This situation is so depressing. It's a real tar baby for Warren, if we can still use that phrase (is there another phrase that means the same thing?). The more she talks about it, the more the message gets out to white people, and the message is "As if affirmative action wasn't bad, enough, this white lady benefited from affirmative action, and now she wants to be president." Now the message is being amended to include "and she says she deserves to benefit from affirmative action, because genetic testing proves she is imperceptibly not 100% white". All this is bad.
Why do we always hand message-crafting to the worst people?
It seems like she didn't even talk to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma before releasing the results of her ridiculous stunt. I don't pretend to understand what does and doesn't work politically at this point, but she's bungled the substance of this issue for years.
I like her a lot but I really hope she doesn't run, she's a terrible counterpuncher.
I had a discussion about this offline yesterday with someone a lot more sympathetic to EW on this issue than I am. I realize that she never claimed membership/citizenship, or predominance. The fact is that she checked a box on a form, and the form's purpose was to see how well her employer was doing at recruiting POC faculty. She (unthinkingly?) let her employer claim a success in that effort it did not deserve. For that, she has always owed an apology -- not to me, obviously* -- but some recognition, at least, of the long tradition of cultural erasure and of 'playing Indian." Is the privilege that let her casually embrace an old family story out of sentimentality for the elder relatives that told it to her related to the privilege that led her to casually embrace vote for Ronald Reagan? Better late than never, I suppose.
EW is more Native, apparently, than the guy for whom the Washington DC football team says it was named.
In sum, 1 is right. It's a tar baby.
* Not to me, especially, I would say in this forum.
EW is more Native, apparently, than the guy for whom the Washington DC football team says it was named.
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I don't there's any evidence that she's Native in any meaningful sense of that word, which is one of the many ways that she's made a complete hash of what should have been a non-issue.
1: What she needs to do is leak stories about her tax evasion. And then maybe allegations that she beats up her husband. And she's secretly working for a foreign government. Then she can just bring up the Cherokee heritage thing from time to time to distract from the other stories.
I thought her full explanation was worthy, and it was headlines and tweets that were reducing it to a simplistic "I am so!". It is true she left some stuff unsaid in yesterday's release with unfortunate implications, and should have discussed the matter with some actual indigenous people/groups, but let's not write her off for this.
(One thing in her feed that is common of high-level Democrats that really gets under my skin: criticizing a policy by saying it's "unpopular". Say why it's wrong, already!)
She clarified 17 hours ago:
I won't sit quietly for @realDonaldTrump's racism, so I took a test. But DNA & family history has nothing to do with tribal affiliation or citizenship, which is determined only - only - by Tribal Nations. I respect the distinction, & don't list myself as Native in the Senate.
8-9: barring something absolutely shocking, I'm going to vote for the Democratic nominee. If that person is Warren, her candidacy will have a lot to recommend it. In the meantime, I reserve the right to say that she's mishandled this issue for many, many years and that a single well-considered (finally!) tweet coming on the heels of a massively overhyped and profoundly stupid propaganda stunt doesn't make actually her judgement in this case look much better to me.
3 is right, and more generally suggests to me that Warren has no chance of reviving the Obama coalition of educated liberals and minorities. Makes me somewhat skeptical of her candidacy, though at least it's better to get these kinds of missteps out early.
I'm not going to vote for a boomer (any boomer) in the primary anyway, so ultimately this isn't going to make a big difference for my vote.
I think she can push back hard on the affirmative action stuff -- there's been serious reporting done that establishes pretty clearly that no one hired her thinking of her as a woman of color. Affirmative action for her as a Native American really didn't happen.
The problem she's got with Native American activists is that she publicly identified herself as in some sense NA (that directory of minority faculty) on the basis of a family history of NA ancestry. And first, for most white people who think they have NA ancestry, it's bullshit, and the fact that white people feel free to bullshit about that stuff is racist and damaging. For Warren, it looks as though it wasn't bullshit -- the distant NA ancestry seems to be real, so she's not lying or bullshitting about it. But second, claiming any kind of NA connection on the basis of that kind of ancestry is a huge problem for a lot of NA activists even if the ancestral connection is true.
And that places her in a bind. She needs to be able to punch back against Trump by saying that she wasn't lying or bullshitting, but insisting that she was right to say what she said comes off as very hostile from an activist NA perspective. I don't know how she fixes it without a time machine.
3 bothers me as well. I don't think she's dumb, so I figure she didn't talk to them because they would never ever be on board and she wanted to say something anyway. So she has to have expected some level of argument.
Checking the box was a mistake from the beginning, yes.
I admit to feeling a slight desire to push back on the most extreme Native statements, which read to me like "You're not allowed to mention Natives in your personal history without our permission", and I don't like the idea of ceding that permission to anybody, ever. But I'm a white* guy, so I should probably shut up, which is usually the correct answer.
*75% northern euro, 25% Ashkenazi, according to both family history and genetic testing.
Having some distant ancestor who was (or wasn't) Native American (blood isn't, in most cases, the determining factor, which is why this stunt is so profoundly stupid and perceived as damaging by many people) doesn't make someone at all Native American. Put another way, her story was always wrongheaded, culturally insensitive, and politically corrosive. And taking a DNA test does absolutely nothing to change that; it only deepens the wrongheadedness of what she's said in the past.
And I should add that the while the tweet in 9 is much better than what she's said in the past, it fails to acknowledge that taking the DNA test was also racist and colonialist. And then, releasing the results of the test was an assault on Cherokee sovereignty at a particularly fraught moment for Native peoples. Warren has either been terribly advised on this issue (likely) or doesn't give a shit about one of the most central questions for Native communities (possible).
Let me say again that I generally like Warren and will, if she gets the nomination, vote for her and be relatively happy doing so. And the tweet in 9 is definitely a (half) step in the right direction.
reviving the Obama coalition of educated liberals and minorities.
Trump's rising approval rating among Hispanics since becoming President has been one of the most doom-inspiring trends of the last two years.
Educated liberals are kind of expecting too much of other people.
6 -- You're right of course, about EW. I'm assuming, I think validly, that the Washington NFL guy was actually zero, so even a little bit is more than that.
8/9 -- I don't see an apology for checking the box.
15 -- You're better informed than I, I'm sure, but my perception is that the Cherokee citizenship rules are much more permissive than for a number of nations. That recent US Supreme Court case on that kid made a swipe at it: the kid at issue had very little identifiable Cherokee ancestry, but under the Cherokee rules he/she still counted. My former paralegal is a member of the Assiniboine/Sioux nation; they require that you show 25% Assiniboine/Sioux. (Nakoda/Dakota, I guess.) This is certainly common for the nations around here.
That she's from Oklahoma really makes the cluelessness indefensible.
First line of Justice Alito's opinion in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl: This case is about a little girl (Baby Girl) who is classified as an Indian because she is 1.2% (3/256) Cherokee.
But it's for the Cherokee to apply the rules, not her.
That being said, if all she's saying is that she's not Native but she likely had a distant Native ancestor, I don't understand why taking the test is inherently racist and colonialist. (Beyond that being a white person in the United States is inherently colonialist and almost certainly racist, anyhow.)
15: the CNO has no blood quantum for citizenship, as far as I know, so her DNA results aren't meaningful in that regard. And of course they're utterly meaningless when it comes to claiming Native identity. The test only proves that she probably had some relatively distant ancestor who probably had some "Indian blood," which I don't even know what that means.
The most likely scenario, I'm guessing, is that Warren's family had some nonsense story about being descended from a Cherokee princess or whatever. That's a very common story to tell in Oklahoma, as you know. If she had consulted with smart people years ago, she would have apologized for passing along family lore that in some contexts is silly and in others is damaging.
23: because DNA tests and blood quanta are used to undermine tribal sovereignty all the time. Read Kim Tallbear's book if you care about these issues.
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/native-american-dna
With everything else going on, I'm kind of outraged out of caring. It either helps in November or I wish it were off the news as quickly as possible.
25 Blood quanta is fraught either way. When it's time to divide up a pot of money that has suddenly arrived, whether through economic development, or settlement of litigation, or some other thing, how many people get to share the dough is a big damn deal to everyone involved. As is eligibility to vote, to use the Nation's resources, and a zillion other things.
And then there's the issue of the box EW checked. It doesn't say 'citizenship' and checking it doesn't mean one is claiming either citizenship or eligibility for citizenship. It's quite common, nowadays, for people to fall under the quantum required for any of the several nations their ancestors were part of -- especially if many of their ancestors were Metis -- and yet still be Native enough to get followed around in the K-Mart (or, in bigger cities, the Nordstrom) whenever they go shopping. The checkbox is about identity, I think, not either citizenship or distant ancestry.
Tweet that fully describes my family:
having all this family lore is sooooo goyishe. being ashkenazi jewish is like, our ancestors lived in this same shitty part of ukraine for hundreds of years and then fled because of pogroms to america the end.
Ok, not exactly, we lived in multiple shitty parts of Eastern Europe. 23&me fully confirms (99.6%, 0.2% "Eastern European", 0.2% "Broadly European")
My wife's (goy) family, OTOH, literally has a published book documenting their descendants since the first ancestor emigrated to North America in the mid 1600s.
This is a very valuable trailer for the Trump re-election in 2020.
Blood quanta is fraught either way. When it's time to divide up a pot of money that has suddenly arrived, whether through economic development, or settlement of litigation, or some other thing, how many people get to share the dough is a big damn deal to everyone involved. As is eligibility to vote, to use the Nation's resources, and a zillion other things.
Sure, but respecting tribal sovereignty means that it's up to the Native nations in question to sort out these questions. It's complicated, but only as a matter of internal tribal politics.
27 is where I am. I mostly wish it weren't one more thing I get to hear Trump and Lindsey Graham be assholes about.
I'm also not sure what better way there was for her to kill the issue if she really is going to run for pres. The Pocahontas taunts were about calling her a liar and hypocrite. For better or worse, it's precisely because so many white Americans have these family stories (mine did too) and because so many people do understand ethnic identity in terms of blood (given American history you can hardly blame them) that a DNA test that says, "yep, there's Native American in there" is about the most efficient way she can address the stickiest negative framing the right has been able to land on her. She's clearly not Cherokee, but she wasn't just making shit up.
16. Taking a DNA test is not racist or colonialist. It is a neutral act. Publicizing the results in a way that people can interpret as claiming to be something you are not is potentially racist or colonialist. In Warren's case it is an own goal. No one who believes she was trying to benefit from affirmative action will change their mind. No one who believes she wasn't will change their mind. Does she not have a campaign staff or an aide with a functioning neuron?
Speaking of tar, why on earth is Hillary Clinton making on the record statements, in late 2018, about Monica Lewinsky?
(is there another phrase that means the same thing?)
sticky wicket
Shades of Clinton and "Dumb Donald". Democrats are inexperienced at fighting back so we can expect some missteps. There also may be a college debate style tendency to want to respond to every point, even when some are best dismissed with contempt.
Honestly, I think she's done a pretty good job and been as careful as we can expect a reasonable person to be. In a lifetime of knowing that one of her ancestors was Cherokee, and that it was important to her family, she described herself as Cherokee twice that we know of (cookbook, Harvard questionnaire), neither time to her advantage. The rest of the time, she has been very accurate (approx.: one of my ancestors was Cherokee), which is also true. She has never claimed to be speaking for the Cherokee.
She was actually great about identifying the real "Pocahontas" as a raped and kidnapped child. She specifically says she isn't a Cherokee citizen, and hasn't tried for any of the benefits of citizenry. She designated the $1M for a non-profit for Indigenous women.
I suppose I'll regret saying this in another year when I get even more woke, but this is what a reasonable person would do.
My own family had rumors of a Cherokee ancestor, disproved by a genetic test. But you know, that's interesting! When people asked me what I am, I'd say 'half Russian Jew, half German and Irish with a Cherokee princess somewhere in there.' (I don't say that anymore, since it wasn't true.) She had even more reason to know of that in her background, and perhaps some familiarity with the culture from growing up in Oklahoma. I mean, I've joked that I have Korean heritage from growing up with mostly Korean classmates. I think she's done fine with all this.
I'm sure she didn't consult any tribal leaders on this stunt, because she knew they would not be in favor, but this article from February makes her sound pretty good on Native issues up to that point. Not perfect, but that she makes an effort to stay informed and advocate for the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe, apparently.
Megan speaks for me, also. Sure, the checkbox and the cookbook were screwups, but the video was just telling the truth in a very complete way - including an accurate discussion of what her ancestry *didn't* mean.
(is there another phrase that means the same thing?)
Chinese finger trap.
Tweet that fully describes my family:
having all this family lore is sooooo goyishe. being ashkenazi jewish is like, our ancestors lived in this same shitty part of ukraine for hundreds of years and then fled because of pogroms to america the end.
hai.
Bad timing for Warren apart from the other issues noted*.
Also not wild about Clinton doing her and Bill's thing right now.
But since we're busy policing the speech of prominent dem women let me just say how much more it infuriates me that misogynistic and utterly failed presidential candidate Joe Biden is the leading Dem candidate for 2020. My God I would have thought the Kavanaugh debacle would have cooled that. (And I do realize current "polling" mostly reflects name recognition.)
*If she aspires to run for President at some point she needed to address it. I will take the liberty of quoting my daughter's thoughts on how she might have done it better (from an email to me).
