The Boston Globe has the op-ed piece, Elizabeth Warren’s Wetumka roots, by Farah Stockman. To whet your appetite for some of the nuance introduced by this column, I give you the following quotes:
The problem with these heritage treasure hunts is that they presuppose that the question of racial identity is always absolute: is she or isn’t she?
Real life is more complex. In 1990, only about 60 percent of the 1.9 million Americans who declared themselves to be Native American on the census were actually enrolled in a federally recognized tribe, according to University of Kansas sociologist Joane Nagel.
More than three times as many people self-identified as Native American in 1990 than in 1960, as tribes became more politically active and cultural ties became more celebrated.
Nowhere in America has more people per capita who identify as Native American than Oklahoma, where Warren grew up. Twelve percent of people there identify as such.
That’s because the place is literally Native America. It was the last stop on the Trail of Tears, where the federal government deposited tribes forcibly removed from more desirable lands in the 1800s.
Sarah Stockman seems to be exhibiting a fair amount of journalistic initiative in seeking out experts to provide a little nuance to the story being fed to the Globe by Scott Brown’s campaign. If this is the beginnings of an apology from the Globe for their previous journalistic sloth, then I accept.
One minor quibble even with this story is the quote:
Should Warren have had deeper roots to list herself in a directory of minority law professors?
By my reading of the news, Warren did not list herself in a directory of minority law professors. She listed herself in a general directory of lawyers, and her listing indicated that she was a member of a minority. Of course, judging from the news coverage of this story so far, anything I learned from reading one news source is as suspect as anything I read in another.
Yes, I claim to be Jewish, but I am not enrolled in any Federally recognized tribe, either. So I can understand how you can think of yourself as being something even though the Federal Government has not given its blessing to your claim.
My wife tells me that I cannot go around offering to show my circumcision as proof of my claims.
This post is a complement to the previous post Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Heritage.