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Elizabeth Warren bullied to take DNA test to prove Indian heritage

trblmkr said:
People are not breeds of dogs.
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The genetic similarity between a human and a cat is 90%, and it would be about the same for a dog.

Humans call different kinds of dogs or cats ‘breeds’, but they never liked the idea that humans were similar to other animals, so they preferred to use the word ‘race’. Some humans don’t even like to admit there are different races, but that's ridiculous, as any non-religious biologist will explain.

We can easily see the difference between a member of the Caucasian race and the Mongoloid race, so too we can easily see the difference between Gala and Golden Delicious apples, Siamese and Manx cats or poodles and pugs. Any five year old can do that.

A true poodle is a true poodle because they have bred for generation after generation to have certain traits.
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The same thing happens with any group of animals or plants that are isolated from others, and only reproduce within their own group. If humans evolve that way for hundreds of thousands of years they end up as separate race. This is basic evolution, which you probably didn’t study by the sound of it.

Do you believe a geneticist would claim to be able to look at a person on the street and identify the 2, 3, 4, 8 sources of DNA in that person?
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If the person is a member of a particular race, and is not mixed, then yes, that task is easy for any geneticist. He can recognize this man’s race, and this one’s, and so on, very easily. I once met a gentleman at work who I recognized immediately as a member of the Kalahari bushmen tribe in Africa. I asked him if I was right and he confirmed it. He said that yes, his parents were Kalahari bushmen, but he had been raised in Australia. He was very easy to recognize, since many of the Kalahari bushmen have very similar traits. He told me that many people asked him about this, as his features were easy to recognize. When we see Chinese people it isn’t hard to figure out they are from China, and so on. It’s not a big deal.
 
Mr Person said:
For it to be a "lie", she'd have had to know she had no native heritage when she checked that box.

Her supposed heritage appears that it was a family story, and how many people fully investigate family stories before believing them? In any event, the people responsible for hiring her at Harvard said (back in 2012, when the GOP concocted this line of attack) that they weren't even aware of any claim to native heritage and instead sought her out due to her expertise.

Elizabeth Warren Herself Claimed "Minority" Status - The Volokh Conspiracy

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2012/05/why_harvard_law_took_elizabeth_warren/

The entire GOP angle is based on the fact that at some point after they hired her, Harvard touted her has having minority status. Either way, this checking of a box from decades ago had nothing to do with why she got elected (except perhaps to the extent some people might have protest-voted against Brown for having embraced the attack).

The only people who ever had standing to demand she prove her ancestry would have been people who hired her because of a claim to that ancestry. The people now demanding it have no logical basis for doing so given the way this all played out. I think she shouldn't have so much as dignified it with a response.





This is like if I ran for public office, then the other side discovered at some point in my life, I indicated I was Jewish on my application because that's how my parents raised me. But then, this other side discovered that actually, my mother didn't follow the orthodox or even conservative Jewish protocols for converting (from Christianity) to Judiasm and therefore, I was not actually Jewish by matrilineal descent. Then, using all that to smear me even though the every entity that accepted/hired me went on record saying they didn't know about any claim to Judiasm and didn't rely on it in making their decision.

That would be dirty under-handed ploy because in this hypothetical, I would have done what just about everyone else does with regard to family stories: accept them. (Unless perhaps they're insane, such as a claim that grandpa is secretly a spacelord).

I don't see any reason to view the attacks on Warren as different from that.




You mention Trump and his taxes. Well, for better or worse there actually has been a tradition of Presidents releasing tax returns.

There is no tradition of people making claims to having certain heritage proving via DNA test that they actually have that heritage before making the claim.

I'd also note that the sort of things tax returns might reveal about a candidate are rather different than what a DNA test might reveal. So, I'm not seeing any parallel there. (Also, Trump has lowered standards in many ways worse than not releasing returns)
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I agree at least in part with you about it being harvards responsibility to verify her claim of ethnicity if they are using it to make any kind of claim of diversity. When she checked that box they should of required her to verify her claim or they should not be using it to satisfy a quota, unless she is making a legal statement. There's no crime in her being wrong intentionally or unintentionally. I could apply to Harvard and claim im a blind disabled black woman and if they admit me without verifing my claim, that's on them. I actually support everyone lie like she did and but an end to these nonsense quotas.

