SIO162: In Defense of Elizabeth Warren

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 162, I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I am freshly back from QED, still jet-lagged, my sleep seems to be ruined forever, but I'll deal with it, that's okay, it was worth it because it was such a great conference, I really enjoyed meeting everybody, by the way, if you came and said hi, if introduced yourself, that was awesome, thanks for doing that, I enjoyed meeting each and every one of you, and, I cannot wait, they're going to do it again, in two years. Unfortunately, not next year, but the year after when we'll all be waiting with bated breath on the American election. It's going to be right around that time in 2020. But I will be there. I'm pretty much vowing to go there, if humanly possible, no matter what, because that conference was truly amazing.

0:01:19 Thomas: I really enjoyed it. Far I haven't gotten the audio files yet, but I'm told that the, at least the live SIO was recorded, I witnessed it being recorded, so it's just a matter of getting my hands on that audio, and then also I'm trying to find out if the mental health panel that that I hosted was recorded, because that was, I think, incredibly valuable, in my opinion, I found it really moving and hopefully helpful to people, I would really love you guys to be able to hear that, we'll see how that works, one way or the other, something is going to be one of the episodes on here, for those who couldn't make it, because it It was really good stuff, and I want to share it with you, so, that's that, all right, now, today's episode, yeah, I've, you know, I feel like I've been doing more ranting lately, and, I, I also feel like people seem to be appreciating it, I do have a really good interview saved that will probably be next week, and I've always got lots of interviews in the works that'll be good, but, for now, I really find myself needing to comment on a couple things. Things.

All right, first things first, I wanted to tell a little story that, uh, I found depressing, but, but maybe amusing, and I think will frame what I want to talk about in a good way. Uh, so, first off, I, you might remember, it's, it been a, I guess, a couple weeks now, but a new report came out, which is telling us basically what we all already knew, but in more detail. Is this report saying we have just 12 years to limit devastating global warming, a new U.N.

0:02:56 Thomas: Panel that says we basically, by 2040, we're screwed, like, we just, we are just screwed, I mean, that's, that is what it is, but we can try to do everything we can and be slightly less screwed, but, uh, the, the varying estimates, uh, all involve massive screwage, pretty much, which just, you know, millions of lives in danger and from things like flooding, disease, mass migration, uh, lack of water, just all this stuff, there's so many effects of climate change and it's, we're not doing a good job and we have very little time to fix it and there's, you know, there's some interesting details, of course, one thing to keep in mind that this report says is that even if we can't reach, you know, any certain goals, any amount we do will help, like, like, even if we can't meet the goals that, you know, the 1.5 Celsius target, it's still good to do whatever we can because each marginal amount equals human lives, or possibly a lot of human lives.

But when I saw those headlines, that New York Times article as well, I, I was thinking about it, and it, one of them had the 2040 threshold, like, we could have major, major unrest, basically, by 2040 because of how destabilizing this will be to certain parts of the world, like maybe you'll be fine specifically where you are or something, but a lot of people won't be, that triggers mass migration, that makes things unstable, that, you know, we've already seen a rise of right-wing movements in so many countries because of migration due to war, which in turn was at least partially because of, you know, limited resources, which can be traced back to climate change.

0:04:41 Thomas: And it's only going to get worse. And when I saw that 2040 thing, I was just thinking, oh, fantastic. So Phoebe will be what, 23, I guess, you Know, that that's well within probably most of our lifetimes listing. Thing. I'm optimistic, but absolutely our children's lifetimes. So we need to drastically change our behavior soon. We have to. And unfortunately, in the United States, we are home to what some people have said is the only political party on the planet that doesn't believe in climate change.

It's not as though this is a left-right issue in every country and the right wing in every Every country doesn't believe. No, Republicans in the United States are pretty much the only people on planet Earth who somehow don't believe in this or at least are paid to not believe in it, are paid to not care about it because they prize corporate profits over the well-being of the entire planet. Jump forward now to a couple days ago when I was flying back from Manchester, and I was seated next to a British woman who had lived, and was actually a U.S. citizen since the 90s, she was in on some special visa, she's telling me the story, it a lottery visa in the 90's that was designed for certain people, like Irish immigrants to get in on, but they had to include UK, UK, you know, British people too. It was a, it was a whole story. It was kind of interesting to hear about, but she had gained US citizenship in the nineties.

And, um, you know, I don't usually come right out and talk politics on an airplane with someone I'm pretty much a chain to and next, you know, in the next seat.

0:06:29 Thomas: Uh, but as we got to talking, it seemed like we were pretty aligned on some stuff, you know, it seems sort of here and there, I guess maybe we both, both were dropping little hints as to the fact that we both seem to be decently liberal or left wing. And she mentioned she has a trans son and cares a lot about trans rights and LGBT and all that. And she said, I think her or her family member was at a climate march recently. And that's when I kind of remembered this article and we started talking about it. And I mentioned the fact that, geez, can you believe that only in 2040 this projection is that, you know, we're going to be facing serious global unrest, like dire consequences, the whole thing. And she's, she was right there with me.

0:07:16 Thomas: She was like, yeah, absolutely. It's amazing. I can't believe it. I'm so mad. All the same stuff. And then not ten minutes later, after we kind of talked about that and got into some other stuff, we got, somehow, got on the topic of more explicitly talking politics, and she just says, oh, boy, I can't, I don't want to vote for any of these Democrats, I'm just not too excited about them, she said, well, I love Beto O'Rourke, which, you know, neither of us live, she actually is a resident of California, so, both of us live in California. He has no impact on, on anything here, but whatever. I mean, it's important that the Senate maybe go to Democrats. Okay. She likes Beto O'Rourke, even though she doesn't get to directly vote for him.