She should have instead stressed that she was told this family history, that she had no reason to disbelieve, and mentioned it in her life when it seemed relevant. Then talk a bit with experts/historians about how this is actually a very common story and that she's since come to learn her grandma's story may not actually be true, but she fortunately never actually tried to "use" it in a meaningful way. Talk a bit with a native person abt appropriation and general feelings of native ppl abt these things, as well as trump/GOP racism and douchebaggery abt it, and then- big reveal! DNA test collaborates grandmas story! End by saying that shes glad to put this story to rest, ready to focus on issues.
Warren, from the video:
"I'm not enrolled in a tribe, and only tribes determine tribal citizenship. I understand and respect that distinction. But my family history is my family history."
i have complicated feelings re posting about this here, as in the past doing so on the subject of my own NA ancestry has provoked reactions from other posters that i felt were bizarrely hostile (of course! i would feel this!) --- on the other hand, as of now i'm still posting here, so ...
my own guiding principles re: acknowledging/claiming NA ancestry as someone who presents a gazillion percent pale pale MC white person have been - 1) vis a vis institutions (schools, gov'ts, charitable groups, never ever if there is any possibility whatsoever of it granting me a personal advantage, 2) from within those institutions i will consider it only if there is a very good case made that identifying myself as such would further the path forward for other whose own NA identities our society would generally recognize as conferring disadvantages, and 3) in interpersonal interactions with NAs only with the explicit invitation of the NA person/group.
the clearest example i can give is that i did not claim NA identify in applying to law school, but the school has a NALSA chapter and i was solicited to join--rather doggedly in fact!--and take part in recruiting and fund raising events by the existing members of NALSA. At the recruitment fairs the students were by no means hostile to my presence, and i had a great time at them and hope the time i spent with some really lovely people was of help to them whatever their educational/career path. the ladies who came with their fry bread kit for the annual fundraiser were also extremely low key and had no problem putting me to work. i've never had a negative social interaction with a NA person when they knew about my background probably because i'm not presuming or expecting anything from them.
i think i've ended up with this orientation from general principles of politeness and common sense but also because my family knowledge of NA ancestry isn't mythic, it is extremely gritty and tied to people i knew/know and there was no "princess" aspect of their lives, the impacts of being NA were/are hard, lasting and carried on to the next generation. well okay there was the one great aunt who ended up with the house on the golf course situation with the successive teacup poodles, louis seize furniture and AMAZING beehive hairdos, she'd clearly played her cards excellently well.
there is a huge debate among NAs re quantum issues, it seems to me to be not wholly but strongly generational, and it is really painful for a lot of people, another great reason to be as scrupulously polite as you can manage.
Tweet that fully describes my family:
having all this family lore is sooooo goyishe. being ashkenazi jewish is like, our ancestors lived in this same shitty part of ukraine for hundreds of years and then fled because of pogroms to america the end.
That's my family history except that my mother's father and mother went to Palestine instead of the U.S.
Technically, we weren't the same shitty part of Ukraine. Both my mom's side and my dad's side were the same shitty part of Poland/Russia, where the border kept jumping back and forth.
Technically, I bet it was a shitty part of Ukraine at least once.
And a shitty part of Germany several times.
39. There are people who (a) support EW and (b) have both DNA and genealogical evidence that they are descended from a literal Cherokee "princess." Not that the Cherokees even had such a thing, but "daughter of the tribal chief" is less exciting. If your ancestor is on the Dawes Roll, then you are eligible for Cherokee citizenship and benefits.
Heck, maybe even a shitty part of Austria-Hungary. The Jews are like super cosmopolitan.
49: I dunno. I bet it's fascinating, say, how Yiddish differed between Shitty Part of Ukraine (Galicia?) and Shitty Polish/Russian Borderlands, or how the migration routes that took the Ashkenazi to those various parts of the Pale, through the HRE or whatever, varied. I guess it's very goy of me, but families encode history in an interesting way. We're all walking fossil records of the history that brought us here. (Unfortunately, most of history is mostly shitty, but. Yeah.)
I very strongly hope that nothing in 46.1 is referring to anything I've said or done. If it does, please accept my sincere apology.
If I may, I think the principles outlined in 46.2 are exemplary,; my annoyance with EW about this is because she let her employer(s) think/say they had accomplished some aspect of their diversity goals. Whether this would have helped or hindered faculty recruitment of people with an actual NA identity, I guess I don't know.
It's a two or three day story, I'm sure, and probably on net will win her some marginal votes.
44.3 I'm sure TFA reflect me being unimpressed with Biden as a presidential candidate when I saw him last March. I cannot imagine he's actually serious about running.
25: Thanks. I ran across her twitter feed and it's been helpful to start to understand.
I guess what I'm getting hung up on--and as we all know, if Unfogged is anything, it's white people talking about how they get hung up on race--is that I feel like there are at least three separate predicates that are being blurred:
1) I have a distant Native ancestor [but am not myself Native].
2) I am Native.
3) I am a member of a particular Native tribal nation, such as the Cherokee Nation.
A DNA test can only have hope of answering the first one*, and I think Warren has, at least in this occasion, been careful to only claim that one**. (Sorry if I missed something.) But people who understand this better are claiming that's uncomfortably close to the latter two, because in the eyes of many white people those all mean the same thing, which has in other cases led to Native sovereignty (particularly concerning the right to judge membership) eroding. So since taking the DNA test (and publicizing its results) will, by that process, lead to deleterious effects on Native groups, doing so is a racist act, regardless of her intentions. Something like that?
So, if I do take a DNA test***, in the possible but unlikely event that some teeny-tiny amount of my DNA patterns seem pre-Columbian, I take it I should just keep quiet about it?
* Well, really, it's telling you the degree to which your DNA patterns look like ones that we believe, based on statistical analysis, evolved in the Americas. I guess it's debatable whether you think that is a reasonable proxy.
** The check-box thing was definitely her claiming the second one, and it was clearly wrong to do so. And it got us into this whole mess.
*** Which I probably will--close family members on both sides have taken them, so there's hardly any privacy left to lose.
And I do realize current "polling" mostly reflects name recognition.
I think that's pretty much all of it. Unlike the Republican clown car of 2016, there are going to be a lot of good Democratic candidates in 2020. Biden won't be the nominee.
(Who, among the serious candidates, do I like less than Biden in 2020? Nobody comes to mind.)
But this thread is making me realize something else: I'm becoming increasingly tribal about Democratic politicians, and find myself reflexively bristling at any criticism of any of them - even Biden, who is long past his sell-by date, and was rotten well before then.
Biden is a dick, but I am 99% certain that he won't pull off his human mask and reveal a cannibal lizard underneath. That's where I draw the line for Democrats: No cannibal lizards in 2020. I am a Never-Cannibal-Lizarder. Unless the lizard is running against Trump.
Tangentially related to this thread and as a direct followup to the recent genealogy thread, in the last week it appears that my Ancestry DNA test has succeeded in firming up the cloudiest bit of my semi-recent ancestry (and subject of a bit of controversy within the family) regarding the identity of a 2nd great-grandfather. We had a marriage certificate but it had 3 contradictory facts about the guy (age, parent's names, and birthplace*). The marriage ended quickly and our** best candidate remarried in another part of the state and had five children. I just got a new possible match at the estimated 3rd-4th cousin level (based on the hypothesized tree it would be a half 3rd cousin once removed) whose grandfather (well-documented and confirmed by the person who had the test) was one of the five children from the 2nd marriage.
So I am pleased with that.
*The birthplace was listed as a small town in tidewater Virginiia when for his parents and all other info it was Fishkill NY (lower Hudson valley). Somewhat interestingly the town (Warner VA) is very near where his unit ended up in the Civil War.
**"Our" being my daughter and me. my sister was vocally skeptical. I am waiting to inform her of the information until my unseemly internal gloating dies down. (Also steeling myself for when she continues to doubt...)
I think "cannibal lizard" is better than "yellow dog".
Because inside a cannibal lizard it's cannibal lizards all the way down.
The check-box thing was definitely her claiming the second one, and it was clearly wrong to do so. And it got us into this whole mess.
I once read an explanation that she thought she was letting Native students know that they could approach her for mentorship, as an also Native person. Which she isn't. But she is from barely-making-it Oklahoma, which is not the same thing, but might have some applicability. And people have said she's a great mentor. Given that we know her to be conscientious and careful, I think she should get the benefit of the doubt on this too.
Or maybe it was too hasty, and she thought "hey, I've got some Cherokee ancestry" as she filled out a form. But even that, I am not going to fault too heavily, since it was once, in the 80's.
Presumably, a cannibal lizard only eats other lizards, so in addition to legislation, it could also provide pest control.
59.last: Agree. And if Biden is nominated in 2020 he'll be my dick.
assault on Cherokee sovereignty
That's a bit strong.
I think Biden is better than Cuomo, but I'm not sure there's a living soul eligible for the presidency I wouldn't vote for over Trump.
Agree that Cuomo is even worse.
. . . I'm not sure there's a living soul eligible for the presidency I wouldn't vote for over Trump.
This is a terrible game, but I'd be less excited about Stephen Miller (who will be 35 in 2020) than Trump.
OK, yeah, there are highly problematic things in 8/9 that haven't been properly addressed yet. I still hate the circular firing squad feel of all this, esp. given EW is clearly trying to get better continuously. (Although you'd have hoped she would have started from a better baseline, being from OK.)
I would have thought she'd start out OK.
It's a two or three day story, I'm sure, and probably on net will win her some marginal votes.
If she runs it's going to be a 24/7/365 day story. And I think this is going to lose her votes. The inept way she's handled this goes to show that. I care about one thing in November 2020 and that's winning the presidency and getting this destructive asshole out of there. She's hobbled and hasn't shown she can deal with his bullying. There are other candidates out there (Gillibrand 2020!)
I think she's great and if she runs and wins the primary I will back her enthusiastically but I think she's damaged goods and hasn't shown that she can fight back effectively. This is Swift boated Kerry redux.
I don't think it comes across as inept to most of America.
I know someone said above that now it seems like she's going to get smeared that she did benefit from affirmative action, but only from Fox News. The main thing Dems need to do is get the right-thinking but failing-to-vote people to the polls, end of story, and I don't think it sounds inept to someone who thinks basically right but is generally uninformed.
I am amused that DNA allegedly demonstrates that my adopted son has more Native American ancestry than Elizabeth Warren, even though he was born in rural Kazakhstan in an area with no U.S. presence ever. Discussed here very recently.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_16654.html#2020341
That said, I don't see what she did was so terrible. She had claimed to have some Native ancestry, and she does, and everyone who said she didn't was full of shit. She acknowledged in her initial video that she doesn't claim to be enrolled in any tribe. She got trump to satay some stupid things about why he won't pay on his bet.
Sure, the Dawes Act descended Cherokees don't much like DNA testing. They have a significant financial interest.
I don't view checking a box for ethnicity as much of a sin, and it wasn't of any importance to Harvard's ranking in anyone's mind. If she was signalling solidarity with students from similar heritage, good for her.
You had to do this today when I'm tied up, and not yesterday when I was thinking about it... so from the midst of being tied up: dq, I have nothing but praise for your principles, often think of them, and am always happy to hear your views on the subject.
On my last extremely depressing visit to University Press Books in Berkeley, which has mostly gone to shit, I found this book and was very curious about contents:
http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/WILDIS.html
Has anyone read it? Worth reading?
Recalling the mirror image scandals in my own, uh, tribe:
John Kerry claiming with some plausibility that he didn't know his grandfather was Jewish and had taken the name "Kerry" at Ellis Island. The grandfather had died long before Kerry was born. He got some shit because he had allowed everyone in Massachusetts to assume he was Irish, but apparently never said that out loud, at least not on camera.
Madeleine Albright less plausibly claiming that she didn't know that her father, who had been a prominent diplomat for Czechoslovakia and left abruptly in 1939, was Jewish. The tribe did not take well to that.
"among the serious candidates"
I assume the qualifier "serious" means you aren't including Avenatti, because I'd vote for Biden over him.
People seems to be making the common Democratic mistake of assuming how a candidate will be attacked has anything to do with their behavior. This is the line of thinking that got us "why didn't Hillary disclose her speeches" or "why did Hillary have to keep a private server?" It doesn't matter what you do or what your strengths are, if you are running as a Democrat you will be attacked by Fox News for some made up bullshit. If Warren has never checked the box on that form she'd be attacked for being, I don't know, a class traitor to her working Oklahoman roots. Gillibrand will be attacked as an opportunist because she became more liberal when she went from representing a conservative district to representing a liberal state. There is no point in thinking you can deflect attacks that are at best bad faith and more commonly outright lies.
68-69: I had forgotten that Cuomo might get in the race. I bet he'd have the Martin O'Malley vote locked up.
I mean, specifically, Martin's vote. Nobody else in the Democratic Party is going to vote for that sonofabitch.
and hasn't shown that she can fight back effectively. This is Swift boated Kerry redux.
Or e-mails redux. Someday it is going to occur to people that the problem isn't the flawed candidate; it's a seriously fucked-up media ecosystem. I mean, Jesus, purple bandaids? How can the Republican Party be permitted to live something like that down? What was Kerry supposed to do with a supine media willing to accept whatever crap they were fed by morons and assholes?
82 before 79, which covered the same ground.
I like Warren overall, but this incident indicates seriously poor judgment in several ways and does make me question her viability as a presidential candidate.
For one thing, it's entirely fighting on Trump's turf and premised on taking his cartoonish racism as a proposition to be seriously debated. There's just no winning that sort of fight, as evidenced by the fact that Trump responded by saying he wanted to test her DNA "personally" (whatever that means).
