Like Elizabeth Warren? Checking American Indian Box Based On “Family Lore” Slammed At SCOTUS Affirmative Action Argument
During oral argument of affirmative action case, lawyer for UNC agrees with Justice Alito that “family lore” doesn’t provide basis to claim American Indian status, in a pretty clear reference to Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Listening to U.S. Supreme Court arguments doesn’t usually make me break out laughing and spit out what I’m drinking. But today was special.
I was minding my own business listening to the UNC Affirmative Action oral argument, while I did other things. Justice Alito was questioning Ryan Y. Park, North Carolina Solicitor General, arguing for UNC, when I heard the term “family lore.”
That got my attention.
Because “family lore” was Elizabeth Warren’s justification for claiming to be Cherokee when she checked the box early in her law professor career to claim Native American status. It all was unsubstantiated, as we have documented more extensively than anyone at ElizabethWarrenWiki.org. Not only does Warren have no identifiable Native American ancestors, Warren’s key family lore, including her parents’ alleged elopement and her family’s high cheekbones, were cast into serious doubt.
Don’t even get me started on her entries in the Pow Wow Chow Cookbook, just don’t.
So I paid attention. And it was a thing of beauty.
At pages 97-99 of the transcript, Justice Alito questions how much ancestry was needed to check a box. Is one grandparent enough? One great grandparent? One great, great grandparent?
JUSTICE ALITO: Let me just ask one more related question, and that is the circumstance — and this is a real problem, and I’ve heard it described to me by people who face it, when can a student honestly claim to fall within one of these groups that is awarded a plus factor? So let’s say the student has one grandparent who falls within that class. Can the student claim to be a member of an underrepresented minority?
MR. PARK: Yes, we rely on — on self-reporting. And — and we don’t give any —
JUSTICE ALITO: All right. One great grandparent.
MR. PARK: If that person believes that that is the accurate expression of their identity, I don’t think there would be any —
JUSTICE ALITO: One —
MR. PARK: — problem.
JUSTICE ALITO: — great-great grandparent? Are you going to make me continue to go on?
MR. PARK: Right, right, right. I think that as we go on, I agree that it would seem less plausible that that person would feel that this is actually capturing my true racial identity but the same is true for any of the other diversity factors that we rely on.
Justice Alito then turned to family lore (emphasis added):
JUSTICE ALITO: It’s family lore that we have an ancestor who was an American Indian.
MR. PARK: So I — I think in that particular circumstance, it would be not accurate for them to say based on —
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, I identify as an American Indian because I’ve always been told that some ancestor back in the old days was an American — was an American Indian.
MR. PARK: Yes, so I think in that circumstance, it would be very unlikely that that person was telling the truth. And the same is true for — you know, we rely on self-reporting for all the — the demographic and other characteristics that we ask for. And there’s nothing special about the racial identification on that score, Your Honor.
Justice Alito clearly was talking about Elizabeth Warren when he talked about family lore.
I wish there were video, because he surely had a big grin on his face. I also bet Justice Thomas chuckled. He knows.
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Comments
Elizabeth Warren apologizes for calling herself an American Indian (missed it).. Did Harvard apologize for believing her?
Did Warren apologize – and refund money – to the people she defrauded by selling a book she plagarized and based it on a lie about herself?
Such scum is – and has been – running our country!
Elizabeth Warren’s Pow Wow Chow ‘Cherokee’ recipes were word for word COPIES of famous FRENCH chef’s techniques:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146628/Elizabeth-Warrens-Pow-Wow-Chow-Cherokee-recipes-word-word-COPIES-famous-FRENCH-chefs-techniques.html
Different question. Plagiarism is not acceptable regardless one one’s racial self-identification.
Do we even have to say that? We’re living in stupid times.
With an accomplished, serial plagiarizer in the Oval Office. So, not acceptable?
Huh? What book? As far as I know none of her books is plagiarized, and none are based on her supposed Indian ancestry.
Pow WoW Chow Wow was both plagiarized and claimed as being based on her native American folklore (No I don’t think she came up with the Duke of Windsor’s favorite food; either the chef who actually served the Duke of Windsor was telling the truth about how he got his recipe or Elizabeth Warren plagiarized it).