0:08:01 Thomas: But that was the only Democrat that she was excited about voting for. She, she said, I can't vote for any of these Democrats. We got to get Feinstein out of there. We got To get these other old dinosaurs out of There. And I just, so five to 10 minutes, If that, after discussing the fact that Republicans are going to let the world end, like it's pretty much that dire, like they're just going to Let the whole world burn. And our children are screwed. And you know, they have they don't care. And there's no regard to them. Right after that, it's well, but I don't care. I can't vote for these Democrats. Are you, are you kidding me? Like, what is it going to take? What, what does one side have to do? Serious hypothetical. What does one entire party have to do to make voting them out a moral obligation, no matter who's on the other side?

0:08:54 Thomas: And again, that's even assuming that the, that the Democrats or whoever's running against them aren't good. That that's just granted, like pretend they're all the worst, which I don't agree with. I don'T think that's true. I think a lot of Democrats are great. I think there's so many candidates I'm excited about, especially with this new wave of women running and tons of LGBT running people of different ethnicities, backgrounds, you know, first, second generation, all this stuff, great stuff, getting more diversity and youth and all that in there. I love it. It's fantastic. But even pretend that's all not happening. Like, just pretend it's a bunch of Dianne Feinsteins or something, and maybe you're not a huge fan for some reason. I personally am a fan of her sticking up for the victim in the Kavanaugh hearings and being the only one, essentially, who did what the victim wanted.

0:09:44 Thomas: I thought that was very, the opposite of out of touch. I think that was a very in touch with what is needed at this current cultural moment. But never, never mind that, they're not exciting enough or something, and, and I, just imagine, I mean, honestly, I'm going to do a little analogy, and you just, just tell me if it's, where it's wrong, because, like, I honestly don't know that it is, pretend the Republican platform includes detonating a mysterious and random assortment of nuclear weapons at different places in the world at random in the year 2020, 2040, like that's just on there. Yeah, we're going to do that. We're going to, you know, use the U.S. military to just go, we are going to plant some nuclear weapons.

0:10:31 Thomas: No one will know where exactly. I mean, you might be able to guess, but they're just going to detonate and kill millions of people and displace people and make areas of the world uninhabitable for decades. We are just going to, that's in our platform. We were doing that in 2040 and then we've got people who are seeing that. And I think because they're They're just not properly evaluating the risk or whatever, but they're effectively seeing that in the platform and saying, okay, well, who's on the other side of that? Are they, are they, have they taken a corporate donation? The people on the side of it's, it's gotten to the point it's absurd and it has gotten to the place where it, this is, this issue trumps everything else. You know, I never want to do any sort of Competing, you know, hierarchy of which issues are more important, you know, which discrimination, which civil rights are more important, I don't want to do that.

0:11:25 Thomas: I think there's plenty we can do at one time. I really believe that, and there's so many valid issues, so many valid issues and there are plenty of issues that Democrats are, you know, can be, different Democrats at different times can be not the strongest on, fine, I'll acknowledge all that, however, once you start talking about global ruin in our pretty near future, like significant global catastrophe. And by the way, if we continue to do nothing, it turns into really, really bad. Like, will do this. The planet's going to be dust or something in a few centuries. When you start looking at that level of catastrophe, that does actually trump everything else. Like, I mean, it just does. The simple thing is you have to first triage, you know, these risks.

0:12:12 Thomas: And when you see one of them is like global catastrophe, then it becomes, okay, we need to address that. And we need all become single issue voters on global catastrophe. We all need to be like, okay. Single issue, I will vote for the avoid global catastrophe party. And, by, by the way, this isn't necessarily like some rigid Democrat thing. It lines up that way. But if somewhere in some district and somewhere in this country, there is a climate change denialist Democrat running against a let's-do-something-about-climate-change Republican, go and vote for that Republican because it's that important. It really is that important.

0:12:58 Thomas: And it's just here where I have to take a quick second to remind people how anything works for some reason, because there's still, there still are some people who think the way you send a message to, say, a Democrat who you don't like is by not voting for them and allowing the Republican to win, and I'm reminded, when Lydia and I are going through our California ballots right now, and what we're seeing is Democrats versus other Democrats, because, because there's been so much Democrat winning in California that we've changed the rules so that the top two run against each other. So it's not even Democrat, Republicans, Democrat, Democrat. And that's when you get a real chance to have the most progressive policies. It never was going to be work as a plan that you would not vote for a, a Democrat because it wasn't the more progressive one.

0:13:49 Thomas: And then that would make things more progressive later. That's just never going to work. The only way to make that progress is by driving things further left incrementally, or if maybe if a candidate can win right away, that's fine. But in the absence of that, handing power over to Republicans does the opposite. It moves things over to the right. It's so simple. I don't understand why this isn't something that that everybody agrees with. I really don't. And in this state where we have Democrats running against Democrats because we have supported Democrats in California and, you know, its population, its demographics, it's all that stuff, but anyway, the point is it's a result of overwhelming support for Democrats. In this state, I can pick and choose and say, hmm, of these two Democrats that are my two choices, which one is better on climate?

0:14:40 Thomas: Which one is like the super most progressive one ever? Who, you, you know, I could, it's an arms race. It can go further and further left, just as some of these awful states go further and further right into the nonsense, because they have the same thing on the other side. That's, there's, no state where it works any way but that. It never is like, we hand power over to the other site, and then that, that somehow gets you what you wanted originally. It just doesn't work like that. And I'll take a second to say here, if you sense some urgency and distress in my voice, it's because I have this, this little feeling, I think it's just a little tiny feeling in my head somewhere that what if Democrats don't take back the House in a few weeks here?

