When a blonde, blue-eyed, middle-class white woman claims preferences based on her dubious, and, at best, theoretical Native-American ancestry, the cover is blown on the race industry.
This is a jarring "stop and smell the coffee" article on the shameless double standard that permeates le affair Elizabeth Warren:
Imagine if a Republican candidate claimed, confidently, that she was part Native American. Imagine if she had actually used that identity to have herself listed as a minority at Harvard, qualifying her for special treatment and celebration as proof of how diverse and progressive her department is. Imagine if, many years later, it turned out that her claims to Native heritage were dubious and, when pressed for proof, she offered her “high cheekbones.” Oh, and she once contributed a recipe to a Native American cookbook called “Pow Wow Chow” (that may even have been plagiarised).
Chances are, that Republican candidate would be hounded night and day by the press, branded a racist and probably be winding down her political career. Right now, she’d be sitting by the phone, praying for a call from the producers of Celebrity Apprentice (gotta pay the mortgage on that wigwam somehow).
The incredible thing is that all this has happened to a Democratic senatorial candidate called Elizabeth Warren. And not only has she been given a pass by her party, which normally treats race with the respect it deserves, but also by the mainstream media. Last night she was chatting with Chris Matthews on MSNBC and Matthews failed to mention the scandal once. If there’s any one reason why Democrats and liberals aren't showing the expected anger about this, it’s because their section of the media has declined to discuss it.
The sad thing is that Warren is, otherwise, an intelligent and credible candidate for the Senate. The product of a working-class family, this self-made academic was one of the bright sparks behind the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and is one of the leading liberal minds of her generation. She’s competing in a naturally Democratic state (Massachusetts) that turned bellwether when it elected Tea Party Republican Scott Brown. The 2012 senate race ought to be about jobs and the economy.
Alas, Warren’s bizarre posturing as a Native American (which she has pursued with all the conviction of a full blown delusion) has sapped her credibility. Race shapes a lot of the way that Democrats think about economics and social justice – and within that narrative, Native Americans were the very first minority that the Europeans oppressed on American soil. It thus ought to be not just odd but immoral that Warren would try to borrow their heritage of suffering in order to advance her political career. Worse still, the Harvard Law Journal described her as a “woman of color,” as if it was translating her claimed identity into proof that it was reaching out to African-Americans. A lot of liberals invested a lot of emotional effort into sustaining this myth. This sort of thing is just as inappropriate as Mitt Romney suddenly claiming to be the descendent of slaves.
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