The diversity of Elizabeth Warren

[Geee]

Human Events:

BOSTON -- Blond, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren, the Senate candidate and Harvard professor who cites "family lore" that she is 1/32nd Cherokee, was inducted into Oklahoma's Hall of Fame last year. Her biography on oklahomaheritage.com says she "can track both sides of her family in Oklahoma long before statehood" (1907) and "she proudly tells everyone she encounters that she is 'an Okie to my toes.'" It does not mention any Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother. A DVD of the induction ceremony shows that neither Warren nor anyone else mentioned this.

 

The kerfuffle that has earned Warren such sobriquets as "Spouting Bull" and "Fauxcahontas" began with reports that Harvard Law School, in routine academic preening about diversity (in everything but thought), listed her as a minority faculty member, as did the University of Pennsylvania when she taught there. She said some in her family had "high cheekbones like all of the Indians do." The New England Historic Genealogical Society said a document confirmed the family lore of Warren's Cherokee ancestry, but later backtracked. She has said she did not know Harvard was listing her as a minority in the 1990s, but Harvard was echoing her: From 1986 through 1995, starting before she came to Harvard, a directory published by the Association of American Law Schools listed her as a minority and says its listings are based on professors claiming minority status.

 

So, although no evidence has been found that Warren is part Indian, for years two universities listed her as such. She has identified herself as a minority, as when, signing her name as "Elizabeth Warren -- Cherokee," she submitted a crab recipe (Oklahoma crabs?) to a supposedly Indian cookbook. This is a political problem.

 

A poll taken before this controversy found her Republican opponent Scott Brown trouncing her on "likability," 57 percent to 23 percent. Even Democrats broke for Brown 40-38. Now she is a comic figure associated with laughable racial preferences. She who wants Wall Street "held accountable" is accountable for two elite law schools advertising her minority status. She who accuses Wall Street of gaming the financial system at least collaborated with, and perhaps benefited from, the often absurd obsession with "diversity."

 

How absurd? Warren says that for almost a decade she listed herself in the AALS directory as a Native American because she hoped to "meet others like me." This well-educated, highly paid, much-honored (she was a consumer protection adviser to President Obama) member of America's upper 1 percent went looking for people "who are like I am" among Native Americans?