0:15:26 Thomas: It's not that many weeks, what, two, three weeks, I guess, two and a half weeks. If we don't take back the house. That is the ultimate catastrophe. That will show Republicans that they can do whatever they want and it doesn't matter. They can embrace the worst, the worst racist, sexist, anti-woman, pro-rapist, antisex assault survivor, just the worst stuff they can can do. And there's no consequences, no consequences. And I just have this little feeling that it might happen. And, and, you know, if, if we don't win it back, you know, a, it is because of gerrymandering, which in turn goes back to us, not valuing the elections enough in 2010 to Democrats, not voting locally state elections. So there's that, you Know, they got us, but we can't make that mistake again. So gerrymandering is a barrier that we do have to overcome, but we can and we should. And if we don't, it'll be because some people stayed home, you know, people for whatever reason, they stayed home.

0:16:38 Thomas: Now there's a lot of voter suppression too, you Know, that, that is happening, but there's more than enough available voter resources in people who can vote that there, There, there is, there's just the percentage of people who don't vote in these kinds of elections is so high that, um, we could easily, if people just do it, we can easily take back control. Um, but for whatever reason, people, people don't, and I'm worried if they don't were absolutely screwed. So that's maybe why I'm a little on edge on this particular topic. And it's with that that I want to transition over to the other topic, that's likely the name of the episode, sorry that it took this long to get to that, if that's what you were waiting for, but, uh, Elizabeth Warren.

0:17:25 Thomas: So, this is a, this a tough one, this an interesting thing, um, and I, I, want to emphasize here, so this involves, uh, Native American ancestry and tribal identities, stuff like that, and, I just want to say at the outset that do believe Americans who have benefited from white privilege, like I have, really do owe it to Native Americans and, and for that matter, any other groups, to be respectful and considerate and really rigorous in how we think about these things. Because this Elizabeth Warren issue, I took a long time of reading a whole bunch of stuff about what happened, what she said, what she did, what different Native American voices are saying about it. I've read everything I could get my hands on about this.

0:18:12 Thomas: And there's some great pieces. And I do think we actually, we definitely owe it to Native Americans to at least put in the time and the research before forming an opinion on something like this, that we we, the least we can do is not have a knee-jerk, anger, defensive reaction to any sort of charge of, you know, racism or being inconsiderate. I think we absolutely owe it to groups that do not have the white privilege that we have to stop and consider and say, okay, what's going on here? Is my behavior or is this person's behavior inconsidered? Is it racist? Is perpetuating racism? All that stuff. I do believe we, I strongly believe we have the obligation to do that and not reject these things out of hand and not react defensively.

0:18:59 Thomas: So I, I, in that spirit, like I really kept an open mind about this, and I'm still wavering a little bit, but after reading a lot about this, and again, checking, going over all the words and everything, I'm a littlebit frustrated with what's happening to Elizabeth with Warren because almost every single critique I've read of her begins with saying that she said things she didn't say, which, it's one thing if, like, oh, you know, it's not a case of, oh, her intentions were good but her words were, were bad, you know, that kind of thing, it's like no, she literally said things and then people just ignored it or said that she's said different things, and that's what, what, I think everyone's entitled to at least be held accountable for the words they actually said, you know, that not, not words that people put in their mouths or people that everyone assumed she said, I, let's, let see what she actually said.

0:19:59 Thomas: And to really evaluate this properly, I'm going to take us all the way back. I'm gonna go through the whole thing. This is the origin of this hideous and ugly Pocahontas slur, this racist insult that Trump has been using. It's absurd, it's horrible, it horrendous. And let's not forget that. No matter what happened today, and no matter how you might feel about Elizabeth Warren, let it always be said that what Trump has done has been bigoted, racist, racist, insensitive, horrendous from the very beginning.

I know it's sort of like we just take that for granted and then everybody has to act around that and be perfect around that, but just keep that in mind. In a game, in a contest, if it's a head-to-head competition of who's getting the best of whatever this is, if you can look at it that way, Then the person who is being grossly, disgustingly racist from the beginning, uh, is not outmaneuvering the person who is, is not doing that. So that, that's at a bare minimum. Let's, let's keep that in mind. So, here's the origin story of the Elizabeth Warren Native American Ancestry thingy. Um, apparently, she's, she grew up in Oklahoma, and, uh, like a lot of people who grew up in Oklahoma, uh, they, her family has a story, and actually, pretty compelling and not insignificant family story.

Of someone in her family down the line, one of her ancestors, being Cherokee, and to the point where I think it's her grand, great-grandparents, there was some question of whether or not they could even be married because of the stigma around a sort of a mixed racial background marriage, so in her her family.

0:21:51 Thomas: And that's, you know, it's possible that that was a exaggerated over the course of history, who knows, but it was an important family story to her and her family members, uh. That somewhere in, back in her ancestry, back, in her family line, she had this, uh. Native American ancestry of some kind, and apparently back in the 80s or she had either mentioned it, it's kind of hard to determine which, people aren't exactly sure because it was the 80's and they don't have like all the forms, but I guess she mentioned that fact or also she might have filled out a certain questionnaire and who knows how this was worded, but she might have put on a questionnaire somewhere that she thought she had this Native American ancestry.

0:22:40 Thomas: And I mentioned how it was worded because, actually, my wife Lydia mentioned, because she has some sort of similar thing, actually. Some minor amount of Native American ancestry somewhere in her tree, and back in the 90s, or the forms sometimes were written as like, check all that apply, you know, and in a way that it really doesn't strike me as that odd that somebody who reads a form that says that or something like that would think, okay, this is something that's in my family history. Now, again, I'm not saying that I know what the form said. I don't. I'm just raising that as a possibility. And it also seems like Elizabeth Warren just believes and believed and still believes that this was a significant portion of her family tree and might've filled filled out the form or said something or whatever.