Also, not consulting with the Cherokees first was just unbelievably shortsighted. This exact issue is a hot button for the Oklahoma Cherokees specifically because of a long-running dispute over the membership eligibility of the Cherokee freedmen, which was only resolved last year. Of course they were going to be pissed off at her for doing this. If she didn't consult with them because she knew they'd object and she wanted to do it anyway, well, there's some poor judgment right there. If she didn't even think to consult with them (implausible in my opinion since she's from Oklahoma and must know at least a little bit about this backstory) that would be even worse judgment.
Finally, and most importantly, people are mostly talking about this as an issue of identity and political optics, but it's actually a real legal and policy issue that is currently live and being actively litigated with high stakes. A federal judge in Texas just ruled that the Indian Child Welfare Act is unconstitutional on exactly the grounds that it is based on race rather than political status. (The Cherokee Nation actually happens to be a defendant in that case.) If this ruling is sustained by higher courts, it would be a catastrophic blow to the whole edifice of law and policy regarding the federal relationship to tribes with massive practical implications. Warren's silly DNA stunt is unlikely to have any major practical impacts itself, but it plays directly into the interpretation of Native status and identity that underlies this ruling.
Warren's silly DNA stunt is unlikely to have any major practical impacts itself, but it plays directly into the interpretation of Native status and identity that underlies this ruling.
This is the connection that I am unable to make. Warren explicitly disavowed the interpretation that you are imputing to her. Moreover, even without that disavowal, I can't work out how her DNA status -- or knowledge of her status -- has any conceivable bearing on this case at all. We already knew that some Americans have a small amount of Native ancestry. If that fact hurts Native Americans' legal position, then it just does. (But how could it?) In any event, there's nothing Warren can do about that.
Also, I don't know if I can take another Trump vs female Democrat contest, with the country as primed for misogyny as I have ever personally seen it. It doesn't matter to the nation what I can or can't handle, but that's where I am.
This has definitely backfired on Warren, so in that sense it was a mistake. But essentially everything von wafer has said on this thread is completely insane. You have an unconditional right to take a DNA test and publicly talk about the results. Maybe this hurts your chances to be elected President -- nobody owes you their vote (unless the opponent is Republican) -- but there's no general principle here that Warren has violated.
The general principle here is, don't look like a dumbass on the national stage when you're a Democratic senator, and she's definitely violated it.
I have a new theory for this. Warren is in the pocket of Big DNA Testing. .
87: Who on earth was talking about rights and what someone should be free or not free to do? This is all about how esteemed or disliked her actions are in public estimation, not whether they are (or should be) literally banned.
We already knew that some Americans have a small amount of Native ancestry. If that fact hurts Native Americans' legal position, then it just does. (But how could it?)
It reinforces the widespread perception that "Native American" is a racial/ethnic category to which people like that arguably belong, and it's unconstitutional to pass laws like ICWA that provide special treatment to people who belong to that sort of category. Obviously this sort of perception shouldn't have any bearing on the interpretation of the legal definitions underlying these laws, but in practice it clearly does, as evidenced by the ICWA ruling.
90: von wafer is. That's why I mentioned him. And who said anything about banned? In my reading, von wafer is calling Warren's actions immoral.
It reinforces the widespread perception that "Native American" is a racial/ethnic category to which people like that arguably belong
Is the problem:
a. a "widespread perception that "Native American" is a racial/ethnic category"?
or just b. Whether a person like EW belongs to it?
Because the latter half of your sentence: and it's unconstitutional to pass laws like ICWA that provide special treatment to people who belong to that sort of category.
would seem to follow from "a", but I myself have the perception that Native American is a racial/ethnic category.
It can't be the perception that NA is a racial/ethnic category that's the problem - the problem is that they're not being given sufficient protections specific to the problems remaining from the genocide over the past five centuries.
This comment feels like gobbledygook but I had a real point buried somewhere that I wanted to make.
92.last: There can be only one!
It reinforces the widespread perception that "Native American" is a racial/ethnic category to which people like that arguably belong
"Arguably" is doing an amazing amount of work here. Warren herself is making the opposite argument - I mean, actually making the argument, not "arguably" making the argument.
this incident indicates seriously poor judgment in several ways and does make me question her viability
This has definitely backfired on Warren
don't look like a dumbass on the national stage when you're a Democratic senator, and she's definitely violated it
Honestly, what the hell are you guys talking about? The only evidence I see that this was a big gaffe is that the usual suspects are telling us it is: the wingnut orcs who will always start poking around for any weak point to exploit, and the liberal handwringers who signal that that they've found one with their wailings of regret. Christ, it is exhausting to watch this play over and over.
I don't blame the Cherokee leaders for pushing back at Warren for this, because they have their own set of political concerns, but at a national scale, mostly nobody cares about the particulars of NA tribal inclusion except for native Americans and uncommonly decent people, neither of whom are often presidential candidates.
Theo said it himself: Warren's silly DNA stunt is unlikely to have any major practical impacts itself
Political necessity motivates endless silly stunts and otherwise I don't understand why that isn't the end of this matter.
96: I think Warren imagined that she could make hay out of Trump's million dollar donation comment, and has instead is getting condemnations from Native Americans. Plus it doesn't help her the underlying issue, which is that the Repubs are claiming that Warren benefited from affirmative action (which they think is bad) that she isn't even entitled to (which is somehow doubly bad). If you completely lose control of the narrative of your political stunt within a day or two, it wasn't a good political stunt.
I think Warren is guessing that there were a lot of people out there who think the juxtaposition between her fair looks and the idea that she has Native ancestry is somehow laughable. And there are a bunch of stupid loud men shouting that she should "prove it." And she did. And in a couple years, who can say what the outcome will be. Maybe it'll be 'she angered the Cherokee Nation and can't control her political stunts.' But maybe it'll be 'they said to prove it and she did, so it isn't so funny that a blond woman said she had Native ancestors.'
92: read my actual words. They're up above in the thread. If you have an issue with something I wrote, quote it, and I'll try to respond. Otherwise, blah.
93: No, the problem is a. That there are white people with some Native ancestry is neither here nor there in terms of the legal issue. The basis for having separate laws like ICWA that apply only to Native Americans is that the US government deals with Indian tribes as fellow governments on a "government-to-government" basis, not with individual tribal members on the basis of their ancestry. It's that understanding that is under threat with things like this ICWA lawsuit, and Warren's DNA test is counterproductive (to a tiny degree) from that perspective because it implies that ancestry is an important part of Native identity, which is part of the argument that the plaintiffs made and the judge accepted.
Sorry for commenting w/o reading 99 comments first, but:
As soon as I realized yesterday morning what was happening, I thought, "No good will come of this (but I'm slightly relieved that she wasn't merely repeating groundless "Cherokee princess" stories)."
I like her a great deal, but am not a particular fan of her or her putative '20 primary campaign. I don't really have a dog in this fight.
That said, I'm really, really not here for the "science is fine, but not if it offends indigenous people" takes. And I'm sorry, but that's what this "dubious DNA evidence" shit is. We don't take Ken Ham seriously with his "there are uncertainties in the science, besides, my religious beliefs deserve respect" line, but when tribal members go from the entirely correct "ancestry ≠ membership" line to "DNA is meaningless settler colonialism", suddenly we're monsters not to fall in line. Sorry, I'm off that fucking bus.
I'll admit that my feelings on this are colored by past controversies where (e.g.) 15,000 y.o. remains are claimed by tribes that we know with as much certainty as we know anything arrived in a region much more recently. I get the context. I really, really fucking do*. Context doesn't change how generic drift and carbon dating work, and it maddens me that we have to pretend**.
Finally, one of the things that I've read many times is indigenous peoples pointing out that, actually, their oral traditions turned out to be much more accurate than any white people (including/especially scientists) had ever credited. This is a fact about the world that I've internalized. But suddenly, in this case, oral tradition is a despicable tool of settler colonialism, and the fact that it's been corroborated by science just makes it more contemptible. Bullshit.
On some level, how poorly this has turned out is, per 98, evidence that EW would be a suboptimal candidate, and the earlier that's shown, the better. Fine. Doesn't mean I have to buy every take that's being offered.
*and in fact, if you reply to me by reiterating context that I fucking know, I'm not going to humor you. Western scientists have a bad history and present with indigenous peoples. Granted. Unless that means we abandon it in everything else, that can't actually justify abandoning it here.
**I mean, the pretense mostly doesn't matter, so it's fine as a gesture. But then you have to pretend that it's not a gesture, and it becomes a swirl of bullshit.
Honestly, what the hell are you guys talking about?
I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm talking about the response to Warren that I'm seeing from Native people and organizations with which I am familiar.
So you think the response to Warren that you're seeing from Native people and organizations with which you're familiar are good indicators of her strength as a presidential candidate?
Yes, on the general principle that pissing off your allies for no reason is a bad idea.
White people are so hard to deal with I'm going to go check my DNA to see if I can be something else.
You are whatever the cops perceive you to be.
Fuck 'em, they can't vote.
Typical bleeding heart liberals, telling cops what they can and can't do.
If there a role for white allies like Ari and Teo in explaining this mess to confused liberals, it's by belng really slow and loud and clear about the very important distinction between being currently a member of a Native American tribe (which as Teo said is a political, citizenship status), and having some Native American ancestry, and that it is perceived by current members of Native American tribes to be important wrongdoing to loosely claim to be "Native American" in the absence of a currently valid claim to tribal membership.
I'm getting this from Ari, elsewhere, and it took me a long time to get it -- the NA criticism of Warren for having claimed to be Native American (which she's not doing anymore, but she did in the past) isn't based on her claims of NA ancestry being false. I think people assumed they were false, because most white people's are, but even though they've turned out to probably be true, that's not the issue -- she was raised white, doesn't have any currently valid claim to tribal membership, and so she was wrong, and seriously, importantly wrong, to casually claim to be NA on the basis of distant ancestry.
I found that really confusing, and I think most of the people in this thread don't yet get that perspective -- like, not even to disagree with squarely, just didn't get that that's a possible framing. And the things I'm reading from Native writers are taking it as so obvious that it's almost unspoken, which makes it hard to pick up on if you're generally clueless on the issues like I am.
Also, hard to pick up on this stuff when the world is literally burning around you and institutions are collapsing and the president of the United States is calling a woman he paid for sex ugly while comparing a murderous monarch with his own most recent Supreme Court nominee.
Anyway, there's a lot going on, so I haven't really paid attention to this and I have deliberately avoided reading about it anywhere but here.
That's still somewhere that isn't here.
Not to stir the pot further, I think it's also true that current Native American tribes vary pretty broadly in their degrees of political and communal continuity, and that some of the controversies around tribal membership and federal recognition have been significantly affected by economic development opportunities. This country has been awful to native peoples and I don't begrudge anyone their share of the casino profits/oil royalties/whatever, but a tribe's current membership rules should be regarded as a political settlement within that community and between that community and the federal government, not as a moral claim about how non-members can think about their ancestry.
I had many things to say, but they have been replaced by "I have been on this bus since 4:18." I should calculate its effective speed, probably a single digit.
Try painting "Straight Talk Express" on the side of it.
113: Was she really "raised white"? Not in the way that almost all of her White colleagues on the Harvard faculty were. Growing up on the edge of poverty in small towns in Oklahoma, and getting married at 19, puts her closer to the median Native American's experience than to the median Harvard professor's experience.
Warren first publicly identified as Native American when she was on the Penn and Harvard Law faculties. Her working class Okie background, and causally connected, probably the least impressive academic credentials on the entire faculty,* made her not-quite-acceptable to some of her Whiter colleagues. Identifying with her non-White heritage-- and non-White colleagues and students-- was a natural consequence.
Harvard Law School was also where Obama began to identify as African-American, despite having 0% African-American ancestry or DNA.
*BA University of Houston, JD Rutgers-Camden, no more advanced degrees.
"J.D. Rutgers-Camden" would make a good pseud.
Or, I suppose, name for kid with Waspy but liberal parents.
Was she really "raised white"?
Yes. Working class, but not Native American.
I'm also still not convinced that she hurt herself politically. There aren't that many enrolled Cherokees, and most of them are in Oklahoma. In purple states, "Cherokee princess in my family tree" is almost as large a voting bloc as soccer moms.
I agree that this incident itself is unlikely to make much difference one way or the other for her politically.
I think that's a real possibility -- that Native Americans are largely going to think she's an asshole, but it won't do her much harm because they're mostly not a large voting block. Which makes the whole thing sad and regrettable, but maybe not politically consequential.
The fact that she apparently thought it was a good idea really does make me wonder about her judgment, though. What was the potential upside? What did she think was going to happen? She couldn't possibly have thought Trump would just back down and write a million-dollar check. Maybe she just thinks picking fights with Trump is inherently a good way to rile up her own base, but this particular one was on his terms and I don't see how it was likely to help.
I think she thought, reasonably, that having good evidence that her family history of Native American ancestry wasn't bullshit would be effective pushback against Trump calling her a liar. I think there's a fair chance it is -- for people who aren't hardcore Trump fans, and who also aren't involved enough to have a sense of the political issues around what she did, the DNA test makes his insults look baseless.
Sure, but how many people like that are there really? I think most people who are engaged enough to hear about stuff like this already have pretty firm opinions on both Trump and Warren.
130: I think there's a lot of people who qualify as vaguely informed who might catch wind of this and think she won. Anyone who is claiming to know that this stunt is a miscalculation is reading tea leaves.
