Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has remained unscathed by her false claims to Native American heritage. That’s in part due to the fact that she’s from deep blue Massachusetts. She was able to dodge this accusation of false heritage to win a U.S. Senate seat. Yet, over time, local publications have been bringing pressure to Warren’s racial hoax. Guy wrote about the Boston Globe putting on their front page how this false claim to the Cherokee Nation made by Warren could have lasting political ramifications, though more centered on a possible 2020 run rather than her 2018 re-election.
Some members of the Cherokee Nation are rightfully upset over Warren’s claim that she’s Native American. In November of 2017, Rebecca Nagle, an actual Native American woman, ripped Warren, writing an essay in Think Progress saying:
She was not a hero to me when she failed to foster a haven of support for Native students within Harvard University’s alienating Ivy League culture. She is not a hero for spending years awkwardly avoiding Native leaders. She is not a hero because, despite claiming to be the only Native woman in the U.S. Senate, she has done nothing to advance our rights.
She is not from us. She does not represent us. She is not Cherokee.
The controversy over Warren’s identity stems from the 1990s, when Warren was a professor at Harvard Law School. The university promoted her and celebrated her as the first minority woman to receive tenure. When the Boston press dug up these reports during Warren’s campaign for Senate in 2012, she stated she didn’t know why Harvard had promoted her as Native American. It appears that Warren categorized herself as a minority when it served her career and later dropped the marker after gaining tenure.
Now, the editorial board of the local Berkshire Eagle says it’s time for Warren to spit in a tube and take a DNA test:
Since the news of her background came out, rather than renounce her claim, she has taken the course of fully embracing it — championing native causes, speaking to native groups of their pride and deriding their treatment at the hands of the U.S. government.
We cannot know whether this advocacy is an awkward attempt to identify with others of her heritage, or whether it is simply a socially-conscious politician's desire to right historic wrongs on the part of disadvantaged people.
What we do know is that Sen. Warren has shown herself to be a fighter for social equality and for a capitalist system that floats all boats, not just yachts.
For these reasons, those who wish her ill will never allow the Native American question to recede; Sen. Warren's potential appeal as a national candidate constitutes too much of a threat. Therefore, we offer a simple suggestion that could not even have been contemplated when Warren first listed her heritage on an employment form.
The same technology that can match a perpetrator to a crime with virtually 100 percent certainty could settle the question of her heritage for all time.
There are now so many commercial DNA heritage-tracking labs in business that they advertise on television. The going rate for one of the most popular tests is $99. All the senator needs to do is spit into a tube, wait a few weeks and get her answer. No matter if the test came up negative or positive, it would constitute a plus for Warren and her political hopes.
Were she to test positive for Native American DNA, it would permanently resolve the issue — while possibly shutting down President Trump.
Should the test come up negative, it would be an opportunity for the senator to perform an act rarely seen among politicians: an admission of her error and a full-throated apology to Native American tribes and anyone else offended by her spurious claim.
Yeah, even if she were to take the test, have it come up negative, and apologize, it wouldn’t sit well with voters since she took so long to repent. She gained from peddling that hoax. Frankly, while this is a 2020 concern, the fact that Warren is so far left, outside the mainstream, and probably won’t do well outside of the Boston suburbs is a far more pressing concern. If anything, her political opponents should jump on the DNA test train, as a way to pressure her for accountability on this rather problematic chapter in her public life career.