What the hell are you talking about? She did not publish Pow-wow Chow! She had nothing to do with it beyond contributing a few recipes, and she certainly never made any money from it.
In addition, it’s literally impossible for something to be “both plagiarized and claimed as being based on her native American folklore”. The two things contradict each other.
None of the recipes in Pow-wow Chow were purported to be original, so the whole concept of plagiarism can’t apply. The whole point was that it was supposed to be a collection of traditional Indian recipes, handed down in families, which is why it was so funny that Harris’s contributions were based on ingredients that the old-time Cherokee would not have had access to, and that they were in fact taken from the NY Times. None of this is compatible with an accusation of plagiarism.
And no, 4rdm2, I had no idea what FineReport was referring to. I still don’t know, since FineReport has not replied. All I have is Danny’s wildly unlikely guess. Is it possible that two people imagined that Pow-wow Chow was published by Harris, or that she made any money from it?!
Do people seriously not understand how cook books like this work?! Nobody is paid for their contributions, and contributors rarely claim to have invented them. They are usually either handed down in families, or copied from somewhere.
“In addition, it’s literally impossible for something to be “both plagiarized and claimed as being based on her native American folklore”. The two things contradict each other.”
This is the most bizarre claim imaginable. It’s 100% possible if the source you plagiarized has no connection to Native American culture… as turned out to be precisely the case.
No, Henry. You are contradicting yourself. What you are saying makes no sense. The definition of plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as your own original work. If you claim that something is based on your native American folklore, then by definition it cannot be plagiarized, no matter where you got it from.
On the contrary, if it’s actually your own work that you made up yourself, then your attributing it to tradition is false. (That’s what Robbie Burns did with Auld Lang Syne; he claimed it was a traditional song that he merely transcribed, but it was really his own original creation. And no, that is not fraud; there is no law that such a claim has to be true, so nobody could have sued Burns.)
The whole concept of plagiarism only applies in academia, where original work is valued for its originality. In most other areas a work is valued only for its content, and nobody cares whether the person presenting it actually wrote it himself, nor does the person usually make any claim to have done so, so the whole idea of plagiarism is just irrelevant. That’s why it doesn’t matter that Martin Luther King Jr copied sermons from other preachers, but it does matter that he incorporated pieces of those copied sermons in his thesis. It’s likely that he was not conscious of this distinction.
That’s also why it doesn’t matter that Joe Biden copied the words of Neil Kinnock’s speech; had his own life mirrored Kinnock’s in the ways he claimed in those words, it would have been 100% OK that he copied them. The problem was that the words, while true of Kinnock, were not true of Biden. He didn’t just lift Kinnock’s words, he lifted his life story. And that was a huge problem that sank his presidential bid that time around. But his plagiarism in college was a huge problem, that almost got him expelled.
And no, plagiarism is not the same thing as breach of copyright. Those are two different concepts with different scopes and rules.
Come on Milhouse, this is just blatant purposeful obtuseness. You knew this, why are you pretending otherwise just to be contrary?
More importantly, Did she pay reparations to the real American Indians she stole opportunities from?
There’s no reason to suppose that she stole any opportunities from any real Indians. Even if the Harvard board members who hired her are lying about their not having known she was making this claim, there was no real Indian whom they were considering hiring instead. She was the only person they were considering for that position at that time. And if they hadn’t hired her there’s no reason to suppose the next candidate they might have considered would have been an Indian.
If they had known the truth about liawatha the would have hired someone else.
That is pure speculation. Not only is there no evidence of that, the members of the board that hired her have explicitly said they didn’t even know she was making such a claim. Now it’s possible that they’re lying, but that’s what they say, and there’s no evidence against it. Further, even if they are lying, and they were aware, that would still not show that they wouldn’t have hired her without it.
More importantly, did the American Indian get the opportunity he or she was denied?
What Indian? There was never any Indian in contention for that job. No Indian ever applied for it. They were not specifically looking for an Indian. And we have the board members’ word, for whatever it’s worth, that they didn’t even know she was claiming to be Indian.