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk
 
ecofarm said:
You don't understand the accuracy question. Earlier in the thread someone explained it. The test, if negative, would not be definitive.

Is she claiming NA perspective? No. Is she claiming to represent NAs? No. Has she gained from the claim? No. Her university application did not claim minority? Case closed.

So you're demanding a test that cannot prove a negative because someone's grandma had NA blood and it caused family problems. How does that make sense?
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No, the case is not closed because her lies don't fall into your narrow definition of what should matter. It's still cultural appropriation and the liberals have come down hard on others who've done it.

Now, the ball's in their court.

The "the might be wrong if it's negative" doesn't hold water. Her test is going to be negative -- Cherokee officials who studied her genealogy have already stated that she has no Cherokee blood. Not according to her lineage at any rate. There's always a chance of an extramarital affair somewhere along the way, but, that's unlikely.

She did what she did and now it's going to haunt her unless she can prove, via DNA, that she has Native American blood.

And, I think we both know that if she could prove it -- she would.
 
Chomsky said:
That's an interesting argument. I've seen it before.

There may be some truth there, since many of his followers seem to love his behaviour.

But their happiness with providing an alternative-facts environment, along with an ends-justify-the-means winner-take-all attitude, is very troubling to those of us that are rooted in factual reality, expecting leadership in values (amongst others).
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Too bad there is only a few of us.
 
Rob Larrikin said:
The genetic similarity between a human and a cat is 90%, and it would be about the same for a dog.

Humans call different kinds of dogs or cats ‘breeds’, but they never liked the idea that humans were similar to other animals, so they preferred to use the word ‘race’. Some humans don’t even like to admit there are different races, but that's ridiculous, as any non-religious biologist will explain.

We can easily see the difference between a member of the Caucasian race and the Mongoloid race, so too we can easily see the difference between Gala and Golden Delicious apples, Siamese and Manx cats or poodles and pugs. Any five year old can do that.



The same thing happens with any group of animals or plants that are isolated from others, and only reproduce within their own group. If humans evolve that way for hundreds of thousands of years they end up as separate race. This is basic evolution, which you probably didn’t study by the sound of it.



If the person is a member of a particular race, and is not mixed, then yes, that task is easy for any geneticist. He can recognize this man’s race, and this one’s, and so on, very easily. I once met a gentleman at work who I recognized immediately as a member of the Kalahari bushmen tribe in Africa. I asked him if I was right and he confirmed it. He said that yes, his parents were Kalahari bushmen, but he had been raised in Australia. He was very easy to recognize, since many of the Kalahari bushmen have very similar traits. He told me that many people asked him about this, as his features were easy to recognize. When we see Chinese people it isn’t hard to figure out they are from China, and so on. It’s not a big deal.
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You specify "not mixed". Which in regards to Warren, does not apply. And please feel free to post a photo and show what features are feline and which are simian in a random portrait. And even then I still refute your assertions that you can spot an ethnic Chinese from a ethnic Mongol. The DNA has been blended over the years.
 
trblmkr said:
You specify "not mixed". Which in regards to Warren, does not apply. And please feel free to post a photo and show what features are feline and which are simian in a random portrait. And even then I still refute your assertions that you can spot an ethnic Chinese from a ethnic Mongol. The DNA has been blended over the years.
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My guess is that Warren is about as much Anglo Saxon as the poodle above is poodle. What is your guess about the poodle? 100%? As for picking out Asians, I once worked in a theme park and was surrounded by Asians. I could easily tell which were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Indonesian and Malaysian, and would prove it by asking them. Believe me, two years in that joint and you'd tell them all apart easily.
 
Headline, Fox News, circa 2022: President Warren shows her DNA profile, but refuses to show the long form!
 
Rob Larrikin said:
My guess is that Warren is about as much Anglo Saxon as the poodle above is poodle. What is your guess about the poodle? 100%? As for picking out Asians, I once worked in a theme park and was surrounded by Asians. I could easily tell which were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Indonesian and Malaysian, and would prove it by asking them. Believe me, two years in that joint and you'd tell them all apart easily.
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What does "test positive for Native American" mean? You test any random 100 Americans, and 99 of them will have common genome with Native Americans. It's not as "one or zero" as people seem to think.
 
