That’s part of a comment from reader stevewhitemd to my interview with Marisa DeFranco, who is challenging Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary:
If Harvard were better at having a diverse professorship, it would not have to put someone who appears as white as I am out there as minority.That’s really it in a nutshell, isn’t it?Many, many Americans support the idea of affirmative action. They understand that our country has a legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination. They recognize a need to fix past wrongs that have been passed down to the present generation. They support helping people who have been wronged.But most Americans won’t support affirmative action that is unfair, nor will they support those who game AA to score for themselves.That last one is what the good Prof. Warren did. She gamed it. She claimed Cherokee background knowing, knowing that no university would call her on it….She gamed it.That’s what resonates. Americans don’t like cheaters, and they most especially don’t like people taking for themselves that to which they’re not entitled. It’s like taking money out of the collection plate on a Sunday.
Why aren’t liberals screaming about this?
Elizabeth Warren has done as much damage to the notion of affirmative action as anyone in memory. She made a mockery of it whether or not she received the benefit in any provable fashion.
If Elizabeth Warren can claim minority status for diversity purposes, then diversity as it is practiced at Harvard and elsewhere is a game of charades, in which “sounds like” is more important than “is.”
To make it worse, Warren did so, as Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes said, by “stepping on the backs of Cherokee” like Twila’s great-great-great grandmother, Polly Tadpole:
What kind of person does that, and refuses to acknowledge what she did and apologize?
And what kind of self-respecting liberal Massachusetts voter would vote for such a person?
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