Donald Trump Using Pocahontas as a Slur Again
Commentary: Trump'south "Pocahontas" annotate wasn't a racial slur
I was a Boston radio talk host in 2012 when the Elizabeth Warren/Native American heritage story broke, and I had the perfect nickname for her:
"Faux-cahontas."
I knew information technology was perfect because it stuck. Mocking Elizabeth Warren for her unsubstantiated claims of minority status has been a staple of the Talk-Right ever since. This helps explain President Trump's cringe-inducing non sequitur virtually "Pochantas" during a ceremony honoring Navajo "Code Talkers." He knows there's an audience for it.
Trump's critics are wrong to claim Trump was beingness racist past dropping the "P" word. Rude? Insulting to his guests? Totally inappropriate? Absolutely.
But "Faux-cahontas," "Lie-awatha," "Rides In Limos" and the other nicknames Warren's been given by the Correct aren't slurs against Native Americans. They're attacks on Warren and her play at identity politics (her claim of Cherokee heritage remains unproven).
Is she a Native American? In that location is literally no evidence of whatsoever kind to substantiate her claim. Native American genealogists like Twila Barnes say that they are confident Warren, who was born and raised in Oklahoma, has no Indian connections going back every bit far as the Andrew Jackson administration. The senator herself has merely offered hearsay testify: she has recounted that her aunt said of Warren's father that he had "high cheekbones like all the Indians practice." That's it.
And yet, when Harvard Law School found itself under burn down for a lack of racial diversity, their spokesperson told the Harvard Crimson paper that "Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is a Native American."
Where did Harvard get that idea? And how did Warren spend a decade on the American Clan of Police force School'south list of "minority" professors?
In that location is only 1 source for that data: Elizabeth Warren.
Warren defenders argue that it's all just a mistake -- mere "family lore." Her family told her she was Native American, and she believed it. What's the large deal? And since at that place's likewise no proof her questionable claims got her a job as a "minority" candidate over some other qualified applicant, nosotros'll never know if Warren did anything wrong.
Except, in my opinion, nosotros already do. Elizabeth Warren was wrong to ever claim to be a Cherokee in the first identify. And I know—because I am i. Well, more than Warren is, anyway.
My grandfather, Ray Futrell, was born in Tulsa, OK. His grandmother, Nancy Hill, was a Cherokee Indian living in what was the Oklahoma territory. Every bit a child growing up in rural S Carolina, I would occasionally brag about my Cherokee heritage to my friends.
Later I attended college in Tulsa, and spent time with my cousins in rural Oklahoma. They lived in an area where being a Native American mattered, where the poverty still plaguing the Indian community was in show. At a local customs rodeo, I heard my first (and, I'm happy to study, last) racial slur directed at a Native American.
And hither's what I learned: I am absolutely not an "Indian" in whatsoever meaningful sense. Whether I'thou genetically 1/4th or ane/400th Cherokee doesn't matter. I have never spent a single minute of my life living as an Indian in white-bulk America. My family has never suffered a unmarried slight, endured a single insult. Even if I could merits native status via some technical loophole, it would exist a lie.
And the same is true of Senator Warren.
And then why did she brand the claim in the first place? Warren said she only did then "to connect with other people like me" on campus, significant actual Native Americans. But because the AALS's directory didn't break downwards what minority group each professor fell into, this explanation never made whatever sense.
Merely what if it's true? What if Professor Warren had "connected" with, say, Bonnie HeavyRunner, founder of the Native American Studies program at the University of Montana? What would this suburban white woman from a center-grade background have had in common with Professor HeavyRunner, who grew upwards as ane of 12 children on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation? Whose life was shaped past the challenges and bug that come up with this experience?
This is the reason why the mockery of Sen. Warren has power: She has nevertheless to ain up to the fact that her claims of minority condition were false and unfair, even if no true minority applicant always lost a position considering of them. If her motive wasn't to game the organisation, she could have owned upwardly to the truth when the story outset broke five years ago.
Instead, she tried to defend it with embarrassing claims about cheekbones, and now-debunked stories nigh parents forced to ally in surreptitious over racial tensions, and plagiarized recipes for "crab with tomato mayonnaise dressing" in the family unit's "Pow Wow Chow" cookbook.
Yes, President Trump's "Pocahontas" comment was off-putting and out of place. Merely criticism of Sen. Warren's simulated-identity politics is right on point.
Michael Graham
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-trumps-pocahontas-comment-wasnt-a-racial-slur/
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