being the first African American president.
His mom was white, and his dad was African. So he had zero % of the “African American” experience in his ancestry.