Milhouse—Harvard marketed her appointment with that claim. She did nothing. Call it bad optics, call it blind ambition or call it whatever negative terminology you wish—but I underscore the negative connotations. She was (is?) PROFESSIONAL faculty, and that imposes a particularly high burden of policing your own integrity and your own record even when it comes to what your own institution says about you. There are no excuses. Granted I am not an attorney as I state below, however this is on Harvard and Liz Warren for marketing dubious information. Wouldn’t be the first time Harvard or one of its faculty out and out lied, but to use that lie to make moral hay against their adversaries is just unacceptable under any circumstance.
Brilliant!
How about if my family produced a cook book called Pow Wow Chow? Surely that would clinch it? No! Okay, what if my mother always told me I had high cheek bones? I’m in the ballpark now, right? Good, I’m off to Harvard.
How about Pelosi’s new book: “101 Uses For Gavels That You Never Thought Of”
I wouldn’t waste my hard-earned wampum on it.
Considering how much the buying power of my hard earned and saved wampum has dropped like a rock. That is Dem’s fault. Now I want to start whopping them.
I buy my wampum from Rosalind Capital. They say it’s a good investment and will go up in a few years.
I would have asked this question: if we’re deciding race based on self-identification, and everyone who applies in 2023 identifies as “black”, will that require pro-white procedures to be put in for 2024?
Their measure is broken. And if they fix it, they need to take on the unenviable task of telling people what race they are.
That’s different because “white”, unlike every other sort of racial category, is not a protected class. That’s why it’s important that Asians brought this lawsuit, because they probably have standing where whites would not.
How could the country we built be free to discriminate against us? But it is, and it’s an article of faith. I saw Joe Rogan being very careful to say that whites have an advantage here (when will I see it?) and it’s OK that they get less legal protection than anyone else. And that’s why Joe Rogan is allowed to have a big podcast business.
This is just not true. Under US anti-discrimination law, for most categories there is no such thing as a protected class; there are only protected categories. For example it’s illegal to discriminate against anyone in public accommodations on the basis of their race; that means any race, including white.
The only exceptions, as far as I know, are disability discrimination, where only disabled people are protected — it’s legal to discriminate against someone for not being disabled — and age discrimination, which applies only to those over 40. If you have a maximum hiring age of 30, or a minimum age of 50, a 40-year-old can sue you but a 39-year-old cannot because the law explicitly says he is not protected. But other than those two categories, all anti-discrimination laws apply to everyone equally.
The reason this suit is being brought by Asians is because it looks better that way; they don’t have the historical nonsense that would accompany a suit by “privileged” white people.
While it is technically illegal to discriminate against whites, as a practical matter, it happens a great deal.
As a practical matter discrimination against black people happens a great deal too. But it’s just as illegal.
Yet we have housing complexes that are age restricted, there are many developments that are age 55 and above as an example and they are legal.
They are specifically exempted from the law.
Or instituting a new “one drop” rule….
Shrieking Crow will be after the Alito scalp…such as it is.
“R. PARK: Yes, so I think in that circumstance, it would be very unlikely that that person was telling the truth. And the same is true for — you know, we rely on self-reporting for all the — the demographic and other characteristics that we ask for..”
In other words, in all the cases of racial fakery (all Democrats as far as I can ascertain, the college simply accepts the racial claims without any demand for verification. Just “check the box.”
No wonder it is an easy scam for people like Fauxcohontas.
I don’t see clearly what the difference is. Is it that Indian requires different proof than other races? (It used to, you used to have to show membership on the Dawes Roll or something, at least for being a student. Which can explain why Liz Warren only attended Rutgers Law School, being a white woman, then blasted into the academic stratosphere by discovering her Indian heritage when on the academic job market, where such documentation is not required.
Well, Ward Churchill and Rachel Donezal are infamous cases of leftists pretending to be Indian and black, respectively, to gain some advantage.
The Cherokee nation requires proof, which Fauxcohontas refused until politically forced to do so, and failed miserably.
But you are correct: there is not “black” test, other than appearance or the “one drop” rule, or “hispanic” test, other than last names. Asians just have to pass too many tests and break the grading curve, lol!
There must be advantages to being black, regardless of what we are told, since half black individuals, such as Obama and Halle Berry, claim to black alone, with no deleterious effects.
Interesting fact – a large section of India was colonized by the Portuguese. So, may Indians have names that like Garcia or Martinez and going back centuries they probably have some Hispanic blood. Could they claim that Hispanic status to get into University?