0:23:30 Thomas: Now, judge that how you will. That doesn't strike me as really that bad. Now, had she been using it and leveraging what that Native American identity to her advantage, then that would be wrong. Unequivocally, that would be wrong, I would, I think that would a bad thing to do. Now, if it was in the 80s, I would obviously leave her some room to, like, apologize and have grown as a person, but that aside, if she leveraged a marginalized identity, even though she totally passes for white, and no person in our society would think she's anything other than white, so, So therefore benefits from white privilege and all that, and yet had used a marginalized identity to gain some sort of advantage. That would be absolutely wrong. And I want to state that unequivocally.

0:24:17 Thomas: I don't see that as having happened. People have accused her of doing that, but everything I'm finding, I'll link you these PolitiFact articles, which by the way, PolitiFact didn't go easy on her about this because way way back when this first came up, they emphasized like, we can't verify this claim that she has any Native American heritage. This was before the DNA test. And they were pretty hard on her for that. So like they kind of called her a little bit not truthful because of that.

So I just use that to say it's not as though PolitiFact has tried to be like bending over backwards to cater to Elizabeth Elizabeth Warren. So. Everything that I've seen is that in the 90s, you know, mid-80s, early-90s, there was a lot of pressure on these major law schools that she taught at, Harvard was one of them, to Hire more diverse staff, you know, I can imagine it was a very white male heavy kind of faculty back in the day, probably still is, but that was a major pressure, and it looks as though what happened is some sort of diversity representative or some representative from the school that she was at used the fact that she had ticked a box somewhere or mentioned it, either or, to say that she, she was Native American and therefore minority faculty and and use that as like a argument against this idea that Harvard Law or whichever school was was too white male.

Now, that is some major BS. Buts about it. That's wrong. They shouldn't have done that. Warren says she never consented to that, it wasn't discussed in hiring or anything like that, and lots of people have given testimony from the schools that she wasn't hired on the basis of this identity or anything.

0:26:08 Thomas: It came up later, and the schools used it to their advantage, so they are the ones who are guilty of having done this. Thank you, guys. And here is a quote from the PolitiFact. "Warren herself didn't trumpet this side of her family's story. When applying to college and law school, records show that she either identified as white or declined to apply based on minority status." So she didn't utilize this identity to try to gain entry into law school or to get her teaching positions. Positions, it sounds like from what I'm reading about what Elizabeth Warren has said, she filled something out at a certain point because she wanted to maybe meet other people like her who who had this possible family history, and she said that she never did, there never was any sort of conference or something, she was hoping there'd be something like that so she could talk to other people, uh, in a similar situation, she says nothing ever came of it, but seems as though, again, the, the schools used it to their advantage, and that was absolutely wrong.

0:27:07 Thomas: 100% wrong. I hope they've apologized or whatever, but it seems as though we don't have a good record of holding the people who are actually responsible for things like this accountable. We just hold women accountable for what other people have done around them. So, if all this happened in the eighties, you might ask, why in the world was this an issue in 2012? And the answer is, this was because of her, uh, campaign in 2012. She never made any claims about this.

She didn't run on this issue. If, if you just listened to Trump and the Republicans, you would think she had run as like a native American and like, you know, said like, I'm a native America and please vote for me. None of that happened. She even didn't even mention it. It was only because some Republican, You know, operatives did some sleuthing and figured out the fact that she had claimed on somewhere, again, on some form, that she had Native American ancestry, and they brought it up as a campaign issue in 2012, and she said, Elizabeth Warren, and maybe you could argue she should have had a different response, but she said, well, this is a story in my family, so I'm not going to deny it. I'm going to like, and picture if it had looked the other way.

If someone said, aha, you have Native American ancestry, and she said, no, I don't, no, I definitely don't, that looks pretty bad from the other angle. So she embraced it and said, this is something that has been a family story. It's something in my family and I'm, I'm proud of the genetic heritage that I have and the family tree that I had.

0:28:42 Thomas: And keep in mind that during this time, Republicans, at, you know, at rallies and stuff, were doing racist tomahawk gestures in order to mock her for the fact that she said she had some Native American ancestry. I mean, just absolute racist garbage. And that's when Trump started doing the Pocahontas nickname, and he just kept doing it ever since. Just solid years of doing that. Same joke, because he's an incredibly boring, racist, nonsense person. So just to step back, I want you to imagine if you were Elizabeth Warren, and this was part of, again, you can quibble with it if you want, but this is part of her perceived family history, her mother has told her that she couldn't even, it was controversial that her parents were even able to get married because of this Native American heritage, and so that is a big part of her family story.

0:29:42 Thomas: And then you get a bunch of people saying she's lying about it and saying her mom was lying about and just without without evidence either way. I mean, honestly, she didn't have documentation to back it up. So fair enough. But they didn't have documentation that it was false. And without documentation either way, they took a family story and decided that it was a complete deception. They decided that she had used it to her advantage, which she didn't. They decided she was capitalizing, you know, claiming she was full on Cherokee, which she didn't. And I can imagine, and I, you know, I have, I have to think you might feel similarly, that you would maybe want to defend your family from having the whole country, or at least half of one party of the country, think that you're just this deranged liar.

0:30:30 Thomas: So, she did this genetics test, and this wasn't just a 23andMe nonsense kind of thing, PolitiFact actually interviewed several top biological anthropologists to assess this doctor that she had do it, Bustamante, and here are the quotes, they all said they are sound, I have read the DNA test report closely, and I think the analysis described therein was conducted properly, said Theodore Schurr at the University of Pennsylvania. These are among the most robust methods today, said Deborah Bolnick at the University of Connecticut and past president of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics. Bustamante found five DNA segments that he could say with 99% certainty were of Native American origin.