DickBanks said:
What does "test positive for Native American" mean? You test any random 100 Americans, and 99 of them will have common genome with Native Americans. It's not as "one or zero" as people seem to think.
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From Quora: “What percentage of the US population carry Native Americans’ DNA?”

Excerpts:

I would suspect that most Americans would make assumptions that this figure is quite large. But, this would be based almost solely on hazy notions that “Indians and White/Blacks mixed historically.” And then, they’d probably extrapolate this out a bit and give a broad statement like, “Many Americans would have some degree of Indian blood.” And some might even say there are more Americans with some blood than there are tribal members of all 500+ tribal nations in this country.
….

Many Americans just have this simplistic perception that Natives “mixed with Whites/Blacks.” But, they do not understand the social structure for this mixing. Mixed offspring almost uniformly were integrated into the tribal community. The mixing was almost completely restricted to this tribal sphere. They were not moving into White society in large numbers and diffusing this blood at high levels. It did occur, but it was not as common. White society had laws on the books to prevent non-European blood from entering the White population, and they applied these laws vigorously. Anti-miscegenation statutes were usually enforced in White society, not in tribal lands. So, mixed individuals could often have their civil rights severely restricted in America, and they chose to be affiliated with the tribal community anyway. This social structure did indeed limit gene flow, or at least, it restricted the direction of the flow. You also have to consider that there just weren’t enough Natives – and mixed bloods trying to join White society – to impact the larger White gene pool. This is simply a matter of proportionality! For example, there were only about 250,000 Native Americans alive within the US in 1900. That was it. We are talking about a tiny population.
….

The White American average genetic makeup is 98.6% European, 0.19% African, and 0.18% Native American.

Claims that US is a genetic melting pot appear overblown--if you're white | Genetic Literacy Project

The figures for African Americans in not much different when it comes to Native admixture – just 0.8%

These low numbers illustrate that the contribution of Native Americans to the White and Black population is minuscule. But, you also have to understand that this is based on aggregate figures. Most families would have no Native ancestry at all. A smaller number would have slightly higher degrees, which would then give an extremely low number to the entire population as an average. In other words, pull a random American, and they would not have that result by some kind of default.

The slightly higher degree for African Americans – still under 1% - also has to do with historical reality and social structures. This mostly goes back to the early days of slavery when Native slaves were in bondage alongside Africans. This practice faded by the early to mid-1700s. But, the pool of enslaved Natives mixed with African slaves and produced offspring which then diffused this blood to a larger population. I would say that African Americans tend to have a more common default degree of very low Indian blood. But, they have fewer clusters of families with higher blood quantum.

Finally, the question pertains to having Native blood and not being aware of it.

This is an incredibly important point here. I would say that most Americans with Native ancestry of any significant degree are actually aware of it. And I would also say that a very large number of Americans assume they have Native blood out of proportion to reality or facts. In other words, many pass along false myths or family lore of ancestors “said to be Cherokee/Native American.” The vast majority of these claims are totally incorrect.

The phenomenon of Americans claiming Native American blood is actually highly exaggerated and inflated.

You can see a very stark example of this by looking at the 2010 Census. 800,000+ Americans claims to have “Cherokee” ancestry. Yet, at that point, the three Cherokee bands only had a population of just over 300,000 individuals. And the vast majority were enrolled in Cherokee Nation which doesn’t even have a minimum blood quantum. To put this into perspective there were more Americans with no tribal affiliation claiming Cherokee blood than there were enrolled Cherokees. This is statistically and demographically impossible, but this just goes to illustrates how prevalent these false stories or claims are.

https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-US-population-carry-Native-Americans’-DNA​
 
Rob Larrikin said:
From Quora: “What percentage of the US population carry Native Americans’ DNA?”

https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-the-US-population-carry-Native-Americans’-DNA
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I remember this answer on Quora, and disagreed with its author. He quoted a Genetic Literary Project article, probably to infer its content from the title, but he failed to realize that the content of the article actually argues aganst his point. From the article:

"In the United States, there is a long tradition of trying to draw sharp lines between ethnic groups, but our ancestry is a fluid and complex matter."