Isn't this basically just a replay of 2016? The annoying woman has all her "facts" and her "truth" and her "evidence" but the real issue is that she thinks she's better than you.
i'm quite sure it wasn't either of you, charley or lurid! and i'm also sure it was comments along the lines of "oh yeah sure 'cherokee princess' for sure, you faker," which as unimaginative points out in 125 is going to be an accurate riposte so so so many times. but the context felt aggressive, probably because i felt it carried an assumption of bad faith on my part that i didn't feel was warranted based on the personal details i'd disclosed, but it is entirely likely i actually hadn't said anything particularly personal at that point here. i can't recall and am not going to look that is for sure.
i'm not sure i would completely endorse the idea that growing up disadvantaged white in a community with clearly-identifiable disadvantaged NAs in it would cause one to ID with NAs later on at harvard, but then i was never at harvard so don't know. i mean, obama deciding to self-identify as AA was perhaps tethered in being treated as functionally AA (i assume, but don't know bc have never read anything on this subject written by obama or others)? whereas warren wouldn't ever have been treated as NA based on appearance, self-presentation, etc.
i think my own brushes with this whole mess have the older i've gotten just made me more and more and more sad and noticing of the depressingly diverse ways that it sucks to be a non-white minority in the US. like it is differently enraging to be the descendants of africans brought here as chattel slaves vs a NA, but hoo boy is it easy for those who've made it into the category of white to be offensive and annoying to these and other groups. e.g., the unthinking takes re: potential graves of children who died of lack of care/malicious harm in catholic orphanages/care homes being unthinkingly reported as if nothing of the like had ever been discovered before in the US. anyone of minimally good faith would reflect for 10 seconds on the history of this country and stop themselves, i mean logically that cannot be a correct claim. but it seems to pass without general remark among those of us who are white.
113: I'm glad you posted this comment, and honestly had no idea that that was the locus of confusion. I'm still weirded out that it (apparently) is one. I've been arguing with my uncle for three days on Facebook and that argument, like the discussion here, seems to involve a near-zero level of mutual understanding of what we are even arguing about.
Nobody thinks having an African ancestor 10 generations back makes them black in any meaningful, current-lived-experience sense. Why is this so difficult/different?
(Is this a stupid analogy and a stupid rhetorical move? Probably! The whole thing is so stupid! Why is everyone being so stupid about it?)
Nobody thinks having an African ancestor 10 generations back makes them black in any meaningful, current-lived-experience sense. Why is this so difficult/different?
It's not at that extreme, but what about mixed-race people whose skin colors and degrees of cultural affiliation vary within and between generations? You could perfectly easily have two people with the same amount of Native American ancestry, one of whom is enrolled in a tribe (let's say Cherokee) and the other of whom isn't. The latter shouldn't say "I am Cherokee" but could perfectly reasonably say "I am 1/8 Cherokee" if that's an accurate description of their ancestry.
If we had some bacon, we could have bacon and eggs, if we had some eggs
Effective speed of bus: 7.3 mph. Silicon Valley is a joke.
My take was going to be thoughtful and measured and full of questions, and then when I sat down to type, it came out like this:
...is that White People are not going to be able to seize upon a hard-and-fast rule that will make it easy to understand Native identity issues, perhaps because no one has made a good enough Power Point deck. This is always annoying, because getting yelled at for racial insensitivity is a heavy cross to bear and even the Passion didn't take as long as a 5-credit semester course and Jesus redeemed everyone and we just need to redeem ourselves.
I'm okay blaming the bus for that. Sofia Samatar wrote an essay, which deserves to be more famous than it is, about (among many other things) white impatience. Part of the problem with these discussions is that people want to understand, they sincerely want to understand, but they know they're smart enough that it shouldn't take all that long to learn the rules, assuming their interlocutors are trying to explain in good faith.
In the logic of diversity work, bodies of color form a material that must accumulate until it reaches a certain mass. Once that's done, everyone can stop talking about it. For now, we minimize talk by representing our work with charts that can be taken in instantly, at a glance. In her book On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life, Sara Ahmed writes of diversity workers of color: "We are ticks in the boxes; we tick their boxes." The box is the predictable form, the tick the sign of how quickly you can get past it. Get past us.
Well, you ask, should we dissolve all the committees, then? Keep faculty of color off them? What's your solution? Try to read the demand for solutions and your frustration for what they are: products of the logic of diversity work, which wants to get the debt paid, over with, done. Diversity work is slow and yet it's always in a rush. It can't relax. It can't afford the informal gesture, the improvised note, the tangential question that moves off script, away from representation into some weird territory of you and me talking in this room right now. Diversity work can't afford to entertain the thought that some debts can't be paid, that they might just be past due. With agonizing slowness, this work grinds on toward payment--that is, toward the point where it will no longer exist. It's a suicidal project.
Anyway, I told my family story here and that's still roughly where I am. (This is, for our truly avid readers, not the same story I told more recently about my paternal grandfather -- the Métis ancestors and cousin who enrolled in a tribe are on my mom's side.) I do have mixed feelings about being heavily invested in protecting any definition of whiteness.
Lastly, to dq: i'm also sure it was comments along the lines of "oh yeah sure 'cherokee princess' for sure, you faker," -- I remember this and I remember who said it, I remember thinking it was bullshit at the time, and you handled it graciously.
I have two questions:
First, what does Warren's DNA test prove? We can all, including her, agree that it doesn't prove she's Native, right? She's now said as much, which is a good thing, though as the Gessen piece I linked above makes clear, her video is ambiguous on this point. Regardless, let's take her at her word, which leaves us with evidence of what exactly? That she very likely had a distant ancestor who had some Native blood, which tells us nothing. We don't know if that person was a member of a Native community or would have been considered Native by today's standards or the standards of her or his day. So, the DNA test accomplished what other than propping up a pernicious misconception about how Native identity is determined? I honestly don't understand this part of people's argument.
Second, if you want to talk about the politics rather than the substance of her video, why did she do this now? She's not running for office at the moment. She could have waited until after the midterms. She must know that Democrats running in red states, including her colleagues in the US Senate, don't want to talk about affirmative action. So, why do this right now? It's totally mysterious to me.
That's a pretty sweet comma splice in my second full paragraph. I'm just gonna gaze at that in wonder for a few minutes.
Are DaveLMA and DaveLHI different people?
That she very likely had a distant ancestor who had some Native blood, which tells us nothing.
It tells us she had a distant ancestor who was Native. That's how you get a more recent ancestor with "some Native blood."
Are you willfully ignoring the point that blood doesn't necessarily confer indigeneity on someone now and may not have in the past? I honestly can't tell at this point who's being disingenuous and who just doesn't get it.
It's also possible that I'm missing some important angle. If that's the case, I'd be grateful if someone would explain what it is.
141.2 And a couple of her colleagues are counting on Native turnout to win re-election.
Right. I can't even imagine how pissed Heitkamp and Tester must be at the moment. Neither Baldwin nor Klobuchar are gonna lose, but they can't be thrilled either.
Now that I think about it, Sinema and Rosen are probably also wondering what the hell she was thinking.
I suppose I ought to read that Texas case cited in 84. I'd forgotten until I was looking for that Alito quote above that Thomas wrote an opinion in the Baby Girl case calling the statute unconstitutional. I haven't thought it through -- it didn't look before 2016 like there was much point in following Thomas' threads all the way down the rabbit hole -- but if he's right that the Indian commerce clause is really only about trade, then I think maybe a whole lot of things change.
148 I bet Trump says something about EW when he's here day after tomorrow. Will he say something that helps us? Maybe!
145 seems to be saying that a) just because Warren has some Native blood doesn't mean she counts as Native, which is true, and also b) that just because she had a distant ancestor with some Native blood doesn't mean that _any of her ancestors_ counted as Native either, which betrays some confusion about the way inheritance works.
152: We don't know if that person was a member of a Native community or would have been considered Native by today's standards or the standards of her or his day.
That's what I wrote all the way up there in 141. Again, it's possible I'm missing an angle. If so, I'm eager to hear what it is, because I'm truly not understanding what the DNA test proved other than something about blood.
152 I'm not sure what VW was saying, but I will repeat, from the recent DNA thread, that having DNA that matches someone from North America, or the Orkneys, doesn't mean one's ancestors were there. It means some ancestors came from the same population as the people who are in current models as being from there.
Example, a Blackfeet woman I know slightly (and follow on twitter) was saying yesterday that her DNA showed a substantial East Asian component. Totally not accounted for within the historical period: and, really, we're talking about a fairly limited space of time and number of people for her to have an ancestor who came to North America from Asia in the 19th or 20th centuries. Most likely, this is DNA that came across the Bering Strait long ago. Right?
154 is true but that is not what VW seems to be saying. He seems to think that it is possible for EW to be descended from someone with Native blood - Native ancestry - without EW having any ancestors who were actually properly Native.
Indigeneity isn't necessarily now and wasn't necessarily in the past defined by blood. Is that actually hard for you to understood? Or do you reject that statement? Or am I missing some actual argument that you're making?
145/146: you may be underestimating how much relevant history and policy people just don't know. I'm not sure anyone is being disingenuous. I'm too confused and exhausted to be disingenuous.
To play devil's advocate, though, perhaps this is the claim: Warren has found another piece of evidence for the apocryphal family story that some ancestor of hers was indigenous. The evidence is now as follows: the family has passed on information about a Cherokee ancestor; DNA evidence gives some support to (is not inconsistent with) the family claim. You could envision a world where the claim is more substantiated by finding a bunch of records, comparing with oral histories -- it may just be unknowable either way, but it might be possible to pin down. Or is she stubbornly holding onto this even after serious historical investigations have turned up nothing? I've always found this story a little repellent and haven't delved into the details, which won't stop me from shooting my mouth off here.
Heitkamp's Twitter feed is all about Native issues rn: https://twitter.com/SenatorHeitkamp I should send her some money.
For what it's worth, I'm leaving aside the accuracy or inaccuracy of DNA tests, because, having been accused of parroting GOP talking points in the past, I'm trying to avoid being called anti-science by one of the Daves.
156: yes. But what is one possible scenario where EW is descended from someone with Native ancestry but does not herself have any Native ancestry? Hypothetically.
157.2 is what I'm assuming people are saying, but it doesn't, I don't think, make any sense. If people understand that indigeneity isn't necessarily now and wasn't necessarily in the past defined by blood, using DNA tests to prove that one of Warren's ancestors was "Native" is, as I said above, doing nothing more than propping up a pernicious misconception about how Native identity is determined.
159: you're talking in circles, nameless person.
Put another way, what does "Native ancestry" mean to you? To many Native people I know, people who have spoken out about this issue in recent years, it means an ancestor who was a member of a Native community, which is NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE PROVEN WITH A DNA TEST.
155, 156 -- I guess I'm lost too. VW, let's assume that a short strand of EW's DNA shows a sequence that models predict is consistent with populations that lived in pre-Columbian North America. Aren't the only choices here (a) the DNA was inherited, at some point in the past, by someone with pre-Columbian North American Ancestry or (b) the models are insufficiently developed, and this DNA strand is actually from an ancestor who lived in Lappland or East Africa, or somewhere other than pre-Columbian North America?
Kim TallBear would say that "pre-Columbian North American Ancestry" doesn't equal "Native." She's been clear on that point, and lots of other Native activists have agreed with her. It's possible to say that they're using motivated reasoning (people have talked about profits from casinos and extractive industries in this thread), but I don't know that it matters.
That said, there's another argument, about the accuracy and inaccuracy of the models--especially given how few contemporary Native people have agreed to have their DNA sequenced by these companies--which is also relevant. But again, I left that issue to the side, because the cultural question seems more interesting to me.
Everyone with Native DNA has or had a parent with Native DNA. That's how you get DNA.
Therefore, logically, everyone today with Native DNA had a pre-1492 ancestor with Native DNA.
Putting aside concerns like 154, everyone with Native DNA before 1492 was a resident of the Americas.
Are you arguing that this proves nothing because it was possible to be a native inhabitant of the Americas before 1492 and not be a Native American, because you might not have been a member of a Native American community?
What Kim TallBear and others think is relevant to whether Warren can count herself as Native, but not to the question "were any of Warren's ancestors Native?"
Sorry, I want to be as clear as I should be: the cultural question is more interesting to me because Warren has agreed that she's not Native but then indicated that her DNA proves that her ancestor was Native, and I'm not clear how that argument works without projecting non-Native definitions of identity back into the past.
You're skipping terms here, VW. I'm with you on using the word Native to describe an identity. I think it's reasonably used more broadly than citizenship in a nation, although I know some want to use it more narrowly. But what I don't see how you avoid is saying that someone who has some little bit of pre-Columbian North American Ancestry has that same little bit of Native Ancestry.
Granted that nearly all the people with Native Ancestry are not Native, either in identity of citizenship terms.
168 was to Charley, but I guess it might answer ajay's question as well.
169: you're defining Native as "having been in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus," right? If so, Kim TallBear and many others don't accept that definition.
I'm ok with saying that a particular ancestor identified by EW may not be any more Native than she is. But as you work back into the past, eventually you're going to come to someone who is Native by anyone's definition. Aren't you?
170: it doesn't completely but it sounds like you're arguing that the answer to my 166.2 is "yes" which is a not very intuitive conclusion to come to.
No, because we don't get to define for Native people who's Native. Native communities make that decision for themselves. That's the foundation of cultural sovereignty. And so a DNA test can't tell us who was and who wasn't Native.
171 Well, they weren't Welsh. Or one of the lost tribes of Israel.
173: sorry, I'm not making that argument. I'm saying that other people have made that argument, yes.