0:31:15 Thomas: Native Americans arose as a distinct population in Siberia some 17,000-23,000 years ago and then spread into the Americas around 16,000 year ago, Schurr said. Said, indigenous populations share a common genomic makeup. After six to ten generations, that DNA would be very dilute, which was consistent with Bustamante's finding that 95% of Warren's DNA was European. Rather than face, because again, this is all about 2020, obviously Elizabeth Warren is running and this is what this is about. So, rather than face two years of Trump making these claims and the media having to say, oh, no substantiation, we can't find, and, you know, to be fair to the media, there wasn't any any corroborating evidence of this claims, just Elizabeth Warren's word and her family's word, and rather than faced two years years of being called a liar and not really having a good defense for it, she got it tested and it turns out it was consistent.

0:32:14 Thomas: All these experts interviewed in PolitiFact say this is consistent with her story. And so she framed it as, I'm not afraid of these results, Donald Trump, why don't you release your tax returns? You know, what are you afraid of there? And furthermore, I think this is also important. Couple, couple very important things. First off, she says, I never, here's, here are some of her tweets. She did a video, I am not going to go through the whole video, but here are a few tweets that I think give a good, like, kind of indication of what's in the video. She says, "I get it, Donald Trump is afraid of facts, but I'm not, and the facts are clear, a deep independent investigation shows my background played no role in any job I got." So again, that's trying to fight the claim, because this claim has been made that she used a fake Native American identity to get jobs, so she is fighting back against that, and she should, if she's being lied about in public, she wants to correct that.

0:33:14 Thomas: Why shouldn't she? And then she said this, By the way, Donald Trump, remember saying on 7-5 that you would give $1 million to a charity of my choice if my DNA showed Native American ancestry? I remember, and here's the verdict. Please send the check to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. Center. And she got Trump to, at first, deny that he even said that, so that's something of a win. I know it doesn't sound like much in this day and age, but I think that's a minor political victory, getting him to just outright lie about something that was on video. She said further, NIWRC is a nonprofit working to protect Native women from violence. More than half of all Native women have experienced sexual violence, and the majority of violent crimes against Native Americans are perpetrated by non-Natives. Send them your $1 million check, Donald Trump.

0:34:01 Thomas: And then, I took this test and released the results for anyone who cares to see because I've got nothing to hide. What are you hiding? Released your tax returns. Okay, I already said that. Now, here's another one I think is very important. And she also said this in the video, and this is key, I won't sit quietly for Donald Trump's racism, so I took a test, but DNA and family history has nothing to do with tribal affiliation or citizenship, which is determined only, only, she says a second time, only by tribal nations. I respect the distinction and don't list myself as native in the Senate. It. Not be clear and she said in the videos as well, she's saying she does not consider herself native, she doesn't list herself native. She's not trying to benefit from that identity, she was merely corroborating the family story that she's been called a liar for, for going on six years now, and is going to be for another two years.

0:34:59 Thomas: I, sorry, I just don't, I can't really see why that's that bad of a thing for her to have done. Now I'll get into, again, I wanted to make sure I considered the views on this. I'm going to get into a few articles written by Native Americans about it. I think that's very important to consider their side, but I think that's an important thing. I think some people maybe missed that she said this, and I think, I think that's, that's kind of on you. I think, I think you need to know what she's saying. You need to at least watch the whole video or read what she said before pouncing on her. And many people just said, oh, she's not tribal nations. How dare she say she's tribal nations and has a tribal affiliation for the, and she didn't.

0:35:45 Thomas: She didn't say that. She said, I respect the distinction. I don't list myself as native. That's genetic DNA. Literally she said DNA and family history has nothing to do with the tribal affiliation, it couldn't be more clear. Okay, so I'm gonna look at some of the critiques of Elizabeth Warren that I've found. There's been some that are widely shared. Here's one from Vox by Brandon Scott, it says, and it's titled, Cherokee Nation citizens like me are used to people claiming our heritage. It's exhausting. We are fed up with people like Elizabeth Warren claiming native heritage. Hmm. So, I'm just gonna, I'll see how long we go until it misrepresents what she did. Did. Growing up in a predominantly Native American area of rural Oklahoma, it was almost unheard of for someone who wasn't Native to claim our ancestry.

0:36:34 Thomas: For us, that would have spurred a communal backlash. Everyone knew everyone, and to make such a claim would have been seen as dishonest or nefarious. Okay, fair enough. "On Monday, I awoke to news that Senator Elizabeth Warren had provided the results of a DNA test to prove that she was, in fact, Native American." Already misrepresented her, already lied about what, I mean, or misrepresented what she said. She didn't prove that she was in fact Native American. She literally said, I do not list myself as native in the Senate. And Okay, I'll read on. "I felt the immediate pangs of dread as the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the nation's oldest native newspaper, found in 1828. I'm constantly fielding requests from people trying to track down their heritage. I'm also constantly getting emails from from angry tribal citizens wanting to report someone who's fictitiously claiming to be Native American."

0:37:24 Thomas: Totally valid. Yeah, so the concern is, and I totally get it, 100% valid concern is people try to claim Native heritage and tribal citizenship in order to claim benefits that they don't really deserve. Now, as for the other part of that, when he's saying, I'm constantly fielding requests from people, trying to track down their heritage, now, I guess, it's, I am sorry if that guy doesn't like doing that, but I don't know why it would have to be assumed that that's some sort of nefarious thing, I mean, people like to know, something people like do, which is figure out what their heritage was, and what their, you know, family history is.

0:38:10 Thomas: It seems especially when you don't always know what it is. In fact, you often don't know what it is going into it. It seems weird that it's being presented as, in this article anyway, like, that's part of the wrongdoing of non-native people. I guess, okay, maybe there's some better way to do it that doesn't involve things from him. I honestly don't really get it, to be frank. So, if anybody can explain that to me, please feel free to.

