Reality is the ultimate irony.
For over a quarter of a century, Elizabeth Warren has described herself as a Native American. When recently asked to provide evidence of her ancestry, she pointed to an unsubstantiated claim on an 1894 Oklahoma Territory marriage license application by her great-great grand uncle William J. Crawford that his mother, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, was a Cherokee.
[N]o evidence supports this claim. O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford had no Cherokee heritage, was listed as “white” in the Census of 1860 ….
But the most stunning discovery about the life of O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is that her husband, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837. [more]
Whether this is true or not ain’t my point.
Whether Warren knowingly lied or not ain’t my point, neither.
You know my abhorrence for the concept of inherited guilt or victimhood.
I’m just wallowing here in that big ol’ sandbox that is reality,
basking in the warming rays of history,
sipping away on a tall, cold glass of irony,
and grinnin’ from ear to ear with the knowledge that sometimes …
well, sometimes life is just funnier’n snot, ain’it?
(What? What if Obama had an ancestor who was involved in the slave trade? Ohh, myyy! [/MrSulu voice])
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15 Comments!
To the whole “she can’t prove it” thing, my entire reaction has been “and who expects that to even be possible?”.
Lots and lots of people in the West have some Indian blood in ‘em … and a whole lot of it was never officially acknowledged, let alone written down with some sort of proof. Turns out Indian relation wasn’t always thought a positive, and was thus often hidden.
(Hell, of course you’d write down “white” in the census if it was plausible – look how Indians and blacks got treated often enough, and the motive is obvious.
Don’t know if her family story is real, made up, true, false – but it’s plausible, and “nobody can prove it” is the norm, not the exception.)
UGH, I was born in the Philippines and My father is like a 1/4 Muscogee I guess that makes me a 1/8th more than her. LOL
^ SherryM, you poor disadvantaged thing! Declare your heritage and collect your rewards. Care to teach law school anywhere, or perhaps run for the U.S. Senate?
Sqaw Lizzie is gonna be throwed under the
teepeebus by *Umgawagawa OBoBo* an all the Libtard Tribe; an that there is a fact Jack!The White eyes ain`t gonna claim her, nor are the Cherokees. Her book will be titled, “The Wench without a Country”. Published by Iowahawk (…who ain`t no injun neither….); it won`t even be bought by Ward Churchill.
“A lie is an excuse guarded.” Johnny Swift.
Thats quite right Ironic, I’m not sure I would want to even if I could prove it. Not that I have anything against the Muscogee, I just have enough trouble being Me. (once was asked if I was from Korea, and in My best southern ascent answered, “No sir I’m from Talladega”) LOL
The rational of affirmative action, if there is one, is that persons of minority ethnicity may have had disadvantages growing up which held them back, and that they should, therefore, be sent to the front of the line, regardless of merit and/or achievements. There may also be some argument that someone of diverse cultural heritage may in some way enrich the work place through this diversity.
(No rocks folks, I’m not arguing for or against the concept, I’m simply stating it as foundation for what I have to say below.)
Sigivald is right regarding the “likely” circumstances of things, and the total unprovability of any of it.
This leads to my point which would be that if things are so far back, so vague, so uncertain that there is no proof whatsoever, then there is no disadvantage either. Someone whose ancestors were raised as, and lived as, “white” for multiple generations have neither the slightest disadvantage nor the slightest minority cultural heritage to bring to a job.
All this proves, if she claimed it, which I expect she did, is that she’s an unprincipled opportunist who’s prepared to work the silly sensibilities of elitist fools to her advantage…. thereby taking the place of an actual minority person (or anyone else of greater talent) that she got in front of with this little hustle.
Well, okay, it may also prove that said elitist fools are gullible, but who knows? Maybe they were as cynical as she was and just wanted to claim “diversity” in their statistics.
^^ SherryM: well I can relate pretty well to that. (By the way, if I’d been in your shoes, I would likely have said — in my best southern accent — wall, mebby South Korea, since I have done things like that before.)
On the other hand, as a poorly educated (mostly) white hick of Southern heritage & accent, I feel I have been disadvantaged, which is pretty much reflected by the receptions I have gotten from graduates of Harvard, Rice and miscellaneous other elitist places who made it clear that I was most certainly not their people.
Therefore, I feel that Harvard or some such place should put me on their faculty to balance things out. Luckily for them, I do bring a kind of cultural diversity that they don’t see much of in their ivory towers. So I could be a sort of Beverly Hillbilly of Harvard Law…. assuming, of course, that they are interested in actual diversity. :-D
Oh, yeah, and there’s my vague but more or less real
CherokeeCreek (a nasty bunch) ancestry, which is surely no less provable than hers.Time for a new campaign theme song!
What, too metal? Okay, FINE…
Me?
I’m all for maximum diversity.
old horndog ^
“What if Obama had an ancestor who was involved in the slave trade?”
Doug,
Well alot of tribes in Africa SOLD other tribes to the white slave traders. Yes, kind of like how some American Indian tribes sold out other tribes to the white man, so did the Africans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_slave_trade
And from the History News Network
http://hnn.us/articles/41431.html
So there is defiantly a chance Obama’s ancestors did just that.
Warren’s been caught in the liberal two step:
1) Get special privileges for minorities
2) Declare yourself a minority (faking it is fine)
I’m really looking forward to seeing her professional career go to the Happy Hunting Grounds.
^ More like the Liberal two-face.
I laughed.
Doug, Paul: I think most of the African slave trade to the Americas was from West Africa, and Kenya is part of East Africa.
Of course, this assumes for relevance that Obama’s ancestors were in the Kenya area, and that slavers (likely Moslem) did not transport slaves they’d bought in East Africa to West Africa, which I may have read somewhere they did. Also, there were other slave trades in Africa besides the West African one.
So far as the initial acquisition of African slaves is concerned, I think Americans and Europeans simply bought them from African traders on the West African coast. It is difficult to imagine white people stupid enough to be running around in the interior of Africa with butterfly nets trying to bag themselves some slaves when the Africans themselves were delighted to sell their enemies, friends, neighbors, etc. in the name of getting rid of them, making profit, and bringing them woe. To quote the Wikipedia article Paul referenced:
What’s interesting is how little weight the article gives to Arab/Moslem contribution to the overall African slave trade, although it is mentioned. There’s a separate article on the Arab slave trade; but I think that in spite of the detail provided, it still only scratches the surface either in terms of scope or how horrible it was….
…. and, by the way, likely continues to be until this very day. Although reduced in scope, I suspect that a large number of slaves are still held in some Moslem counties (Saudi Arabia comes to mine), and that new ones may still be acquired.
To get back to Obama’s ancestors, their being in East Africa, if they were, doesn’t mean that they weren’t involved in the slave trade. It just means that you have to watch out for the “they weren’t in West Africa” trap. Doesn’t mean they didn’t wholesale their neighbors to whomever was the middleman.
In fairness, we don’t know they were involved — or that they weren’t. A great many white Southerners were involved in slave trading before the Civil war in one way or another, but by no means all.
The one sure thing is that none of Obama’s ancestors were ever slaves here in America in spite of the silly-ass presumption by a great many of his black constituents that they were. How dumb can one get? Really.