I literally have a friend who is an Indian National and his name is Andi Martines.
Furthermore, the Portuguese took up residence in Hawaii in droves, and there’s nothing keeping those from claiming Pacific Islander status now, either.
Look at the Philippines, where many people of purely Asian descent carry Hispanic surnames but they hardly consider themselves to be Latino. Yet, in this superficial environment brought on by the labeling culture we are in, a Filipina in such a situation could check off many boxes for a greater advantage. That’s wrong.
Alito and Thomas — the only Justices on the Court who can consistently be relied upon to uphold the Constitution.
Gorsuch too, I think.
1) Thomas
2) Alito
3) Gorsuch
The rest bend with the left wind.
The rest are legal bulls. We bulls wobble but we don’t fall down.
No, I respectfully dissent. Gorsuch’s opinion expanding Title VII’s scope to “transgender” individuals and homosexuals, when those groups aren’t mentioned in the statute’s text, and, were never mentioned by Congress, was an utterly indefensible and obnoxious act of judicial narcissism, caprice and fiat, of the wretched sort that we expect from the Dumb-o-crat activists on the federal bench, such as Sotomayor and Kagan.
This awful decision is precisely why I excluded Gorsuch from inclusion with Thomas and Alito.
It was the logical conclusion of applying originalist reasoning to Loving. The fact that Loving, when extended to its logical conclusion, reaches an absurd result, should make one reconsider whether it was correct in the first place. I seriously wonder how Thomas would have ruled on it, had he been on the court when it came up. I believe he would have found for the Lovings but on different grounds. And without having put a great deal of thought into it, it seems to me that the court should have told Virginia “You don’t have to recognize this couple’s marriage, but you can’t convict them of a crime for having contracted it.”
No, it is not a logical conclusion of originalist reasoning to include transgender or homosexuals to Title VII because those constructs existed when the bill was drafted. Logical extension applies in the narrow case where something arose after the law was enacted, i.e., from the printing press to the TV news.
But it is the logical conclusion of Loving.
Alito, relentlessly trolling the NC state solicitor general. 🤣
How long did it take Park to catch on?
President Trumps 3 have been largely a disappointment to me
Gorsuch has been consistently good and principled. I’d put him with Alito and Thomas as the best on the Court. Kavanaugh and Barrett are uneven.
That worth at least 5o thumbs up!
See my comment, above, in response to yours. I take it you don’t think that Gorsuch was being “good and principled,” when he indefensibly expanded Title VII’s scope to include “transgendered” and homosexual individuals, when those groups weren’t mentioned in the statute or contemplated by Congress? As dotard-marionette, Biden, might say — “Come on, man!!!”
One drop of blood.
That is the federal standard here, by statute.
To answer Justice Alito’s question: If you can prove an ancestor was of the race you’re claiming for an Affirmative Action claim, you can go back as far as you want on your family tree and only need one ancestor. Could be a hundred generations, if you can document it, that’s all you need.
In federal law, it is referred to as “one drop of blood”.
I’ve had to deal with this with the Affirmative Action QUOTAS (which are not to be called quotas, because quotas are illegal) that the EEOC imposes, and enforces, on large employers.
When is a “goal” really a “quota”? When there is a penalty for not meeting it.
We all can trace our ancestry back to the same “ancestral eve” with mitochondrial DNA. So we’re literally, all cousins.
Yet somehow, by rules nobody can codify, we can put some cousins into the “race A” basket, and others into the “race B” basket.
The lawyers defending the systemic racism of systemic racism seemed awfully keen to avoid any actual, concrete, measurable metrics. Which is no surprise, since race is not a concrete, measurable metric.
There’s a very good chance that I’m a direct descendant of Genghis Khan.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/weird-facts/genghis-khan-descendants-0016769
You never know. Judge Alito may be an LI reader.
Aren’t you glad it was not Mohamad the barbarian?
I will raise you one Gorm the Old, in an online record.
You’re right. I traced my DNA ancestry and found out that I’m a direct descendant of “Eve”. It turns out we all came from one mother and there is only one race.