He goes on, "This is our reality, we are faced with an onslaught of people who never lived in our shoes saying, those are my shoes too, simply because they spit into a small hermetically sealed glass tube and got back DNA results that say they are 7% Native American." Okay, again, totally agreed, valid, That's wrong, if people are trying to say I'm one of you because of this minor thing when you aren't in fact one of them, then that's wrong. He continues, "Too often, Native Americans hear the words, I took a DNA test, and too often our heritage and racial identity have has been co-opted by others for monetary gain." To claim, okay, so not done, not in the case of Elizabeth Warren. So first one, monetary gain, no. "To claim some exoticism in their identity." I mean, maybe you could say that's what she's doing, I think that's a a pretty uncharitable read. It seems as though she's just reporting and repeating a story that she was told as a kid. I don't understand why that that's necessarily bad. "Or simply because someone wanted an excuse to wear a real pretty Halloween costume."

0:39:43 Thomas: And, and again, totally agree that if that's what someone's doing, that sucks and they shouldn't do it. Don't, don't use your 5%, whatever, you know, Native American DNA results to say you're allowed to do some cultural appropriation. Don't, I totally agree. "But native identity is not just about tracing a distant ancestor back to our tribe. It's about cultural heritage, our shared experiences and participating in our community." End of quote. And that is exactly what Elizabeth Warren said.

So, so far this article that is critical of Elizabeth Warren misrepresented her once and then repeated, said virtually exactly what she said as though it's something her actions were going against. And again, he, he further misrepresents her, and it's, it's frustrating because I, I really want to be respectful to this point of view, and my default, by the way, my, like, my assumptions, my biases are to listen Defer to a marginalized group when speaking about how they feel about this, and absolutely, I do, except when I read that they're saying things she didn't say, like, that's, I don't, that, that something I can't do, like I can, I dunno about you guys, but it, that that's for me that's a bridge too far, if someone says, well, as a Native American, when she says X, I'm offended, and then she didn' say X?

I, you don't get to just not have to be held to standards of reporting or fact, you know, like you do have to do that part too. It's one thing, you Know, if they had all the facts right and said, this is why this is wrong, then I'm not going to argue as a, as a white person.

0:41:22 Thomas: I'm going to say, okay, I'm Going to, Not going to defer to, to your point of view on your experience, but again, when it's just very clearly not what you said. So I'll continue here for Cherokee nation citizens to be recognized as such. We must retrace our roots back to a family member who signed the Dawes Roll, essentially a turn-of-the-century census for Cherokees. This is considered a legal status as we are members of a sovereign nation within the borders of the United States. But Warren has never claimed actual citizenship in our tribe. She has infringed on this without evidence or understanding that it takes more than DNA to claim an identity. That's literally the opposite of what she said. Here it is, I'll read it again, DNA and family history has nothing to do with tribal affiliation or citizenship, which is determined only, only by tribal nations.

0:42:12 Thomas: I respect the distinction and don't list myself as native in the Senate. That's her tweet, I mean, I'm sorry, no matter how much I want to defer to Native Americans in this instance, I can't just sit here and ignore the fact that this person is saying the opposite of what she said. This person is claiming that Elizabeth Warren is saying things she didn't say and doing things she didn't do. It just, that doesn't fly. I don't know. It's really frustrating. Then the next part of this article is just assigning blame to Elizabeth Warren for things that might happen as a result of people misunderstanding her, and again, I mean, if that's the standard, it's so hard, so the heading is, "Warren's actions could further encourage this behavior," behavior.

0:43:02 Thomas: Now, if you read the behavior as what it actually was, which is verifying that you had a family member sometime back in your ancestry that was Native American and that's it, not listing, not taking on a tribal identity, not doing, I mean, I don't understand what the harm is there. Tell me, tell if I'm wrong, but this seems to be based on a misunderstanding of what, or a misreading or a not reading, a non-reading of what Elizabeth Warren actually said and did. Here it says, "This Warren made her DNA claims to stop the name calling, but she," in my opinion, "has propped up a growing sect of people who think they can rely solely on a DNA test to confirm their identities." Well, good thing she explicitly said she wasn't doing that. "A DNA test will not explain the struggle or plight your ancestors had to go through to make it through a rough patch of dusty earth in exchange for their ancestral homelands. A DNA test will now help you determine determine what language your ancestors spoke, the food they ate, or where they essentially originated."

0:44:01 Thomas: Sure. She seems like she would heartily agree with all that. The Cherokee nation is currently on the precipice of a court case decision. This is, so take a look at the blame here. Like, like what Warren is being held accountable for here. Currently on the precipice, of course, court case, decision that could have devastating consequences to our tribe this month a judge in Texas struck down a law governing the adoptions of Native American children by Native families as unconstitutional. Events surrounding Warren's claims only add confusion to an already complex situation. When people are unclear about what makes someone a citizen of a tribe, misconceptions can lead to a change in the law.

0:44:48 Thomas: In this case, it could prove costly to native children. Oh man. I mean, that's, that'S just an unreasonable thing to blame her for when she explicitly said, here's what makes you a citizen of, of a trial. Only tribal nations can, can govern this. That's it. She explicitly says it. Just to look at this law. It was in 1978. And this is, again, has been struck down by a federal judge in Texas. I guess it could go to the Supreme Court, but it gives Native American American families preferential treatment in adoption proceedings for Native American children based on race. And so the judge said that's unconstitutional because it discriminates against non-Native Americans.

0:45:33 Thomas: Nowhere in that is there any effect of what makes you a Native American. That has no bearing on this case. It just seems like such a grasping at straws to try to blame Elizabeth Warren for some butterfly effect of the, If the case is about whether or not Native Americans should have preferential treatment and the judge says, oh no, that's racist because it gives preferential treatment based on race. You can't do that. Whether or not a DNA test tells you whether or not you're Native American, that has no bearing on that. There's no bearing on that question. I just don't. All right, another one I found is from The Atlantic, and it's by Krystal Tsosie, T-S-O-S-I-E, and it says, Elizabeth Warren's DNA is not her identity. Oh, good, she, she would agree. As a geneticist and member of the Navajo Nation, I have some thoughts on the Senators' announcement. So, this, this is really informative, and, it's a perspective I'm really glad to be reading, And I mean that sincerely. It's both a geneticist and a member of Navajo Nation.

