Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
99 New: On the Hook
Some people have a remarkable ability to give their tormentors new material. Senator Elizabeth Warren would be one of those people.
She takes a DNA test to ‘prove’ her Native American ancestry. And she finds out that nine or ten generations ago, she did, in fact, have a Native American ancestor. This has meaning to her because it confirms what her family told her growing up and I value family stories, never having had many or any. My ancestors came from Ohio, I was told, the part and place before that lost in the handing down from one generation to another.
So the Cherokee Nation takes issue with Senator Warren, reasonably positing that it takes a lot more than a couple shreds of DNA to be an Indian. There is much about it, Indianness, which I only know remotely from friends of friends. There is place and language and inflection and looks on faces. There is manner and touch and beliefs and the earth. There is an inside and an outside.
Even Trump in his epic idiocy can see this fundamental truth and he calls out Senator Warren’s claim to Indian heritage as bogus. And oddly, I agree with him. It is bogus, an interesting historical fact for her family but meaningless in real life. That she would engage in this discussion, offering this authentication of the remotest relative as if it meant something substantial, is perplexing and does nothing but shovel coal into the maw of Donald Trump’s little furnace.
When my kids were little and one would torment the other and the other would react, we’d yell into the back seat, “Don’t take the bait!” They never heeded this directive, the bait-taking being irresistible. And so it was with Senator Warren, I think. Her affection for her own story, passed down to her by her parents, outweighed objective analysis. If she’d looked at her heritage clearly, as a scientist or lawyer, she would have tucked it into the back of a book on the top shelf of her library. But her heart wouldn’t let her do that. She decided she had something to prove – the honesty of her parents? the veracity of her family’s story?
Basically, Elizabeth Warren took the bait. Any one of my kids will tell you – you never win when you do that. Never.
6 Comments on “99 New: On the Hook”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
I regret that the Cherokee nation couldn’t see the difference between claiming to have an Indian in your ancestry and claiming to be a Cherokee. They undercut somebody who was not hurting them in any way.
Well, she was in a bind, and this was her attempt to, as Beth said, stop the train. All that happened was that 60 years ago her mom said something like, “You know honey, my great-great-great grandma was an Indian, but that was a long time ago, and that’s all I know about it.” Then, in a moment she now regrets, they were asking about this stuff at work, and she yielded to the temptation to say, “Yes, I’m a tiny part Native American.” But unless I’m missing something, that’s all she has done–the Cherokee nation has nothing to fear. So again, she’s just trying to render this as much of a non-issue as she can, and I think it worked. Just wish she’d waited until after the election.
I think she made it a bigger issue and looks pretty foolish doing it.
Yes, it made me cringe but I think maybe she just wanted to stop the train
It didn’t stop the train, just laid new track in my opinion.
Yes