You are right about where we originated, that is something I point out to actual racists, It is a fact that as humanity spread out that harsh conditions led to both those who spread east and west, then north now known as Asians and Caucasians developed higher IQ, 105 and 100 respectively. Those left in Africa probably also improved somewhat over time, but far less than others.
I wonder how they would deal with interracial blood transfusions 🙂
Probably don’t care, except under current “diversity” and “equity” guidelines, the POC would get it first.
I be transplants are being prioritized for POC. That would be another area to investigate and expose.
That is true.
You can get up to a pint that way. I would probably need two pints because I was told I’m a quart low.
It wasn’t so much a stab at Warren as it was using her as an example of how easily”race” has become a scam. People like Warren would never be mistaken as being Cherokee so why would they need a leg up? So Warren, already benefiting from “white privilege” now also gets “indigenous privilege” because she identifies as Cherokee?
The point being made is that there are no strict rules for granting these special privileges and so there is no end point. It just becomes a scam for liars at the expense of the “deserving”. Seriously,the discrimination game has become an institution whose purpose has been greatly diminished. So now they just make up new “stuff”.
Glorious!!!!
Shouldn’t the newest Justice be barred from ruling on any Affirmative Action cases due to conflict of interest — ?
If you’re looking for a serious answer, it’s “no”. That’s not how it works at all. She has no conflict of interest, because the outcome of the case will not affect her at all. She is not applying for admission to Harvard or UNC, so she has no interest in how they choose whom to accept. And should any of her children apply there, they’d be guaranteed to be accepted regardless of the outcome.
Milhouse misses the entire point. Obvious sarcasm because the pedophile stated before he selected her that he was going to choose a black woman. An obvious affirmative action pick.
That’s why I wrote “If you’re looking for a serious answer”. If you’re just trying to score a cheap point, go ahead.
This whole argument is a ruse for “white” people who want to hold onto power. The people in power don’t really want African Americans and American Indians, but AAs and AIs pose less risk to those already in power. Asians are too damn smart and work too damn hard. If the Asians get in, how will the children of those in charge ever succeed in life? Before the Asians, it was the Jews for many, many years. (So the Jews created their own school–Brandeis–and their own law firms, investment banks, movie studios, etc. Before segregation ended, African Americans actually did a lot of this, too. But then the Democrats swooped in, created entitlement programs, and cut out the legs beneath the rising African American middle class. It kept them down, just where the elites wanted them.)
So what! Jews and Asians worked hard to achievewhat they achieved-it was never handed to them a crumb ( i.e entitlement ) by anyone
Isn’t that Stuytown’s point?
Lay off the crack.
He’s right. If you’re too dumb to understand it that’s your problem.
Justice Alito calls the shots as he sees them and is a great supporter of free exercise of religion,
It seems that all the demographic information that schools collect is “self reported “, Knowing human nature and amplifying it by todays near total lack of morality and true self awareness it is ludicrous to accept any such information as criteria for acceptance to a university.
Octaroons, anyone?
“Gov. David C. Treen today signed legislation repealing a Louisiana statute that established a mathematical formula to determine if a person was black.
The law establishing the formula, passed by state legislators in 1970, said that anyone having one thirty-second or less of ”Negro blood” should not be designated as black by Louisiana state officials…
…Mrs. Phipps’s lawyer, Brian Begue, says that the law was ”a bad law” but that its repeal was worse. He lobbied vigorously against the repeal. From ‘Laughable’ to ‘Obscene’
”You’re not doing any good to repeal this law without having something to take its place,” Mr. Begue said in an interview. ”You’re exchanging the one thirty-second rule, which is laughable, to ‘traceable amount,’ which is obscene.’…
…Mrs. Phipps’s lawyer, Brian Begue, says that the law was ”a bad law” but that its repeal was worse. He lobbied vigorously against the repeal. From ‘Laughable’ to ‘Obscene’
”You’re not doing any good to repeal this law without having something to take its place,” Mr. Begue said in an interview. ”You’re exchanging the one thirty-second rule, which is laughable, to ‘traceable amount,’ which is obscene.” ”
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/06/us/louisiana-repeals-black-blood-law.html
What’s a “traceable amount?” Scientists are quite sure Homo Sapiens originated in Africa, so I have African ancestry. By the one-drop rule, I’m black in spite of my pasty white skin, so my grandchildren should get an AA preference in college admissions…
But over who? By this reasoning, unless ET or a 100% Neanderthal applies, all the applicants are black and equal.
