There are many advantages of claiming to be Cherokee.
Claiming to be a minority can give financial advantages, job advantages, education advantages.


Natives can get cheaper health care, better financial assistance, fill employer/school quotas for minorities. There's tons on the google!

You posted "She was scamming the system to get an advantage ".

I will make my question clearer, what advantage did Warren receive?

Might be arguable when one has an agenda to prove for/against someone else.


But she listed her minority and her employer used this information to defend their hiring practices of 'people' of color. Sure one can argue she didn't list this with the intent, but I think it's fair to say her motivation to list this information wasn't 'just to meet people of Cherokee background".


She successfully published a recipe in a Native cookbook, credited as being Cherokee. Still arguable, but I doubt that the editors of "Pow Wow Chow" would have included a recipe from 'Elizabeth Warren - white European descendant and mother of two.'

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So Warren claimed Cherokee heritage in order to get a recipe published?

Impressive initiative.

Something tells me "Pow Wow Chow" might not be a completely serious publication along the lines of Paul Bocuse's French Cooking, and that they'd have been happy if they'd discovered Peter Andre was 1/800 Cherokee to get his take on Kleftiko.

Why would a white woman check the "ethnic minority" box in employer surveys, if not in the hope of gaining some advantage by it?

During a bout of insomnia last night, I spent a couple of hours reading indigenous American opinions of her claims and conduct, going back to 2012.

She isn't very popular in native circles.

But who cares what actual native Americans think, eh?

Maybe her parents / grandparents had told her she was part native American and she never thought to question it? It's only since I hit my 30s and matured that I stopped writing "yes please" next to Sex: on those forms.

Pretty much every American I've ever met claims to have indigenous ancestry somewhere in the family. Some even have it documented.

It doesn't make them "native American", and they know it. A student at law school, in particular, would be fully aware of the difference between being an actual native American and having a great-great grandmother who was said to be native according to family lore - with the legal consequences that are tied to such an identity.

I don't buy the ignorance argument. She was an intelligent, grown woman when she made her claims.

Haha, that's valid in many countries that adopted the American model. The ones who really are "minority" laugh their butts off at these tricks though. For me is amazing how America discovered that putting people in some boxes, in some categories can be the cure of all evils in society...and they even managed to export this model.

America was built on racialism. The legal status of entire peoples was determined by their "blood". Dismantling such a system doesn't happen overnight.

Meanwhile, privileged people take on the mantel of oppression in the hope of getting yet more advantages in life, while the genuinely oppressed are elbowed aside. Again.

But hey! She's a Democrat, so...

If Tony Cascarino can claim to be Irish, I think we can all pretty much claim whatever we like in all honesty.

What ignorance argument? Warren said that she has Cherokee heritage. It appears that she was correct.

As you stated, many Americans are happy to claim indigenous ancestry without trying to gain any advantage. Warren is one of them.

All we know for sure is that Trump, one generation removed (on one side*; zero on the other) from European ancestors, has absolutely no connection with (nor understanding of, but that's another issue) indigenous Americans, and seems to be very touchy about it.

* And even then, his father clearly had no American blood.

I don't think they invented it.

You can probably go back as far as historic records allow and look at virtually any multicultural and multiethnic empire and see that certain ethnicities or social groups or casts or whatever you want to call them, had priveledges, and certain professions were reserved for certain groups.

If you wanted to be a banker in medievil Europe for example, a first step might be to pretend to be a Jew. If you wanted to be an iterant blacksmith, you might be beter off pretending to be a gypsy.

So if anything, America perpetuating this thinking in modern form shows it is an empire.

The argument that she didn't know better.

Nope. There is no evidence that she has "Cherokee" heritage. That cannot be proven by a DNA test.

Why did she tick the "ethnic minority" box on her employer surveys back in the nineties, if not in the hope of gaining some advantage?

Seriously, go and have a read what native Americans are saying on the subject. Even CNN have finally got round to letting one have his say:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/15/o...ith/index.html

Isn't it "better" to belong to one of the indigenous people when claiming your Americanism? As a nation of immigrants, everyone who can claim a history older than a hundred years must feel a bit more entitled there.

Haha, true. I got that after a while, but so are the other newly founded countries - Australia, Canada etc. What I noticed at my American acquaintances is that they're obsessed with ancestry. They think they're "German" or "Swiss" even though obviously they have nothing in common, neither as mentality nor culture with any of these countries.

It's... complicated.

Generally, it only really helps to be considered a native American if you're already in a position of privilege. Otherwise, it's just a bit shit.

This is exactly what I feel in the situation.


Not being a democrat or republican, or aiming to support Trump or discredit Warren, but in this case he called her out on it and I think he was correct (I would have done it differently).


She has DNA structure similar to samples from Mexico/Peru/Colombia, and claimed Cherokee from word of mouth. (Of course the DNA cannot distinguish any specific tribe or region)

Yeah right.

You're correct, of course. What we know now is that she has native American ancestry, but from which particular nation, it's impossible to prove through DNA testing.

I've no idea, and nor do you. Perhaps she was and still is simply proud of her ancestry. It seems somewhat racist to me to suggest that an outwardly "white woman" would not claim indigenous heritage if there were no advantage to be gained. Amazingly, I'm quite happy to claim Welsh and Irish ancestry, even though there's no tangible benefit to me to do so.

I don't think it' as much about new countries as about immigrant countries.

Most Mexicans and South Americans I know are pretty obsessed with ancestry too.

In the Uk, groups such as Ugandan Asians make a point of insisting on the Ugandan bit.

And then go to a country such as Liberia where people are proud of the fact that certain ancestors were freed slaves returned home from America, and in some cases consider that fact makes them a separate group from the natives whose ancestors never had to go through that..

In most of those cases, such questions of ancestry confer no discernible priveledge, but are part of people's identity and self-definition.