[SN76477]

Politics is full of bad actors, I do not think Warren is one of those people. You can disagree with her, sure, but she just wants to create fairness for all in my opinion.

Facebook is the opposite of this, with their closed systems, back door dealings and often shady business practices it makes perfect sense that they are opposed to her.

[gadders]

You don't think the whole debacle about claiming to be native american has hurt her credibility somewhat?

[murph-almighty]

I'll bite even though I'm a bit uninformed here:

I think it's plausible to be told something about your heritage and not question it, especially if it's something spanning multiple generations where the paperwork validating the claim is either nonexistent or otherwise hard to reach. At varying points I've been told by relatives that I'm part Scottish, and told by others that I'm not, and I don't really have a straightforward way of validating this aside from engaging in some intensive research.

I can reasonably extend the benefit of the doubt to Elizabeth Warren that she didn't know if she was actually some fraction Native American or not until the DNA test.

[politil_throw93]

> I can reasonably extend the benefit of the doubt to Elizabeth Warren that she didn't know if she was actually some fraction Native American or not until the DNA test.

But she didn't claim to be 'some fraction Native American'. She said her race was 'Native American', just full-on 'Native American', on an official form.

And she claimed to be Cherokee in a book. That's even more bizarre of a thing to claim. No matter what anyone told her, she must have known she wasn't part of the tribe?

People say she's apologised, but she hasn't really said 'I'm sorry that I...' except that she's caused distress. What does she now admit she did? Lied? Stretched the truth? What does she see it as? What was going through her head. What would lead her to make such obviously ludicrous claims? Even if she did have one recent ancestor, which it turns out she probably didn't, it's still a nonsense claim that she is Native American and Cherokee.

Does she still think she's Native American? Will she describe herself as the first Native American president? If she doesn't, what does she say is the difference between now and when she filled out that form? That's what I'm missing - her explanation.

[rpmisms]

I'm a little bit Native American, according to my family. I have never claimed that my parents weren't allowed to get married because of their tribes, nor have I put Native American down as my race on a college application.

Warren found a politically convenient fractional truth and exploited it.

[paulmd]

Do I think her college admissions in 1975 affect her credibility as a senator in 2020? Not particularly, especially compared to her actual track record.

(if we can find a way to forgive and forget Judge Boof's college "hijinks" I think we can find a way to forgive this.)

[tasty_freeze]

Really, people are going to hang her on this issue? Most people have some family lore that isn't 100% verified -- oh, really, your great grandfather was hero in the civil war? maybe, maybe not.

There isn't a pattern of deceit on her part, this "debacle" wasn't a sin of great consequence, all the while it is pushed over and over by someone whose entire life is built on manufacturing falsehoods. "Both sides do it" doesn't apply here. It is like saying I can't be critical of a murderer because I too broke the law by speeding.

[politil_throw93]

What I don't understand is - does she still think she's Native American? If not, what's changed since she filled that form in? It's not her DNA percentage result that has changed her mind, as she saw that as proof. I don't get what her thinking is, and I wouldn't mind her just explaining it.

[jimhefferon]

The contention that she has leveraged claims to be Native American to advance is, at the least, wildly overblown. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-warren-wealthy-n...

[politil_throw93]

But why did she claim it at all? Even if her family's story was correct, having one Native American ancestor at some point ages ago, does not make you simply 'Native American', does it?

[SN76477]

As someone else said

"I think it's plausible to be told something about your heritage and not question it"

[politil_throw93]

I get that she believed that she was small fractional Native American if that's what she was told (and she thought a couple of percentage points on the test proved her right, so she already knew it was very small.) But she didn't claim to be small fractional Native American. She claimed to be simply 'Native American, period'. I can't see why she'd do that?

[gadders]

Agreed, but if I was running for office or using it on official forms I would want to be a bit more certain.

[SN76477]

That is a good point of view to have.

[SN76477]

I do not think she was some how misleading anyone. She was just wrong.

The world is sloppy, its not perfect, people are not perfect. In the end I dont care about that.

[natalyarostova]

Creating fairness for all is sufficiently vague as to justify almost anything. Politicians, or those with power in general, should not be evaluated positively based on their well meaning platitudes, even if they are sincerely held. Creating fairness for all, if implemented poorly, can and has led to mass murder, genocide, etc. I'm not suggesting Warren would lead to that, or implying it, simply saying that wanting to 'do more good' isn't a sufficient defense.

[chrisco255]

[flagged]

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're all the same, which makes them boring, and tend to get angrier as they go.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[SN76477]

Thank you

[vernie]

Fairness bad.