Elizabeth Warren has
repeatedly identified herself as Cherokee. From 1986 to 1995 she listed herself as Native American in the Association of American Law Schools directory of law professors. After gaining tenure, she insisted University of Pennsylvania categorize her as Native American, too. She then identified herself as Native American to Harvard - in her application and hiring materials and in other forms beyond.
Harvard has insisted that Warren's Native American ancestry made no impact on their hiring decisions. Yet, the university immediately
held up the recruitment of Warren, a "Native American woman," to push back against claims that they were insufficiently diverse and diffuse pressure to hire more people of color. Warren was described as Harvard Law's "first woman of color" in a 1997
Fordham Law Review article. She even published multiple recipes to a cookbook,
Pow Wow Chow: A Collection of Recipes from Families of the Five Civilized Tribes - all signed, "Elizabeth Warren, Cherokee."
Warren has consistently struggled to substantiate her claims to Native American ancestry (beyond her grandfather's "
high cheekbones"). Warren asserts her mother was "
part Cherokee and part Delaware," yet a prominent Cherokee genealogist who traced Warren's maternal ancestry all the way back to the Revolutionary War era
found no evidence of any Native American heritage. Some relatives have
publicly disputed Warren's narrative about their family. And, of course, Warren phenotypically presents as white.
For these reasons, she has faced consistent accusations that her claims to Native American ancestry were either mistaken or cynical. The president of the United States mockingly refers to her as "Pocahontas" - and told Warren he would
pay $1 million dollars to a charity of her choice "if you take the test and it shows you're an Indian." He precited Warren would decline this challenge. It would have been better for her if she had.
What the test shows (and doesn't)
According to the test, Warren's DNA is between 1/64 and 1/1032 Columbian, Mexican and/or Peruvian (used as proxies for measuring Cherokee heritage for reasons described
in the report); between 0.1 percent and 1.5 percent of her DNA may be Native American in origin; she may have had a Native American ancestor between six to 10 generations back.
Warren depicted this as "slam dunk" proof that she really is of Native American ancestry. This is a
base-rate fallacy. In fact,
the average white person in America has 0.18 percent Native American DNA - meaning they could be described as about 1/ 556 Native American or as having a Native American ancestor nine to10 generations back. Warren does not seem to have a unique claim to Native American heritage over and above the typical white American.
. The president has refused, insisting he won the wager. Unfortunately, he is correct: although Warren did take the test it did not prove she is "an Indian."
And so, rather than neutralizing Trump's attacks, it is now has made it far easier to portray Warren as a
phony: She appropriated Native American heritage for years in both private and professional settings.
Confronted with evidence that her claims were illegitimate (her DNA is comparable to the average white; she has no other empirical proof of heritage) - Warren nonetheless claimed vindication, emulating Trump's "
post-truth politics."
Throughout, she failed to challenge (
and in fact, reinforced) Trump's false narratives about race, Affirmative Action and the quality of the minority applicants who benefit from it.
Rather than using her platforms and energies to discuss her own agenda, hold Trump accountable for his record and proposals, or speak to constituents' priorities - we are instead discussing Warren's (lack of) Native American ancestry because she herself dragged the issue into the spotlight.
Elizabeth Warren tried to
play Trump's game. She lost. Democrats,
take heed.
Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld fellow in sociology at Columbia University.
