Sen. Elizabeth Warren is talking about her Native American “heritage” again, and it’s not helping her 2020 campaign for president.
Warren appeared on New York’s hip-hop program The Breakfast Club on Friday and the conversation eventually turned to Warren’s long-running scandal involving her claimed Native American ancestry, which she repeatedly used to identify herself as a minority throughout her career.
Watch @cthagod grill @ewarren on her heritage. “When did you find out that you weren’t [Native American]?” “Were there any benefits to that?” “You sound like the original Rachel Dolezal a little bit” @breakfastclubam pic.twitter.com/GFzH8JqSqN
— Sarah Dolan (@sarahedolan) May 31, 2019
Warren offered excuses for the “mistake” and acknowledged that a blood test she publicized last year was a bad idea, though she still maintains that her minority status had no bearing on her hire at Harvard University and subsequent rise to national prominence.
“So I grew up in Oklahoma, learned about my family the same way most people learn about their family, from my mama, my daddy, my aunts and my uncles, and it’s what I believed,” Warren told the program. “But I’m not a person of color. I’m not a citizen of a tribe. And I shouldn’t have done it.”
Host Charlamagne Tha God pressed for something more, and offered a very unflattering comparison to another high-profile case of racial misappropriation.
“If you had a change to do it over, would you?” he questioned.
“I can’t go back, but I shouldn’t of,” Warren said, “but what I can do is try to be a good partner. And that’s what I do every day.
“For example, … what I want to see us do in education is I want to see us get rid of the student loan debt and make an investment in the historically black colleges and universities,” she said, attempting shift the conversation to policy. “I want to see us in housing, hit redlining head-on. I have the first housing proposal to just smack straight into that. I want to see in healthcare, address healthcare disparities in particularly maternal mortality rates for black women.
“We got serious problems we need to attend,” she said.
Other hosts on the show were unfazed.
“So your family told you you were Native American?” DJ Envy questioned.
“Ya!” Warren shot back.
“How long did you hold on to that, because there are some reports that said you were Native American on your Texas bar license, and that you said you were Native American on some documents when you were a professor at Harvard?” Charlamagne asked. “Like, why’d you do that?”
“Ya,” Warren said, “so it’s what I believed. You know, it’s like I said, it’s what I learned from my family.”
“When did you find out you weren’t?” he pressed.
She didn’t answer the question.
As recently as last October, Warren released the results of a DNA test that showed “strong evidence” of Native American roots, which equated to 1/1024 of her DNA. The test ultimately did not quell her critics, including President Trump, and “Pocahontas” was eventually forced to apologize and disavow her claims of Indian heritage.
“Well, I’m not a person of color. I’m not a citizen of a tribe. And tribal citizenship is an important distinction, and not something I am,” Warren said.
“Were there any benefits to that?” Charlamagne interjected.
“No,” Warren said. “Boston Globe did a full investigation … nothing about my family ever affected any job I ever got.”
“You didn’t get a discount in college or … ?” DJ Envy questioned as Warren laughed and shook her head no.
“You’re kind of like the original Rachel Dolezal a little bit. Rachel Dolezal the white woman pretending to be black,” Charlamagne observed.
“Well, this is what I learned from my family,” Warren replied.
“Yeah?” Charlamagne said.
“Ya,” Warren said.
Dolezal, a former NAACP chapter president, was outed in in 2015 for claiming to be half black and a victim of hate crimes, both of which her white parents disputed. Dolezal was also charged with welfare fraud and perjury in the scandal.
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