Given Elizabeth Warren’s prominence and possible candidacy for the 2020 presidency, Republicans are making a point refer to her as ‘Pocahontas’, as trump recently did again.
The Republican line is that she lied about being Native American in order to get benefits as a minority in her work.
But she didn’t.
This is an old issue, but if you’re curious as I was just what happened, here it is, courtesy of a 2012 Atlantic story.
Warren did say she had Native American ancestry in part. Investigations found there was no evidence of this, and at most was an unlikely 1/32 Native role from an ancestor.
However, she never used this claim for benefit for herself. The article describes this:
While a teacher at the University of Texas, she listed herself as "white." But between 1986 and 1995, she listed herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Faculty; the University of Pennsylvania in a 2005 "minority equity report" also listed her as one of the minority professors who had taught at its law school.
The head of the committee that brought Warren to Harvard Law School said talk of Native American ties was not a factor in recruiting her to the prestigious institution. Reported the Boston Herald in April in its first story on Warren's ancestry claim: "Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, a former U.S. Solicitor General who served under Ronald Reagan, sat on the appointing committee that recommended Warren for hire in 1995. He said he didn't recall her Native American heritage ever coming up during the hiring process.
"'It simply played no role in the appointments process. It was not mentioned and I didn't mention it to the faculty,' he said."
He repeated himself this week, telling the Herald: "In spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, the story continues to circulate that Elizabeth Warren enjoyed some kind of affirmative action leg-up in her hiring as a full professor by the Harvard Law School. The innuendo is false."
"I can state categorically that the subject of her Native American ancestry never once was mentioned," he added.
That view was echoed by Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who voted to tenure Warren and was also involved in recruiting her.
"Elizabeth Warren's heritage had absolutely no role in the decision to recruit her to Harvard Law School," he told the Crimson. "Our decision was entirely based on her extraordinary expertise and legendary teaching ability. This whole dispute is fabricated out of whole cloth and has no connection to reality."
And that's the second arena where an absence of evidence should have some weight. If there's no easily located evidence that Warren has Native American ancestry, there's also no evidence Warren used her family story to boost herself into a Harvard job.
So, no, whether Warren has wrongly believed and claimed ancestry, it has had no such abuse.
The article mentions both that it is very common for families to think they have a Native ancestor incorrectly, and that she’s hardly the first politician to have had such an error.
Madelaine Albright learned her heritage was different than her parents had said, with no political issue for her; Marco Rubio on the other hand, falsely claimed his parents had been refugees from Castro when they had not, which was presumably a very helpful claim that was false in running for Florida Senator.