171 does answer my question. OK, I did not know that and that is indeed very non-intuitive. Do they exclude anyone in particular?
I'm not sure that if "pre-Columbian North American Ancestry" doesn't equal "Native", it's furthermore true that there's zero correlation or relevance between the two things ("which tells us nothing," as you put it above). Is it not even a little more likely, statistically, that her family story is true? Are people with pre-Columbian North American ancestry literally no more likely to be Native than anyone else? The strength of that claim seems extreme to me.
I mean, they are saying that there were lots of native Americans in 1491 living in communities, but these aren't Native Americans and they weren't living in Native American communities? Who were they?
They're saying that DNA evidence doesn't get us to who was and who wasn't Native in 1491 any more than it does today, that Native communities, for reasons that teo brought up earlier and other reasons as well, must be allowed to determine for themselves who is and who isn't Native, and twas ever thus. Whether it's intuitive to non-Natives isn't really a huge concern for the people advocating this position, I don't think. Either cultural sovereignty matters or it doesn't, they're saying, and it seems to me (and to some of them) that Warren wants to have it both ways.
I'm not nearly as steeped in this stuff as vw, but I take it that the arguments he's referring to are in the same general area as the argument that "Native" as we know it today is an identity defined within a colonial context that can't necessarily be projected back to the very different context of pre-colonial times. We've discussed that one before and it may be a little easier to grasp intuitively for us white people.
174: True enough as far as it goes, but also a bit circular. It's easy to say that plain old white folks don't get a vote on who counts as Native, and EW is an easy and silly case to be fighting about, but when people with a plausible claim to Native identity seek to sort out among themselves who's in and who's out of a tribal polity, that requires some set of rules. Ancestry may not be necessary or sufficient, but I think it's fair to assume that it's at least relevant in many or most such rules, no?
This is pretty clear (interview with Kim TallBear via link in 25). "We should look at it as citizenship. Countries allow for immigration and have laws that deal with naturalisation of new citizens. I think tribes should do that too."
The larger point about sovereignty is of course valid and I have badly overextended my interest in EW's personal case here. The one line I'd draw, though, is at saying that DNA test results provide literally no meaningful or interesting information about the past in this context. I agree that they're given far too much weight, but I think they give some information. If it's got to be all or nothing, though, then yeah, maybe "nothing" is best.
183: I don't think I said DNA tests tell us nothing. I'm pretty sure I said that they told us things about blood, which isn't, when it comes to defining Native identity, necessarily very helpful in the present or the past. But I'm getting tired and have to wake up in a few hours to drive to the airport, so I'd better try to get some sleep. Good night!
I don't think we have any fundamental disagreement at this point, but here's the quote from 141: "First, what does Warren's DNA test prove? . . . That she very likely had a distant ancestor who had some Native blood, which tells us nothing." I'm sorry if I misquoted or misunderstood your point here. Sleep well! I hope you spend less time in air transit than I spent on that fucking bus.
From what is represented as Kim Tallbear's position here, I think we have to put limits on cultural sovereignty. It may make some political sense and even answer to the demands of justice in today's America but it can't extend back into the indefinite past.
At the risk of sounding like a Republican talking point, why should only NA communities exercise cultural sovereignty? What happens if everybody does it? Wasp cultural sovereignty allows them to stipulate the Jews or Catholics aren't Americans. If we're not happy with that, why is it granted to NAs? That's not intended as a rhetorical question: we can recognise the doctrine as a response to the cultural and economic position today. But that recognition necessarily implies that it is not absolute.
Why should the doctrine of cultural sovereignty today extend into the past? None of us have any idea whether EW's NA ancestor was or was not counted as a member of a native community while alive, and this ignorance is shared by the members of those communities today (when membership clearly has meanings which it did not then).
Thanks to vw for explaining this in such detail.
141: She is running for office and sure to win. Her opponent is an annoying little Trump suck up.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. She's not in an actual race. Has Diehl ever been within 20 points of her in any poll?
God help me for wading into this mess, but...
Yes, stipulating that DNA may say nothing about whether someone can accurately be described as Native or even whether an ancestor met the prevailing tribal standards for membership generations ago. Yet even now, but especially back in the period where Warren's family lore developed, people (white people) defined Native in ways that were not necessarily faithful to tribal standards. Not saying those white definitions are right or appropriate, but application of those standards shaped EW's family history. Seeing her mother as Native (or having Native ancestry), EW's father's family opposed her parents' marriage and so they eloped.
We can certainly reject that definition of Native now, but it doesn't change EW's parents' experience. And it doesn't erase the more individualized personal sense of identity built up around growing up with that family story. It just kind of feels like Warren is getting the blame for a long history in which the dominant white culture defined Native peoples in ways that ignored tribal understandings. But Warren's story makes her a product of that culture, not its cause Concluding that her mother's family was not really Native in any proper sense does not erase the fact that her mother's in-laws didn't want their son marrying her because they considered her part Native.
Challenging Warren to reexamine her family history through a different lens is fair. But I don't think the understanding she grew up with makes her a bad person--or bad candidate. I do think this whole blowup creates a bunch of new material for the GOP to use to attack her. Which is why I wish those on the left would slow their roll before joining the pile on every time a Democratic leader is perceived to have made a misstep.
185: thanks for clarifying. That's 100% on me for having painted with too broad a brush. And thanks for the best wishes. I'm already at the airport, where my first flight seems to be on time.
190: as I was just saying on a completely different but similar issue, it's always someone who is trying who gets the abuse.
The man currently helping to cover up a notorious international murder to help protect his cash flows weighs in again today:
Elizabeth Warren is being hammered, even by the Left. Her false claim of Indian heritage is only selling to VERY LOW I.Q. individuals!
Forty some percent of voters are about to ratify the current leadership of the country.
Per Moby's 114, the Upside Down is a truly fucked up place, and I greatly doubt all of our abilities to make wise or even reasonable choices with regard to our words or actions. I most certainly doubt my own.
186: I know almost nothing about this topic, but to your middle section, the difference is that Native American communities are sovereign entities predating the US who self-govern and have power to negotiate with the US government. The relationship is complicated, but they are entirely allowed to decide who is an isn't part of their nation, just like any other self-governing independent nation. Thinking of them as a racial minority in America is not going to clarify any of this.
Headlines of the Upside Down #4716:
Pro-Trump pimp, Nevada GOP assembly candidate Dennis Hof dies after rally, birthday party with Grover Norquist, Joe Arpaio and porn legend Ron Jeremy
He died at Love ranch which he owns. Apparently Tucker Carlson called in to give a shout-out.
they are entirely allowed to decide who is an isn't part of their nation, just like any other self-governing independent nation
This is not actually true of any other nation - it's against international law and against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. States are allowed to set rules on who counts as a citizen, but they cannot set those rules exactly as they wish, and they cannot then deprive people arbitrarily of citizenship.
197: Correction accepted, but I think "nations get to create their own citizenship rules" is a fine shorthand here.
Nations get to define their own citizenship rules. But Americans are accustomed to not treating heritage and citizenship as coextensive. I sometimes still call myself Irish (or part Irish) even though I am not currently a citizen. (My ancestors were.) Teasing out why and how the rules are different with respect to Native American heritage strikes me as a worthwhile discussion--but not as the sort of thing any person who is not a big dumb racist should be expected to already fully comprehend.
199=me. I am out of practice with the commenting...
Irish people sometimes get pissed at that, I've heard, but they are seriously outnumbered by Americans with Irish ancestors so I've never worried about it.
I'm glad we're fleshing out the differences between various statements that "is Native" can be shorthand for, which I was trying to get at (poorly) in 58. 181 is helpful in wrapping my head around the question in 179. I'm getting the sense that we collectively have an underdeveloped vocabulary here.
I haven't watched the video, and point taken about tribal identity, but I'm not convinced this was a misstep, politically. No one cares about some pissed off Cherokee, and now she can say "I took a DNA test!"
But I wish we could have Warren's politics and Kamala Harris's cool.
143. DaveLMA != DaveLHI. There, that's settled.
As for the Warren thing, my contention is that the argument in this thread is irrelevant. (Interesting, but irrelevant.)
The political question is whether continued attention to this ridiculous issue helps her or hurts her, not whether (with all due respect to them) actual Native Americans think she misused the term "Native." Kim Tallbear's opinion is not of interest to 99% of the electorate (more or less).
What the low-attention voter hears is "Warren, who a DNA test says is 1/1024th NA, checked a box that said she was NA at Harvard, and that box helped her get tenure or excluded a deserving NA applicant." Working through that thicket of "yes, buts" and half-truths and lies is more than most people will care to do. The best one can say is that it is early enough that it will blow over by 2020, if she stops responding to Trump and doesn't otherwise revive it.
And specifically with regard to Trump, there are lines of attack like, "Where's my million bucks to give to charity? Is your bank account too small to pay that, like all the other small things you have? I guess stiffing people on bills is the only kind of stiffing you can do." And also "Call me what you want, but at least my grandfather wasn't running a whorehouse in Canada."
Hell, if I were running the Dem campaign in 2020, I wouldn't have my candidate debate Trump on the grounds that there's no point in talking face-to-face with a liar. The only winning move is not to play.
I'm getting the sense that we collectively have an underdeveloped vocabulary here.
This seems right to me. Or at least, I have some work to do in this regard.
Von confuses me here:
They're saying that DNA evidence doesn't get us to who was and who wasn't Native in 1491 any more than it does today, that Native communities, for reasons that teo brought up earlier and other reasons as well, must be allowed to determine for themselves who is and who isn't Native, and twas ever thus.
The part I'm not getting is the projection into the past. I certainly understand that the question of who is Native is, today, a complicated matter that must be decided by Native communities - pretty much by definition. But it seems to me that pre-Columbian natives are, again by definition, Native or indigenous. Who lived in the pre-Columbian Americas besides indigenous peoples?
199 gets at why this is tricky. It would be ridiculous to think that it was an affront to Chinese sovereignty that some citizens of Singapore who are not Chinese refer to themselves as Chinese. It would be ridiculous to think that it was an affront to German sovereignty for me to say that I'm half German. I can think of a number of reasons why the Native American situation is different (and assume that I'm ignorant of even more reasons), so I'm not actually arguing that these analogies mean it's ok to ignore tribal definitions. But it's certainly something specific and non-obvious about Native communities specifically that isn't mainly about sovereignty or non-sovereignty.
(First sentence was supposed to read "not Chinese citizens".)
it seems to me that pre-Columbian natives are, again by definition, Native or indigenous. Who lived in the pre-Columbian Americas besides indigenous peoples?
As far as I understand vw's summary, the idea is that not all pre-Columbian Americans were Native Americans, and you can't tell which ones (if any) were; only actual Native Americans can decide. They're indigenous but not necessarily Native.
For another example, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel has a lot of official positions about what makes you Jewish and not Jewish which are, well, wrong (or at least that a lot of people would rightly dispute). That Israel is a sovereign nation and the Chief Rabbinate is their duly appointed official representative, doesn't magically make them right. Again this isn't to argue by banned analogy that Native communities don't get to decide who is Native, but rather the emphasize that sovereignty in and of itself isn't really the key point.
This is too hard. Usually, when I have to think of things with fine distinctions and precise definitions, people give me money and health insurance.
"Who lived in the pre-Columbian Americas besides indigenous peoples?"
I'm not saying it was aliens...
But it was aliens.
In addition to aliens, there were presumably lots of peoples living in the Americans back long ago who have no descendents (genetic or cultural) among Native Americans because they were genocided away, either before or at the Columbian exchange.
The link in 116 is interesting.
Within hours of the appearance of the video, Kim TallBear, a professor at the University of Alberta and a leading expert on the use of DNA testing in tribal communities, posted a statement. Sharply critical of Warren's behavior and publicity surrounding the test, she pointed out that tribal governments have developed an approach for determining who belongs to a tribe that is explicitly not based on the results of DNA tests.
This, of course, is something that Warren unambiguously agrees with. So what is the disagreement? Here is the next sentence:
Still, she wrote, Warren and her staff "know very well that the broader US public will understand a DNA test to be a true indication of Elizabeth Warren's right to claim Native American identity in some way."
The article is full of talk about how Warren implied the opposite of what she is saying - for instance, how the dark skin of her siblings conveys that she wants credit for being Native American. This seems like an extraordinarily uncharitable reading.
But note how the goalposts move from the first sentence to the second. The first sentence talks about tribal identity, and misrepresents Warren by suggesting a disagreement where none exists. The second sentence is, I think, the key to the actual disagreement.
Warren is careful to make the distinction between family history and tribal identity. TallBear's argument starts with the assumption that these distinctions are meaningless; that talking about family history can only be interpreted as a claim to Native identity. That doesn't seem right to me.
The discussion is complicated by the fact that Warren really was guilty of the offense of which she is accused -- but only in the past, when she was putting her name in a cookbook, etc. So maybe Warren hasn't apologized sufficiently -- I get that. But TallBear's argument is about the content of the video, and it doesn't seem to take into account the video's actual content.
why should only NA communities exercise cultural sovereignty? What happens if everybody does it? Wasp cultural sovereignty allows them to stipulate the Jews or Catholics aren't Americans. If we're not happy with that, why is it granted to NAs?
WASPs haven't been subjected to several centuries of physical and cultural genocide.
there were presumably lots of peoples living in the Americas back long ago who have no descendents (genetic or cultural) among Native Americans
Of course - this is true for any human population. 47% of adult women in the US right now will leave no descendants.