Watching that video clip of Fauxcahontas bloviating about her claimed heritage, one sees what an utterly vile, miserable, mendacious, self-serving, greasy and narcissistic reprobate this insufferable fabulist-crone is. Utterly wretched in every respect.
This line of questioning hits the two core problems.
First the technology exists to determine what the makeup of a person’s ancestry is. It wouldn’t be difficult to test and report. It would however be incredibly intrusive and objectionable.
Secondly it framed the diversity component as based upon a ‘self identified race’. Another way to state that would be personal choice. By doing so they demonstrate that their notion of diversity is solely based upon the personal identification choice of applicants.
This offensively racist regime is wholly disinterested in personal beliefs, ideology or viewpoints. Nor does it emphasize individual experiences of applicants. Instead it uses self reported race data as a distant proxy for actual diversity of thought, opinion, beliefs or experience.
This shows the whole racist regime is a sham. I have hopes the CT will finally end the racist regime for good.
If only we knew how to do this race / inheritance thing. Oh, wait, we do…
— Based on racial identification of ancestors, through govt and breeding records. We have worked examples from both livestock, and your favorite fascist / ethnic nationalist regime, but what’s the difference between these examples, really?
To the ministry of identity! You are who we say you are! (You are who you say you are, if we choose to recognize it.)
— Physically, “one drop”, or at least 1/1024th of genetic ancestry counts. Interesting that physical classification schemes — vs. administratively declared inheritance — require detectable, heritable differences among “races”, immutable across generations, or your couldn’t classify or track them.
You’re physically, delectably, relevantly different because of who your parents were. Raaaaacist much?
I, myself, identify as a super-intelligent shade of blue. We are grossly under-represented pretty much everywhere. As my great, great Nana’s great paw-paw twice removed said; give me all the things.
I love Justice Alito!! He is brilliant and a true American.
I identify as Tonto Goldstein when required.
I identify as Temujin LXXVIII when I think it will give me an advantage.
“No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.” ~ Booker T. Washington.
[internetpillar.com]
“Shaking my d e r n e d head … looking down at you people today … from heavenly rest.” – Booker T. Washington
Full disclosure: Confession: The first quotation above is real, from >100 years ago.
However, the second quotation is not. I just made it up.
Also, I am not in fact Booker T. Washington. Nor am I in fact dead, writing any of this from eternal heavenly rest.
According to science mankind originated in Africa and that means that all Americans are African Americans. So would we benefit from affirmative action racism?
Resonable people have looked at the data and seen AA helps no one.
Not true. It has created countless jobs for bureaucrats.
Fauxcahontas really mad now. Can’t use family lore anymore. Go on warpath. Make war drums speak.
If lack of DNA constitutes “lore” for race qualification, then why would the Court accept surgery or clothing as proof of gender? You can’t say you are unable to claim American Indian while permitting to define your gender.
I am truly confused by all these arguments! According to the federal government, a person whose body contains ovaries and a vagina can identify as male, or a person with a penis and testicles can identify as female, and either can identify as neither male nor female, and the term ‘woman’ cannot be defined, then how can they say that I am not black or Hispanic or American Indian or any other category that I choose to claim membership in? In addition, don’t try to blame me for any of this. I did not produce it. This is where we are, and I would not be surprised but would expect that every candidate would claim to have black, American Indian, and Hispanic heritage, and let the institution disprove it. “Are you calling me a liar?”
I am not an attorney, nor do I have any remote interest in being one. That being said, someone can have serious intellectual interests in the law and still converse here—I hope?!
I have no ideas what the legalities are about Liz Warren (Rachel Dolezal’s inspiration?) and her “high cheekbones”, but it seems to me that a professional faculty member at her level would be first and foremost dedicated to her own integrity. The fact that Harvard touted her as a Native American law professor, and she did nothing to stop it tells us all a lot about her LACK of integrity.
I will forego the usual jokes about any profession, because all professions suffer from them. But Liz Warren—she really did a number on you legal eagles with her open mouth and gear-disengaged brain.