So it seems like somebody who absolutely we should hear from on this. And so the thrust of this one is that because Native Americans and U.S. tribal groups have declined to participate in genomic studies, this person is saying that, therefore, the geneticist Bustamante, could not be certain that the genetics that he found in Elizabeth Warren could definitely be traced to a U.

0:47:13 Thomas: S. tribe, you know, because, but, but if you go back to what Bustamante and the experts that PolitiFact consulted said, they used South American genetics. But the reason that works is because they're all from one group that came across from Siberia and spread into the Americas, so that's what Bustamante and the several experts that PolitiFact said, that they can be reasonably certain, and then one person who is a PhD candidate says that this might not work because of what I said, a PhD candidate in Genomics and Health, and don't know, I mean, what do I take, the PhD candidate or the several, several PhDs who all said yes, this, this works for this reason.

If you want to go one way because of that, feels better to believe that the test isn't, doesn't work, that's fine, but I, I mean, the evidence to me seems like we should trust the scientific consensus that it does work. But let's, the geneticist, the expert that Elizabeth Warren consulted, and that, you know, several experts said was, was correct. Let's say he's wrong. Are we holding Elizabeth Warren to that? Like, is that is that the standard? Is there, is there no bar?

Is there no standard that's so high that we won't make a female political candidate clear it before we'll give her a break? Like, like, honestly, like not only is, you know, all this, all the standards we hold her to, but she also has to be smarter and know more about genetics than the widely consulted expert in the field that she, she asked to help her.

0:49:00 Thomas: Like she has to be better than that guy and know that there's limitations, let me get into your methodology. I mean, come on. It's, it's just such an unrealistic expectation. Oh, and I should have started with the Cherokee Nation Statement. It, again, it's so hard because in the first sentence, it makes the same mistake. Quote, "Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation," end quote. Yeah, that's what she said. Uh, and, and they even said to determine the lineage, lineage, so like they're saying it's valid what she did, honestly, right?

"While DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity, to an individual," for an example, I mean, so she's, she used it to determine that it's not evidence for tribal affiliation, yeah, well, that's what she said. And then they said, quote, "Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong," end quote. I, I'm not sure how to interpret that, so does that, does that mean just saying, like, just the, even just taking any DNA test and saying, oh, I have a relative that's this, that's even vaguely claiming a connection to Cherokee, Cherokee, I just don't understand, is that the stand, that seems unrealistically and unreasonably harsh, to be inappropriate and wrong.

0:50:40 Thomas: Are we, so is there no DNA testing we can do to lay claim? Was she laying claim? A connection, any connection, even vaguely is inappropriate and wrong. Is that, is that reasonable? I mean, first off, I don't know how to interpret that. I'm assuming they're saying she did that. But if so, I mean just saying, once again, just saying any sort of connection at any, any kind, and by connection it's, I was related to somebody, factually here, it's in this report, I was related to somebody who may have been Cherokee, that's inappropriate and wrong, I don't know, I guess with that statement, if you want to say that because they say that, then, therefore, that's how it is, because they get to say it, I guess that's right, I can't really argue with it, but I would say it's a connection to Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, she said, again, she respects that they have the right to determine their citizenship and only the tribal nations have the rights, so I don't see how she could have been any more considerate when it comes to that claim.

There's, okay, there are a few others, but I don't know that there are any, they're substantially different and kind of running out of time, and I, this is like my least favorite kind of episode, because it goes against all my instincts, but, I just don't, I don't think it's fair to so blatantly misrepresent what somebody said, and then just hide behind the fact that people will defer to you, even when you're just misrepresenting literally the words that she said.

0:52:22 Thomas: It just doesn't seem fair to me. It seems very unfair. So that's how I feel. And what I'm concerned about is something that Rebecca Traister pointed out in her book, which I read. And that was called Good & Mad. She pointed out that, you know, there were so many people in 2016 who said, okay, yeah, I want, I wanna a woman president, of course I want a woman president, just not this one.

Not Hillary, she's too, whatever, she is too corrupt, she too, oh, she to corporatist, she with this and that. I, I, want a women president, sure, just this one, and what she pointed out, that I think is absolutely true, is that's what it's gonna be every time.

I mean, for the most part, that's what it's going to be every time, mysteriously those same people now, and it's funny because a lot of them even said, "Well, if it was Elizabeth Warren, oh I totally would," you know, and then cut to 2020, it's gonna be the same thing, her, her favorability will probably tank, because that's what happens when a woman tries to, uh, you know, deigns to run for the highest office in the land, favorability will tank, and then a bunch of people say, "Well, we, sure, I want a female president, sure, I want a woman to be president, but, I mean, we can't do this one, we can't, she's, look at her, how much people hate her, we can't, you can't make someone that people hate be president, we gotta do is somebody else, we'll wait, we'll wait, we find another one." It's just gonna happen every time because that's what sexism is.

People who are being sexist don't think they're being sexists most of the time, well, some of them might actually, some might be outright misogynists, that's true, but most people don't think they are.

0:54:02 Thomas: When they do those blind resume studies, the people who reject women's names on resumes don't know that they're even doing it. They think they're just prizing education or experience or vice versa, when in reality, when they test it, they're just finding a justification But the resumes are the same, but magically more men get chosen. It's the same thing. I mean, people don't know they're doing it, but the end result is, oh, wow, look at the favorability numbers. They're so down. Oh, people like her. Oh, they think she's too harsh. They think she is too shrill, stuff like that. So, it might have been wrong what Elizabeth Warren did in the 80s. You know, depending on, I don't, it's still, it is kind of unclear because, again, it was the 80's, and they don't have all that much evidence.