They're indigenous but not necessarily Native.
That's what I had been thinking, but von seems to be using "indigenous" and "Native" interchangeably in the context of blood relations, and projecting them both back onto 1491 in the same way. See 145, 156 and 160.
(I recognize that I am merely reiterating your question in 179. The fact that you are satisfied with the answer suggests that I'm missing something.)
OK, so if you're a descendent of one of the people who has no descendents, you're out of luck as far as getting into a tribe these days.
219: yes, von is saying "indigineity" when he should, for consistency, be saying "Nativeness". Being indigenous is a simple statement of fact. Being Native is a specialist term with a particular meaning in the context of US race politics.
218.last. Cite? That's an "interesting" statistic.
It appears to be missing a necessary component, like over what period.
222: This is the closest thing I can find. The terms and "women", "never had children", and "47.6 percent" occur in it, but that skips over a rather important detail.
This thread reminds me of K. Anthony Appiah's writings on collective identities. He has always argued that after we remove any pseudo-scientific criterion for membership we still expect there to be some objective criterion that satisfies all our demands for justice for these identities, but there just isn't any.
221: you're right. Thanks for clarifying what I muddied.
133: as unimaginative points out in 125 is going to be an accurate riposte so so so many times
Literally me.
The employment of all manner of people by the Mongols is hardly news, however gobsmacked that reviewer may be.
Also, the thing about the burning a city down with its own pets is pretty widely repeated.
Of course, but do we have evidence of other Englishmen in the employ of the Mongols?
The idiocy of the reviewer turned me off after about a paragraph, so.
I tried looking for a book excerpt instead but it came to my attention via a link to that review. I had thought when I posted that that it was real Mossy bait. I am disappoint.
I thought the reviewer was a bit annoying also. Too much Slate-pitching very well known parts of history. The book seems like it could be interesting
The book may well be interesting, but that guy clearly isn't qualified to judge. It is in principle me-bait, but I stalled out during the Northern Song some time ago.
Speaking of vaguely Mossyish things, give me a heads up if you find any good sources on Azhaliism (阿吒力教）。
Review by this guy (DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00104434):
As for the rest, the book is a work of imaginative fiction dressed up as history, in which groundless suppositions on one page have mysteriously become proven facts on the next. Can the author really have intended it to be taken seriously ? A few further details must serve to characterize the book and the nature of its author's scholarship :
p. 2 : ' The freshly turned-up documents . .make fascinating reading, even in the cumbrous medieval script'. The principal document is Paris's chronicle, and in particular the letter of Yvo of Narbonne printed as an appendix to Ronay's book. The ' cumbrous medieval script' he has in mind here, though unacknowledged, turns out to be J. A. Giles's English translation of Paris, published in 1852
[...]
p. 113: a most eccentric derivation is confidently offered for 'Genghis'-- a name the meaning of which continues to puzzle Mongolists. Ronay's (unacknowledged) source seems to be Gibbon (Decline and fall of the Roman empire, ed. Bury, vn, p. 3, n. 4)--perhaps not the most up to date or reliable guide to questions of Mongolian etymology.
[...]
This is merely a small selection from mountains of pretentious foolishness. The Tartar khan's Englishman is popular historical writing at its worst.
238: Never heard of. I have some Yunnan stuff in the queue, I'll let you know. (Trusting here the Buddha will reveal your identity if you are meant to know.)
Just think of all the time you might have wasted reading it.
232: Also told about Harald Hardrada.
Yes. I suspect it is legend, not history.
|| As long as we're talking about issues of Native sovereignty, I thought this article about the Mohawk response to the recent cannabis legalization in Canada was interesting. The quoted elders' responses sound legally and culturally correct (if personally incomprehensible to me); I'm curious as to how the community poll will come out. |>
"That said, I'm really, really not here for the "science is fine, but not if it offends indigenous people" takes. And I'm sorry, but that's what this "dubious DNA evidence" shit is. We "
It's very dependent on the sample population with which they do the comparison - the end result from places like 23andme is equal parts science and marketing.
Fucksticks!*
*Apropos of nothing in particular and a whole lot of Irish whiskey and our general situation.
- the end result from places like 23andme is equal parts science and marketing
Consumer science.
The 23andme/Ancestry commercials make me shouty. "I used to think I was part of this one culture that I grew up with and celebrated with my family. But then I mailed in some spot on a stick, and now it's off to buy a whole new wardrobe and music and start eating a new cuisine. Screw you, Finland; I'm Croatian now!"
It's very dependent on the sample population with which they do the comparison - the end result from places like 23andme is equal parts science and marketing.
Yes, this. The estimates are based on the sample size, and the estimates therefore can and do change (we had a conversation about this recently, about how Ancestry had updated its ethnicity estimates...). As I understand it, Ancestry's Native American DNA database is quite small, whereas its database for, say, people with English or Scottish or Irish origins is relatively large (because taking a DNA test for the purposes of genealogical research is kind of a SWPL thing to do, I suspect).
I would never call myself "Irish," though Ancestry currently has my "ethnicity estimate" as "100% Ireland and Scotland." I would, on the other hand, quite comfortably describe myself as "Irish Catholic," as a broad and fuzzy marker of ethnicity, with "Irish" modifying the particular brand of Catholicism in which I was raised. It's like, when your dad asks you out to lunch, and you first go to St. Pat's for Mass, before going out for falafel...
So, I can just drive to Canada and buy weed? Will they check my car to see that I'm not bringing it back here?
They now have signs at the border, informing Canucks that they cannot bring that stuff into the US of A. But yeah, you can totally drive up to Canada if you want some weed.
Could somebody meet me in the middle of Lake Erie with some?
Anyway, driving all the way to Buffalo seems like a bit much.
You just need to consume it in Canada, is the catch. You can now legally buy weed in Canada, sure, but I wouldn't recommend trying to bring it across the border into the States.
Buffalo is way too close to Toronto. I recommend Alexandria Bay, at the Thousand Islands: they just never check anything there.
Good advice. I was going to also see the Canada side of Niagara Falls since I have a passport now, but that can be a different trip.
Criminal defense lawyers in Detroit are stoked for the new source of revenue from everyone who "forgot" they had a joint, or a few kilos, in their suitcases when they were crossing.
Burlington, Buffalo, and Seattle too.
It's easiest to forget in Detroit, because you go North to leave Canada.
The last time I crossed at Alexandria Bay, the US customs official was worrying about my driving on my own into the wilds of the Adirondacks: he didn't even ask to see my documents! "You drive safely, now, dear"...
Of course, I should be probably be offended....Instead, I'm thinking, "Easiest border crossing ever!"...
"It's O.K. I have enough weed and food for three weeks if I get stuck."
I once accidentally smuggled a 4 foot bong into Canada and then back into the States. Dudes at the border were super chill.
It was the '90s.
On the other hand, I know a guy who had a pair of tweezers with a tiny bit of resin on them in his ashtray coming through Sault Ste. Marie, and the Border Patrol locked him up and confiscated the vehicle. Luck of the draw, I guess.
I work on a project with a largely Native board/steering group. My primary take away from that experience has been that it doesn't even particularly make sense to talk of "Native" opinions on things. Even on fairly narrow discussions around some issues, there has been wide disagreement between representatives from different tribal groups about issues like privacy, and access to the digital resources we are working with. The existence of disparate opinions doesn't mean not taking them all seriously, though.
---
On the general nationality/identity thing, I've written this here before. But I genuinely get fucked off at people who are emigrants multiple generations away from Scotland claiming to be Scottish. They aren't.
I don't have some deeply thought through defensible philosophical position on this, but it seems obvious to me that 'Scottishness' is a product of being deeply connected to and/or embedded within a certain culture and set of practices. My friend A whose family came to the UK from Pakistan in the 1960s is Scottish -- she speaks with a Glasgow accent, grew up and went to school in Scotland, etc. -- in a way that someone whose grandparents moved to Canada or the US decades ago is not.
So if people from a particular Native group want to make that claim re: their Native identity, it seems perfectly consistent to me. It doesn't differ that widely from my own emotional response to the same topic. And if another Native group don't feel that way, that's fine, too.
Claiming to be 'Scottish' is a way to claim a ethnic identity without claiming 'white'. Insofar as people want a way to claim one of those, the fake Scottish seems preferable. And I think its a real thing that white people feel left out of having identity and causes lots of bad things.
My wife saw a NYC outer boroughs 4th-gen 'Sicilian/Italian' and an actual born-in-Italy/(had to have a second wedding in Italy because the relatives wanted to take part without all buying flights) Italian get in an argument over who was more Italian.
But I genuinely get fucked off at people who are emigrants multiple generations away from Scotland claiming to be Scottish. They aren't.
Well, okay, fair enough. But there are these little pockets of Canada (e.g., the town of Perth, in Lanark County, Ontario) where people just seem (to my admittedly not-Scottish eye) to have some sort of connection to Scotland, even though they are now generations away.
When I first visited Scotland, it was a bit of a revelation to me: things felt vaguely familiar, and I felt that I was visiting the source (English Canada would perhaps better be designated as Scottish Canada, is what I thought). And many of our founding-of-the-nation-of-Canada politicians were actually born and bred in Scotland, of course (Sir John A. Macdonald, for example, fondly known to Canucks as Sir John A, was Canada's first PM). Not sure how or why this should elicit any sort of anger? Genuinely asking, and not for a friend.
Having been born and bred in Canada, AKA the second home of the Scots....
How did Canada get so polite then?
To be clear, I meant because it had so many Scots people, not because of you personally.
In Scotland we've been exporting every straight cunt tae canada fir generations. Result? They're boring fuckers, and we're a drug-addled underclass.
- Irvine Welsh, Skagboys (via)
If you follow the link to Jeet Heer's Twitter stream, there's the heart-warming story of a guy who took his date to see Jordan Peterson and then she dumped him.
"The thistle and the maple leaf are the emblems of the free"
Not sure how or why this should elicit any sort of anger? Genuinely asking, and not for a friend.
As I feel roughly the same way as ttaM, let me clarify:
Bits of Canada look and feel quite Scottish due to historical links with Scotland - totally fine.
Canadians coming to Scotland and realising that that's why Canada looks like it does - also totally fine.
Actual Scots (born in Scotland) moving to Canada and becoming Canadian prime minister - no problem.
Actual Scots moving to Canada, settling down, and still thinking of themselves as Scots as well as Canadians (or even more than Canadians) - perfectly OK.
But:
Canadians who have no cultural link with Scotland, whose closest Scots ancestor is several generations back, and who may even never have visited Scotland, calling themselves Scottish - very irritating.
I would even be careful about phrases like "Irish Catholic" unless you're pretty confident that the way you do Catholicism is actually similar to the way that Irish people do Catholicism, and not just the way that you think Irish people do Catholicism, or the way that you think Irish people did Catholicism in, say, 1935. I wouldn't take kindly to some Canadian saying "Oh, I hate fun, drink lots of whisky, shout about the Pope being Antichrist and never do any work on the Sabbath because I'm a Scottish Presbyterian!" because I grew up among Scottish Presbyterians and that's a pretty outdated and offensive depiction of them. No, hypothetical Canadian, you are not doing those things because you are a Scottish Presbyterian; you are doing them because you are a dick.
The second home of the Scots is Hell.
278: only because no one else can hack it there.
274: I tracked down the original (it's from Reddit).
It's all -- as usual -- Harald Hardrada's doing.
277: My grandmother's parents who had been Episcopalian joined the Roman Catholic Church. Somewhere in that family tree or my grandfather's there are some French Huguenot ancestors who settled in Ireland, so she used to joke occasionally that she or maybe her kids were Irish Catholics. This was a joke, because her husband's family was Yankee through and through.
277: My grandmother's parents who had been Episcopalian joined the Roman Catholic Church. Somewhere in that family tree or my grandfather's there are some French Huguenot ancestors who settled in Ireland, so she used to joke occasionally that she or maybe her kids were Irish Catholics. This was a joke, because her husband's family was Yankee through and through.
re: 269
Seconding what ajay says above.
I'm not sure why it's so irritating to me, although I think it primarily comes from people who either make a claim to knowledge and experience they don't have, or whose knowledge is a very second hand and out of date knowledge that dates to whenever their parents/grandparents/great-grandparents left. It's especially super-irritating when those people's vision of the country is some chocolate box anachronism that bears little relation to what is really a very different country from the country of 40 or 50 or more years ago.
If people feel affection for Scotland, that's great, though.
And cultural connections are great, and they go both ways, for example, Scottish traditional musicians travelling to Cape Breton, to learn from people there.
to bring the conversation full circle ... what ttaM and ajay are saying is about oh maybe 50-70% of the dynamic re NAs except add in horrendous history of genocide and expropriation *that is ongoing right now* and bob's your uncle. extreme politeness and caution is called for, in my view, whether you agree with the intra-NA political agenda of the NA person or group (for ex re quantum issues) you are interacting with or not. as for conflicts between NA and the rest of us, i understand for ex anthropologists and archaeologists getting pissed off about assertions of sovereignty over human remains from thousands of years ago but then i think about the smithsonian's collection of human remains and it occurs to me that perhaps we can wait to acquire more human knowledge re precolumbian north america until after we've done the decent thing and returned everyone's relative's bodies. or not, i'm not personally involved in these conflicts, but it isn't *not* connected.
also had a conversation in some depth with a friend last night about research on the cross-generational genetic impact of stress and ended up telling her many details re: maternal side of family going back to reservation and it just made me so sad for my grandmother and my mom. so much pain.
