Mrs. Warren's Confession

Pocahontas on film, 1910.

We're watching a crazy situation with Elizabeth Warren's DNA testing. The mainstream media generally are reporting it as a huge propaganda victory for Warren: now she had proven that she really is “native American,” making Trump look bad for doubting her. And Trump has shown himself a liar for not paying up the million dollars he supposedly bet her.

A bet he never made, by the way. He suggested he would make a hypothetical bet if she claimed to be aboriginal while debating him.

Warren's test suggested she had an Indian ancestor 6 to 10 generations ago.

What is not mentioned by the mainstream news reports—maybe they are just too lazy and incompetent to do the simple leg work, maybe they are just that partisan--is that this is about equally true of the average American of “European” ancestry. Warren's detectable aboriginal DNA actually turns out to be a little below the average for the American population.

So has she indeed proven herself to be an Indian?

If so, we all are.

I hope this concept holds. It will end the artificial and destructive separation into two distinct levels of citizenship, and the myth of aboriginality. And I think it is true: all present North Americans are more or less equally the inheritors in any real sense of the various Indian cultures. We are all mixed. We are how they developed. Cultures are not static. And in any case, you should not get any special advantages because of genetics. Race is not a helpful or a Christian concept.

But hey, in passing, were the media once much better, or are we just becoming more aware of how bad they are now that we can compare notes with other sources online?

I think it is a bit of both.