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Monday, September 24, 2012

Elizabeth Warren Finally Responds Decisively Scott Brown's Race Baiting Attacks



The racism of Scott Brown's campaign -- claiming Warren doesn't "look" like he imagines a native American should and therefore she must be lying about it ("just look at her" he declaimed in their first debate, "clearly she's not"), and also insinuating that the consummately accomplished and acclaimed Warren benefited unfairly through claiming to be native American, thus stoking white racist resentments about how "good" non-whites have it because of affirmative action -- seems to me utterly flabbergasting and a scandal matched only by the fact that so far it hasn't been a scandal.

9 comments:

Summerspeaker said...

I'm not sure what to think about this issue. Have you read this article criticizing Warren from a Native American perspective? (Also see here and here.) After learning that Andrea Smith's identity <a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2012/05/02/lies-damned-lies-and-the-complicated-accounting-of-identity-counterpoint/>has been challenged</a>, I don't know what to believe. Calling out the racism of Brown's campaign gets my support, but I'm skeptical about endorsing Warren's claims.

Dale Carrico said...

From "a Native American perspective" ... apart from Warren's own, you mean? "Endorsing" her claims? You think she is lying about her family history, you think she doesn't have a right to identify as she actually does? Wtf? Thanks for "supporting" my criticism of Brown's obvious racism -- duh -- but you'll forgive me if I am not particularly impressed by your political analysis these days.

Summerspeaker said...

As the various links included above show, a number Native American and specifically Cherokee people dispute Warren's claims. While a decidedly complex issue, ethnic fraud - "wannabes," to use the common term Joanne Barker mentions - ain't no joke and constitutes a form of colonialism. Settlers always want to appropriate Indigenous identity for themselves. I don't know what's going on here with any certainty, but promoting self-identification alone as the sole determination of Native status strikes me as dangerous to Native self-determination.

Dale Carrico said...

promoting self-identification alone as the sole determination

I didn't, but whatev. By all means continue "your" crusade against Warren as a self-promoting wannabe. God, you are a piece of work.

jimf said...

> . . .claiming Warren doesn't "look" like he imagines a native American should. . .

What, she needs a headband, maybe?

http://www.retroweb.com/bb/kirk&miramanee.jpg

jollyspaniard said...

We had the same thing about Obama last cycle people claiming he's not really black because his mother was white. Race is a social construct not a genetic one, some people have trouble grokking that.

jimf said...

> We had the same thing about Obama last cycle people
> claiming he's not really black because his mother was white.
> Race is a social construct not a genetic one, some
> people have trouble grokking that.

And of course black people who don't happen to have white mothers
also have to put up with the fact that black people are sometimes
"ranked" (both by whites, now and in the bad old days, and by
fellow blacks) by how light or dark their skin is.

Light-skinned blacks are sometimes perceived by fellow blacks
as getting a social boost thereby, while simultaneously being
resented as "not really being black". Not just skin tone plays
into this, of course, but things like hair texture and other
items of physiognomy. And even behavioral proclivities --
style of speech, interests ("talk white", "act white").

I encountered the word "octoroon", for the first time in a
long time, in a book I was reading recently.

Dale Carrico said...

I like "items of physiognomy" -- the designer baby future is here!

Chad Lott said...

I feel like someone on the Brown side watched Soul Man and was like "this is our narrative".