There is no "hey, I'm a Native American" marker in the human genome. Anglos share far more DNA with other ethnicities than they differ from. In other words, there is really no way to prove or disprove a quantity or percentage of "ethnic blood" with DNA. Family history is far more persuasive.

My guess is that Sen Warren has no more idea of her ethnicity mix than you or I do, but there is an overwhelming probability that she shares genome with many Native Americans, just as you and I probably do.
 
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I personally don't give a flying fig whether Elizabeth Warren has Amerindian DNA in her genome or not. That she thinks she does, or at one time thought she did is pretty apparent, but so what?

She probably has some Neanderthal DNA as well. Will Trump start calling her Og?

I think I'll vote for the candidate who is mature enough to not engage in childish name calling.
 
DickBanks said:
I remember this answer on Quora, and disagreed with its author. He quoted a Genetic Literary Project article, probably to infer its content from the title, but he failed to realize that the content of the article actually argues aganst his point. From the article:

"In the United States, there is a long tradition of trying to draw sharp lines between ethnic groups, but our ancestry is a fluid and complex matter."

There is no "hey, I'm a Native American" marker in the human genome. Anglos share far more DNA with other ethnicities than they differ from. In other words, there is really no way to prove or disprove a quantity or percentage of "ethnic blood" with DNA. Family history is far more persuasive.

My guess is that Sen Warren has no more idea of her ethnicity mix than you or I do, but there is an overwhelming probability that she shares genome with many Native Americans, just as you and I probably do.
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Sorry - I found the other guy far more convincing.
 
Dittohead not! said:
I personally don't give a flying fig whether Elizabeth Warren has Amerindian DNA in her genome or not. That she thinks she does, or at one time thought she did is pretty apparent, but so what?

She probably has some Neanderthal DNA as well. Will Trump start calling her Og?

I think I'll vote for the candidate who is mature enough to not engage in childish name calling.
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She lied about being part Cherokee to gain an advantage that was supposed to be for Native Americans. Had Trump done such a thing you'd be caterwauling about it until the end of days.
 
I'm not a fan of Warren by any means, but even if it turns out she isn't part Cherokee, it doesn't mean she intentionally lied. It may very well be part of her family lore. I have a similar experience. My great grandfather was supposedly a quarter Cherokee. That was the story that was passed down to my grandmother, my father, and then to me and my brothers. And for years when asked about our ancestry we always said we had a drop of Cherokee in us. Then my brother took one of those DNA tests and no Native American DNA showed up. Were we lying? No, we were just repeating what we were told by the best source available to us. Its quite possible the same is true for Warren.

I might also add, those DNA tests are rather fascinating. The other oddity on my brother's results was that the Italian percentage was about half of what we thought it should've been. My mother took the test and she had the same result. Now the curious thing is, we know for a fact that my mother's great grandparents immigrated here from Italy. We've looked up the Ellis island records and can tell you the dates they came over. My great grandmother was the only one in her family even born here in the United States. Now we wonder, did our great-great grandmother have an affair with some non-Italian fellow? We'll never know, but again we always claimed to be a certain percentage of Italian based on what we knew of our family history. Now the tests say otherwise. We're we lying? No, apparently we were misinformed. It does happen.
 
dobieg said:
Chuck Todd was acting like an ass this morning trying to bully Elizabeth Warren into taking a DNA test to prove her Indian heritage. Warren heroically rejected the idea and fought back, "Nobody is going to take that part of me away".


It's a travesty that a powerful woman such as Warren is having her ancestry questioned in a silly attempt to undercut her presidential ambitions.



- more

https://www.yahoo.com/news/warren-r...ry-nobody-going-take-part-away-173657853.html
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I saw the interview. He did not bully her at all.
 
Warren should put up or shut up. She obviously thinks that being part Indian is important for some reason. If so, then prove it. Otherwise, we'll just assume you're lying.
 
Rob Larrikin said:
She lied about being part Cherokee to gain an advantage that was supposed to be for Native Americans. Had Trump done such a thing you'd be caterwauling about it until the end of days.
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She did no such thing, and Trump has told so many lies that I'm about caterwauled out.
 
Rob Larrikin said:
The second part of that lame argument shows you know she's guilty, and that you don't know that two wrongs don't make a right.
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I see. In the parallel universe of Trumpistan, Trump's lies mean that Warren is guilty. Interesting place you have there.
 
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