This may not help, but I can tell you that no American who identifies with Scotland in an annoying way is ever going to say "Oh yeah, I'm a Scottish Presbyterian!" It's more like "Those highlanders, with the kilts, and the warfare... I'm from Clan McGregor of course"
I don't much identify as Slovak, though I have relatives who do, and who have the sort of connection to Europe that is being treated with derision here. It's a very ordinary American thing. (My actual Slovak ancestry is no more recent than my grandparents.)
I have a good friend whose father was German, but he very strongly identifies with his mother's ancestry. He will tell you he is Armenian. He's very serious about it.
When JPJ talked about "Irish Catholics," it didn't even occur to me to think of Ireland. Irish Catholics live in Boston.
My city-born wife is super-annoyed by people from the suburbs who, when asked, say they are from (for example) "Cleveland." (But if I say "Euclid," who is going to know what that is?)
The Washington, DC football team has its offices in Virgina and plays games in Maryland. When I lived in New Jersey, I lived closer to New York than the Jets' and Giants' stadium.
My only genuinely felt ethnic identity, beyond "American," which I'm not proud of, is "Catholic." But surely that is offensive to Catholics, since I no longer believe the things that Catholics believe. Still, I do feel a real connection with the Church.
I'm fascinated that ajay and ttaM have ethnic identities they are possessive about. I totally get it with Native Americans, though.
I identify as a Platonic-American, myself.
But surely that is offensive to Catholics, since I no longer believe the things that Catholics believe. Still, I do feel a real connection with the Church.
"Believe" is a hard word. Most people who go to church leave it up to the clergy to do the serious "believing" and having a coherent worldview. I say if you have a real connection with the Church, you should join a church and go sometimes. Don't worry about being prepared for debates on theological principles.
I say this as someone who
- in fact does identify as Scottish Presbyterian, because I had ancestors who were ministers in that faith, although even in the 19th century they were hired interchangeably across different "Reformed" churches (Dutch, German)
- has been going to a Presbyterian church, despite the alarming tenets of the Five Points of Calvinism (T.U.L.I.P.)
, because I grew up in it, and
- clearly nobody at the church believes in all five of the Five Points of Calvinism (T.U.L.I.P.) - they are extremely liberal
, and despite
- the church not being made up of Scottish people or being "Scottish" in any way, aside from the imagery on one of the six banners about church history
But in a different direction living in London doesn't make you not Scots and that'd still be true even if Scotland became independent and sovereign.
Significant diaspora populations are a weird case. If you grow up in an all Irish neighborhood in Boston and as many Irish descendants live in New England as in Ireland, why do the ones in Ireland get to define the word?
When a white American says they're X, where X is the descriptor for a European ethnic group, understand that with a few exceptions, they're using a shorthand for X-American. Irish-American is a thing. Scottish-American is a different thing. German-American is certainly a thing. There are traditions and cultural norms that have developed differently on this side of the Atlantic and are not broadly shared among all white people.* The exceptions being actual recent immigrants, and on the other end annoying jerks as described in 287. (I tend towards the plastic paddy side of things so I need to be careful there--my strategy to avoid it is to put effort to understand the original culture explicitly from an outsider perspective, but there are pitfalls there.) I think it's better to give the benefit of the doubt on this until proven otherwise. Describing the Irish[-American]ness of my Irish-American family has increasingly little to do with the experience of the actual Irish, especially as they all left before the Easter Uprising.
On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about people from distant suburbs identifying with the big city. Using it as shorthand to describe a location? Fine. (Although "outside Cleveland" is better.) Claiming a sense of ownership over a place whose tax base you fled? Asinine.
* Of course, they get mixed, too, even in ways that don't spread to white America in general. My family eats pork and sauerkraut on New Years, which as far as I can tell is a Pennsylvania Dutch thing. Not that we have any PA Dutch heritage that I know of, but we've spent generations in close contact with the Fancy Dutch. I also have a taste for scrapple, although I only eat it every few years because I enjoy living.
When a white American says they're X, where X is the descriptor for a European ethnic group, understand that with a few exceptions, they're using a shorthand for X-American
Well, they are wrong and they should stop doing that, at least when there are actual Irish people in earshot. (They should also stop doing the reverse, e.g. calling Nelson Mandela a great African-American leader.) Yes, Irish-American is a thing, and the word for that thing is "Irish-American".
There's way more of us than them. It's like "acoustic guitar" now needing to be clarified. It's not fair that they need to specify because they were first, but language marches on.
Context matters, as always. I'm describing something that usually happens in America* and is understood as such; I suppose the Internet requires greater precision. (You could rightly argue that's an accuracy and not a precision issue, to which I'd say I mean syntax and you mean semantics.) Anyway, I would usually say "Irish-American" or "of Irish ancestry" which I hope are inoffensive in all contexts.
* The United States**
** of America (not Mexico)
If you grow up in an all Irish neighborhood in Boston and as many Irish descendants live in New England as in Ireland, why do the ones in Ireland get to define the word?
There are also more people in the UK with Irish heritage than there are in Ireland; five million UK residents have an Irish parent or grandparent as of the last census, 14 million claim Irish ancestry.
That's different because the English created the conditions that required emigration.
They created the conditions that required the United States too, if we believe the egregious Mr Jefferson. What's your point?
My intuition is that, absent special circumstances, I should refer to people in the manner that they prefer. I am becoming persuaded that this is wrong, or that special circumstances are more common than I suppose.
301: Very few Irish people were involved with that. At least relative to now.
I think Moby's trolling. I only troll in my footnotes, as is the way of my people.
It's really hard for me to know myself.
If only you were Greek-American.
I don't feel any particular identification with a European-ancestry hyphenated-American group; to the small extent that I feel any cultural identity it's regional. Marrying someone from a totally different part of the country has been interesting, because I do now notice regional differences I took for granted.
(Oh dairy queen, this is probably overkill but let me clarify that way back in 140 when I said "I remember thinking it was bullshit," I meant I thought the reaction was shitty, not your claim -- I realize that sounded like I meant the exact opposite. I also think this is not the first time here that I've tried to say something compassionate and supportive and had it come out 100% backwards. I'm sure we can attribute this chronic failure to my ancestry somehow, or possibly to my astrological chart ("this one really puts the 'ass' in 'astrological'").
||
A large number of those in the lower status occupations, as well as slaves and soldiers, were Manipuris, people from the Imphal valley who had been brought as war-captives or were their immediate descendants, and by the mid-nineteenth century they were said to form perhaps as much as a quarter of the population or at least 25,000 people. They were Ava's underclass and nearly all domestic servants and many ordinary workers were from this displaced community.These Burmese Buddhists are just a super-charming bunch.|>
Lurid i understood you as you meant to be understood!
As a partial Latvian American I can describe a weird phenomenon of being a relict population of a now largely historical culture. All the Latvian stuff I know is from the interwar period and older. Actual Latvians find it bizarre.
But you could teach them to play instruments!
I haven't seen it myself, but a critic's review of Crazy Rich Asians says it examines "the gap". I guess "the gap" refers to the time elapsed since the Asian parents left, and how the Asian culture has moved on but the Asian-Am children are told about the culture that existed when their parents left. So there's a gap. That hadn't occurred to me, but apparently it is a strong enough phenomenon to show up in a movie, and here you guys are, talking about something similar.
Although I'm sure a diligent search of TFA would prove me wrong, I'm not a fan of "I am Scottish" to describe myself, although my dad's grandmother was born in Dumbarton, with the surname Douglas, and my mom's grandmother comes from Scots-Irish folks who settled the Susquehanna frontier back when it was a frontier.
Where I get off the bus is the apparent assertion, by folks VW cites, that I cannot say 'my dad's grandmother was Scottish' because I am not, myself, a Scot.
I thought it was more that you cannot say "my dad's grandmother was Scottish" on the grounds that ancestry.com says you have Celtic DNA or whatever and there's a family story of how she was from Scotland (but it may be that she was part of a curious small settlement of people on the Faroes, or such). Whereas if you were Scottish now (born and raised), and your dad's grandmother belonged to this anomalous community in the Faroes, it still wouldn't be correct to say that she was Scottish, but in practice no one would care terribly much -- particularly not if you had other ancestors who were more properly Scottish.
I'm still, after all of this, surprised that Warren doesn't have more documentation one way or another.
(They should also stop doing the reverse, e.g. calling Nelson Mandela a great African-American leader.)
This is hilarious, and I bet the thought process goes "He's a great black...wait, am I supposed to say black? African-American leader."
315 last: As I understand it, none of the extant documentation supports EW's family story.* And that which does exist, contradicts it. So the explanation must be that the documents are fake news of some kind. Which could be: I'd believe that there are plenty of instances of people being classified 'white' in some 19th century census where the proper answer was a category that didn't exist: mixed race.
* I'd love to be corrected on this.
Did EW specify how much African ancestry the DNA test found, out of curiosity?
Oh, look at that (PDF). "Little or no evidence of African ancestry."
It states the "African" comparison was 37 Nigerians; I wonder if that's sufficient.
316: I heard a sadder version of this recently. The context was specifically rape-murder victims, and the speaker kept calling them "survivors". I didn't say anything, but kept thinking, no, they didn't survive!
318: The actual report is linked from the Masha Gessen New Yorker piece that VW linked someone upthread. IIRC it found no evidence of African ancestry (all European except the potential NA), but it's not clear how hard they looked.
Ha, pwned. Anyway, all the non-white reference samples were pretty limited, which is par for the course which this sort of thing.
Note in particular that the NA reference samples were all from Canada and Latin America, which is typical because US tribes generally refuse to participate in stuff like this.
On one measurement the Warren sample falls about halfway between the Canadian and Mexican NA reference samples, and Bustamante's like "yeah, that seems about right." He's not wrong, but that's the level of precision we're talking about with a lot of this sort of research.
Using only people from Canada and Latin America as a Native American sample is far better than getting an African sample from only Nigeria.
They're both ridiculous, but one is really absurd.
They're probably not trying to be representative of all of Africa, just those parts slavers who sold to the British colonies stole people from. Nigeria is at least conveniently central among those areas. That being said, still pretty bad.
Also apparently deliberately all-Yoruban Nigerians?
Oh, nevermind, that's really bad.
Also using (regional) Chinese as a test for Asian identity, when a sampling of Tungusic and other Siberian peoples would be more appropriate.
It looks like Tungusic peoples aren't an option in the database they used. Still, would it be inappropriate to combine at least the West African sets?
It's especially super-irritating when those people's vision of the country is some chocolate box anachronism that bears little relation to what is really a very different country from the country of 40 or 50 or more years ago.
Okay, fair enough, and I can see why that would be irritating. And, as ned points out in 287 (and yes, ajay, you can rest easy: nowadays, there aren't too many Canadians, nor Americans, whose identification as "Scottish" involves spurious claims to an outdated notion of Scottish Presbyterianism!...), there is certainly a Scottish version of the plastic paddy phenomenon (kilts and clans and bagpipes, and etc.).
That said, I guess I want to push back against the notion that the current residents/citizens/subjects of the "home" country get to decide who can, and who cannot, claim an affiliation/identification with that country, especially if that country's fairly recent history (and I'm defining the 19th and early 20th centuries as "fairly recent," btw) involves large-scale emigration to other parts of the globe. Which is certainly the case with Scotland, of course. Because culture/ethnicity is not the same thing as nationality, unless we want to adhere to some sort of 19th-century notion of the nation-state as the expression of the people, or something like that. And I'm pretty sure that culture just does not work like that.
I'm not personally asserting any sort of Scottish identity here (because, so far as I know, I have no ancestral ties nor meaningful cultural links to Scotland whatsoever).
But I am claiming that Canadians with ancestral ties to Scotland have every right, and - kilts and clans and bagpipes aside - often good reason, to use the term "Scottish" in their descriptions of their family histories and origins.
And, more broadly, I am claiming that Scottish emigrants to Canada had an enormous impact on the socio-cultural-political history of Canada. It's not just a few Scottish-born Canadian Prime Ministers: it's the fraternal organisation of the Orange Lodge in small-town (and big-city!) Ontario (in the late nineteenth century, and outside of what is now Northern Ireland, the country with the greatest number of Orange lodges was...Canada! and Toronto was sometimes known as "the Belfast of Canada"...); but it's also Tommy Douglas introducing the notion of universal health care to Canadians. On balance, and the Orangemen aside, I do believe the Scotland-to-Canada connection can account for some of the more "progressive" elements of Canada versus the United States...though I guess that's a whole other topic, and no doubt ajay will object...
To your last point I can put the cheap shot reply, namely that the Scots must have self-sorted into the shitheads who colonized the southern US, the more progressive types who went to Canada, and the remainder elsewhere. I don't know where AU and NZ fall on this spectrum. (My surname ultimately derived from the shitheads group.)
The shitheads who populated the US were Scots-Irish. Maybe those generations in Ulster acted as some kind of shithead filter?
I could be persuaded that 17th century colonists to Ulster were self-selected for having a threshold level of assholishness.
Voiceover by Ewan McGregor as Mark "Rent Boy" Renton:
"The Battle of the Boyne was fought on the 11th of July, 1690, between two rival claimants of the British and Irish thrones, James II, Catholic, and William of Orange, Protestant. The battle was decisive. The Protestants won. But 400 years later, the uncompromising and victorious loyalists now feel estranged from the modern, secular United Kingdom. The sectarian songs have been banned, but they still gather and remain loyal to the victory of 1690, and to a simpler, less tolerant time. But if nothing else, history has shown us very clearly, these are people whom it is unwise to provoke."