0:54:50 Thomas: From what I am seeing, and you can look through, you know, do your research, look through the links I share, it seems like she never tried to be considered a minority faculty hire. That that was the school doing it. That was the school trying to claim her for that. And I, I hope that we're not going to do the thing again where we're gonna do the same thing where we blame the woman for something that someone else did, like, like in Gamergate, where they, they blame the female game, game maker, I think it was, versus the journalist that allegedly, like, gave her favors in, you know, how he was reviewing her game. All of the rage, all of the ire, all the harassment, all that stuff went toward the woman in that situation, and nobody cared about them, it was just assumed, well, yeah, of course, the male journalist, you know, he would do that, that's fine, we're gonna get all mad at the, it's no coincidence, it really is no coincidence.

0:55:49 Thomas: And I hope we're not gonna do that here, and I support Elizabeth Warren, and by the way, she's right back on the issues, which I think is smart, you us, ought to take care of the people they've laid off because of, you know, just stuff that she's been great at. She is a great candidate for people who liked Bernie, for people from that economic angle. Again, she was critical to founding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that protects us from banks screwing us over, from big banks screwING us over that's being gutted by Trump. She was, uh, foundational in starting that. So she's a great candidate. She's, she would be a good president and, uh.

0:56:35 Thomas: I kind of am rooting for her, but as always after the primary, I will vote for whoever it is, even if it's Joe fricking Biden, I am not, I'm really hoping it's not going to be him. I absolutely am not supporting him in the, uh in the primary. But, um, whoever, whoever, whatever Democrat, I don't, it might be a socialist. Socialist. That's again, I, all I care about is the country being better. I don't care about like, oh, you didn't choose my candidate of Elizabeth Warren. So I'm not going to vote. I'm going to let Trump be president and ruin lives, ruin millions of people's lives because I'm mad that my favorite candidate wasn't chosen. No, I don't care if it's an outright socialist or something that, I mean, again,I kind of like that, but, but whoever, I'm trying to think of the example, whatever liberal it is.

0:57:21 Thomas: And Biden would be one of them. I'm not rooting for Biden in any way, shape or form. But if he's the guy, then I will be voting for him in the general. So, all right. Let me know how you feel about this. Again, I absolutely mean no disrespect to any Native American tribes. I fully think what Elizabeth Warren said is valid, that they determine their citizenship. I don't think anyone should be taking a test and utilizing some minor DNA result to say that you're a Native American you shouldn't be doing that don't do that I wouldn't do But I just think we're being a little too unfair to what Elizabeth Warren did, so, that's my view. Oh, and then, finally, I wanted to bring up, Aaron Rabi, of course, of Philosophers in Space, said it really great, I think, Thank you.

0:58:08 Thomas: And this is just in, in regard to the, like, oh, you played into Trump's hand thing, like that's, that's another thing people say, ah, you, you play it right into it. Aaron said, "Can everyone please clarify for me what the correct game is to play against the pigeon shitting on the board while 30% of the country laughs and calls that winning? Is it the Rousseau Gambit?

I really want to understand the move that all her detractors are sure would have worked better against the people who are lighting the whole game store on fire as we speak." It's so true, I don't, it's so funny, oh man, I really got to get out of here, but, because it's been such a long episode, but it's, people think that, unless, so, in a battle with Trump, so if they, let's say there's one of these altercations which they're, like, with Stormy Daniels, like with Elizabeth Warren in this instance, it's almost as though people think if Trump doesn't immediately catch on fire or somehow quit the presidency, that he, that just means he won, like whatever it is, he won. Oh, oh, Elizabeth Warren, see, it backfired. Did it? What decides that? What determines that? The fact that he's still president? Yeah, well, he will still be president no matter what. He's proven he can say any number of stupid, factually inaccurate things. And then you can take the fact that he's still president and use that to say, well, I guess he was right about that.

He knows that he is playing a hell of a game. No, he's president because people keep him in office. Because he has Republicans protecting him. There's no game you can play, as Aaron is capturing in that really funny comment. There's nothing you can do that's going to... Trouble just stopped. Oh, you're right, you got me.

0:59:46 Thomas: I apologize. No, he will never do that. There's nothing... She didn't play into his hand or out of his hand or any combination of that. She, I think, did something that I don't blame her for doing. Maybe you could argue strategically she should have done something else. I'm open to that argument. But I think that this will be a strong way to have the media not do a bunch of 50-50 articles about her for two more years. Oh, articles like, "Well, Trump claims that she's made it all up about her ancestry, and she claims that he hasn't." It's like, no, this now protects against that, because she can say, "Look, scientists, back me up." They, you know, I don't think that's that unreasonable for her to have done, all the while emphasizing that it doesn't make her Native American or part of any sort of Native tribe.

1:00:35 Thomas: So, honestly, that's how I feel about it. Thank you All right, if you'd like to yell at me in the voicemail, feel free to, you know, I appreciate it, I'm way open to being wrong, and I went back and forth on this one, I really did, for, you, know, for a while I was like, well, this seems weird, and then, for awhile, I was, like, oh, she really blew it, and, then, I read more about it, And I watched her video and saw what she actually said. And I just thought, no, I mean, she really went out of her way, but I mean I could be persuaded. So if you, if you think I'm missing some arguments, uh, I'm really open to it. I, I, really, I want to, again, emphasize, I means nothing but respect to a native American tribes involved in this. Uh, I just, uh just disagree. That's all. All right. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this, uh vote blue and vote only a couple of weeks.

1:01:21 Thomas: Make sure you're registered. Do everything you can. And if you need help, just email me or something. I'll find a way. I don't care. Just vote. We need to vote. We got to do it. All right. See you next week.