T2 Trainspotting's No more Catholics scene made me laugh out loud. Now, I'm not saying that these are the worst people ever. But there is a strain of assholishness that T2 Trainspotting has a bit of fun with.
Btw, there's a little town near Ottawa, but on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, that was heavily settled by Irish Protestants. Its official name is Shawville, but my (RC) parents always called it "Boyneville."
Because, yeah, emigrants from England, Scotland, and Ireland imported their sectarian conflicts into the so-called "New World" (not so new to the indigenous peoples who had lived there for thousands of years, of course). You can say that that was not "really" English, Scottish, Irish, whatever. But at a certain point, I think, you do have to reckon with the transatlantic dynamics of the British Empire...the import and export of peoples, cultures, languages, religions...and the ways in which they could all mix and mingle.
" I am claiming that Canadians with ancestral ties to Scotland have every right, and - kilts and clans and bagpipes aside - often good reason, to use the term "Scottish" in their descriptions of their family histories and origins."
I... don't think I ever said they couldn't? Nor did i ever say that Scottish settlers didn't have a huge influence on Canada's history and culture. Not that modern Canadians, especially those descended from Scots, shouldn't talk about this or study it or cdlebrate/deplore it.
What they can't say is "I'm Scottish". Because they aren't.
And don't get me started on Canadians saying they burned the White House in the War of 1812. No, you didn't. You shredded an invading US army and sent it homeward to think again. That's good! Be satisfied with that! Don't start appropriating the achievements of (in this case) a Scottish admiral and an Irish general commanding a force composed of British troops and Colonial Marines (freed slaves).
Did they stick the shreds back together to make a threatening note?
A polite note (because Canada). "Sorry we were in when you called."
I have burned
the house
that was in
all white trim
and which
you were probably
saving
for leaders.
Forgive me
it was not guarded
so white
and wooden
319. "Little or no evidence of African ancestry."
So, my 212 is right. It is aliens, and they are running for office.
342: When dear leader brought that up recently for some reason, he blamed the Canadians, and I think every prominent Canadian who commented on it said something to the extent of "oh, no, not us, we'd never do something so rude; that was the limeys."
As for the Ulster-Scots plantation selecting for assholes, many (but not all) of said assholes were former border reavers. There had been asshole selection pressure for centuries that did not affect the rest of Scotland.
As indicated in the Weekend Longreads thread, I have an idea for an app that will make someone a bunch of money.
OK, I'm still working it out in my head, but it's apparently possible to see if some person and I have matching DNA sequences on our X chromosomes. This is a big damn deal for genealogists, because, since it can't be transmitted from father to son, each of us can only get material on our X chromosomes from a limited number of people. So, 7 generations out, we each have 128 ancestors. For a man, though, DNA on an X chromosome can only have come though something like 20 of them.
OK, here's the app. The location of these 20 people in a standard chart -- or however many it is in the next generation back, or the one before that -- is known. An app that would reduce my chart to those people, and would also reduce any chart I find in the same way, could well find, in seconds, a common ancestor between me and some other person. Better yet, in my chart it might say "unknown mother of Mary Smith" while in the other persons chart it might say "Dorothy Jones [wife of William Smith]." Then I get to see what documentation, if any, the other person has . . .
The app needs to run against any gedcom file -- this is the standard way family trees are downloaded and uploaded. I'm sure the big genetic DNA services would like to offer this kind of sorting, and so there are 3 or 4 buyers for the app.
That's it.
What software do you use for gedcom files now? It seems like the thing to do would be to implement this as a feature (plugin maybe?) to some existing product.
Right. The game is to apply it to my tree, and also apply it to other people's trees that I can find online, in various places.
This chart shows where every man's X dna comes from.
That's what the kids are calling it these days?
Hrm, yeah: For an XY person, the number of possible originators (in a given tree) is the same as their XX chromosomal parent. For an XX person, they're a carrier of two X chromosomes; considering both, the total number of possible originators is the sum of that of both their parents.
At the oldest generation, assign each person a value of 1 (since we don't know any further back than them). The Fibonacci sequence is clearest when considering a new XX person: their XX parent is one generation behind them, but their XY parent is two generations behind them (since the XY parent is the same as their XX parent). The sum of the previous two generations (with a base case of 1) gets you that classic Fibonacci look.
So, for example, only 3 of an XY person's great-grandparents could be the source of their X chromosome. On the other hand, for an XX person, five of their great-grandparents are in play.
re: 339
Yeah.
"My great-grandmother was Scottish." -- totally fine.
"I grew up hearing about Scotland from childhood, and have always wanted to visit where my great-grandparents came from." -- totally fine.
"Scotland was a big cultural influence on Canada/New Zealand/wherever." -- totally fine.
"I'm Scottish." -- not fine.
Especially when that claim (not being made by anyone here of course) is then used to justified a load of chocolate box Braveheart bullshit, or, and this is one that particularly drives me to murderous rage, really really bad non-grammatical Scots.
Rant follows ...
---
Scots is, depending on perspective, either a distinct language which shares many common roots with English, or a distinctive Northern dialect of English with different influences from Norman French, Flemish, and Norse that makes it distinct from formal/standard English. Either way, it has a grammar, and rules of morphology, and so on, and it can be gotten _wrong_.
I've had furious arguments with people who produce this bullshit on Facebook and elsewhere, and then claim that their bastardised bullshit is correct (they learned it at their Granny's knee)*, or that there's no fact of the matter to be had about who is right.** And they have a right to produce this bullshit because they are "Scottish".
* Granny usually from Glasgow, where they don't speak Scots.
** there is a fact of that matter, and the fact of the matter is the person who is right is me.***
*** unless I'm arguing with another Scot, who may speak a different dialect of Scots, or be more of a native Scots speaker than me (which might be the case for someone from the North East, for example).
"I can has cheeseburger" comes directly from Robert Burns.
355: I'm surprised about the Glasgow bit. Assuming you're being serious, how do you classify the Glasgow patter? Fundamentally English but with Scots and other influences?
And obviously that sort of twee shit is awful.
On Scots grammar, I've enjoyed looking at grammar edits on the Scots Wikipedia. It's meaningfully different and not in a way that a monolingual English speaker can predict. And I recommend other monolingual English speakers check it out--Scots being the only non-creole sister language (or highly divergent dialect, whichever) English has, it's the only way you'll get that experience of reading something right on the edge of intelligibility with your native language that people from bushier language families routinely get.
I had the same question. What is it that they speak ("traditionally", I guess) in Glasgow?
The older strain of Canadian immigration from Scotland was Gaelic speaking and not Scots speaking though, right? There aren't many left, but what are your opinions on how native Gaelic speaker who grew up in a Gaelic speaking town in Cape Breton are allowed to identify?
re: 358 / 359
Scottish English, although with a lot of distinctly Glasgow dialect words. But they don't typically use Scots grammar or distinctively Scots vocabulary in the way that people do from the North and East of the country. There's broadly a diagonal line down the country, from North East to South West, where on the eastern side of that line, historically, people spoke Scots, and to the west of that line, they spoke Gaelic, and now speak more or less standard English, with a dialect words mixed in. From the 13-14th c onwards, anyway. Before that, Gaelic was more widespread including parts of the central belt. There are parts of Scotland where Gaelic has _never_ been spoken, though.
And Gaelic itself was originally confined to a small area of the west of Scotland. So you have a 500-600 year pattern of expansion from a smallish pocket of Scotland, to become the dominant language across much of the country, and then a retreat back.
re: 360
I don't know. Presumably they can identify as Gaels, and as whatever hyphenated identity they like.
360 seems to think it's a clever trap but isn't. You don't have to speak Scots (as a first language, or indeed at all) to be a Scot. Most Scots don't.
re: 364
Yeah, I guess the point is that there's a different kind of cultural connection with the retained linguistic connection.
I don't think Scots is any kind of pre-requisite, for what it's worth. It's just an annoyance when people do it badly. Not in the sense of not pure -- most people who speak some/any Scots speak some kind of melange of Scots and English, and code shift wildly depending who they are talking to and in what context -- but badly in the sense of grammatical mistakes someone brought up around that kind of speech would never make.
I think something like 1/3 of Scots speak some kind of dialect, fairly often. Where I'm from people speak a fair bit of Scots, but less so than I've heard from people from bits of the North East, or rural Fife, say. Neither of my parents are Scots speakers, so I spoke it a lot more at school than at home, and on the continuum between broad Scots, and English with the occasional Scots word, probably sat somewhere in the middle then. I'd expect I'll basically lose the ability to code shift the longer I live in London.
362: Huh! I would have guessed Glasgow and the western central belt had been fully Scots-icized, after having been (way back when) a Brythonic area. But I guess that can't be the complete story, since Galloway was Gaelic-speaking until recently.
On Gaelic not being a traditional language everywhere: it does annoy me slightly when I see people claiming that Gaelicizing street names (etc.) in Lothian is decolonization.
And don't get me started on Canadians saying they burned the White House in the War of 1812. No, you didn't. You shredded an invading US army and sent it homeward to think again. That's good! Be satisfied with that! Don't start appropriating the achievements of (in this case) a Scottish admiral and an Irish general commanding a force composed of British troops and Colonial Marines (freed slaves).
Know your place, colonials, and be satisfied with that?...
Totally late to reply, but in the off-chance that you'll see this:
You've got a lot of rules for Canadians, ajay! Whether these rules apply to merely hypothetical, or to actual, Canucks, I'm not exactly sure...but I'll be sure to pass them on to my compatriots...
But if you're thinking that Canadians are trying to claim spurious credit for the War of 1812, I'm afraid you are very much mistaken. If anything, the pendulum has swung very much in another direction. That wasn't really "us" in the War of 1812, that was the Brits, not the Canadians, because Canada wasn't "really" Canada until 1867. As if the British dominion of Upper Canada wasn't really Canada, bears no meaningful relationship to present-day Canada whatsoever, because it hadn't yet declared modern-day nation-state status.
In this current moment of attempted reconciliation with the First Nations of Canada for past abuses and atrocities, that pretty much lets us (present-day Canadians of Euro origin) off the hook, doesn't it? Oh, that wasn't us, we Canadians, that was the Brits: because Canada wasn't yet Canada, it was just a bunch of bureaucratic functionaries of the British Empire, along with some trappers and voyageurs, and some half-crazed adventurers.
I'm pretty sure this is wrong, though. The history of Canada is, at least in part, a history of the transatlantlic nature of the British Empire; and yeah, people could be both Scottish and Canadian, or Irish and Canadian, and sometimes both at the same time...
When I was a kid, there was this family two doors down who seemed "Scottish" to me. Now, I was only 5 or 6 years old at the time, and who knows how or why or where I got this notion of their "Scottishness"? But Barbara, Janet, and Douglas (aka "Dougie"): yeah, that family seemed Scottish to me, and it also seemed more authentically Canadian to me than anything my own family could offer (my own family being just a bunch of agrarian underclass emigrants from Ireland).
Anyway, I loved this family that I thought was Scottish. Barbara was beautiful, and ethereal; Janet was down-to-earth and dependable; and Douglas? well, he was just Dougie. Their mother was a Girl Guide leader, and she was just lovely. Their father was a violent, domestic abuser, I'm sorry to say (my dad hated him passionately as both an Orangeman and a wife-beater), and both Barbara and Janet went on to do work in women's shelters.
Anyway, these people were not Scottish nationals, they were
Canadians born and bred. I still think of them as "Scottish," though, and that's how I will no doubt continue to think of them unless and until convinced otherwise...
Whoever of you burned down the white house in 1812, the joke's on you. You bypassed the cities of New York and Philadelphia, where all the wealth, commerce and population could be found, to torch a rural village which had one fancy house and a few boarding houses for the Congressmen. Not even a decent port. Unlike the real cities, it was undefended, because there was nothing worth defending there. The temporary loss of the capital had no real effect on the nation or the war effort.
"But if you're thinking that Canadians are trying to claim spurious credit for the War of 1812, I'm afraid you are very much mistaken."
Canadians have done this, to me, in person, and become pompously furious when I disagreed.
"You've got a lot of rules for Canadians, ajay!"
No, just one, and it applies to non-Canadians too.
No, just one, and it applies to non-Canadians too.
I felt so special...until you mentioned non-Canadians too, that is.
Perhaps some Canadians have a different historical narrative than the one that seems to animate your animosity toward the
Canucks? But which/whose historical narrative carries more weight? Developing...
I can't help noticing that your tone has really become hostile since I let slip that I grew up a Presbyterian.
I have also heard Canadians take credit for the War of 1812.
What ajay isn't telling you is that his one rule is one of those two-page sentences written by Faulkner.
Lest it seem like I'm inconsistent, btw, my own son ... not Scottish.
He's presumably going to grow up with a different perspective on Scotland from someone with no Scottish parents, but, he's spent a grand total of about 6 days in Scotland, and has lived in London his entire life. That might change, we could decide to move back to Scotland, for example.* Or move to the Czech Republic, in which case he might adopt more of a Czech national identity.
* after the civil war, and the famine.
I can't help noticing that your tone has really become hostile since I let slip that I grew up a Presbyterian.
I thought you had let that slip a long time ago? (when we were talking about the "Scots-Irish" in Appalachia, maybe?). Anyway, I was annoyed by (what I read as) 'Canadians can say this, but not that,' which struck me as someone from the metropole dictating to the dumb colonials. I'm sorry if my (admittedly overly defensive) tone came across as hostility.
