XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.politics.usa, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
XPost: alt.genealogy

The Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren meme will never die, in part because
Warren and her allies won't let it. In a new fact-check piece, The
Washington Post's Glenn Kessler again tries to make the case that
Warren really is as Native American as she claims, and to do so he
declares that "just about everything you've read" on her much-maligned
DNA test is "wrong."

On Monday, The Boston Globe published a report that was part of
Warren's media blitz containing information provided by the senator
that offers "strong evidence" that she was not using false claims of
Native blood to get ahead in academia:

Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test that
provides "strong evidence'' she had a Native American
in her family tree dating back 6 to 10 generations, an
unprecedented move by one of the top possible contenders
for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. ...

[Carlos D. Bustamante, a Stanford University professor and
expert in the field who won a 2010 MacArthur fellowship]
concluded that "the vast majority" of Warren's ancestry is
European, but he added that "the results strongly support
the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor."

Bustamente calculates that Warren probably has a pure Native American
ancestor "in the range of 6-10 generations ago," which the Globe
calculated (after an initial incorrect calculation) likely made her
anywhere from 1/64th to 1/1,024th Native American. The result was wide
public mocking of Warren for the media blitz backfire.

But Kessler says everyone's got the math wrong because "ancestors do
not contribute genetic material equally over time."

"Some ancestors contribute a lot - while others nothing at all," he
writes. "In other words, as you go back in time, the number of your
ancestors keeps increasing but not nearly as fast as the number of
genealogical ancestors. Look closely at the sixth generation, and you
will see some strong contributors of genetic material - and many weak
ones."

In other words, all the talk of Warren having less genetic relationship
to Native Americans than the average American is false, Kessler says:

This basic error in understanding the test results was
compounded by the RNC's reference to the 2014 New York
Times article, which was about a genetic profile of the
United States, based on a study of 160,000 people drawn
from the customer base of 23andMe, a consumer personal
genetics company. With reporters believing that Warren's
genome was only as much as 1.56 percent Native American,
the article's line that "European-Americans had genomes
that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent
African, and .18 Native American" made it appear as if
Warren's sample was even smaller than that of the average
American.

Not so. Remember we said that the Bustamante study said
she had 10 times more than the individuals from Utah? That's
the relevant statistic, indicating that her claim to some
Native American heritage is much stronger than most European
Americans.

In other words, Warren is (probably) more Native American than the
average American. Most likely.

So, if she does potentially have more than 1/64th Native American
blood, does this mean she had a right to be described as Harvard's
first "woman of color"? We'd better leave that up to the
Intersectionality crowd to hammer out.

In an interview with the Globe following the massive backlash to her
DNA test, including from the Cherokee Nation, Warren said she wishes
she "had been more mindful" of making the distinction between ancestry
and citizenship. "The tribes and only the tribes determine
citizenship," she said. "It's their right as a matter of sovereignty,
and they exercise that in the ways they choose to exercise it. I
respect that distinction."

Her comments follow a searing rebuke by Cherokee Nation Secretary of
State Chuck Hoskin Jr., who slammed Warren for "undermining tribal
interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage."

"Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation
or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong," said
Hoskins. "It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses
while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their
citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is
proven."

--
Kavanaugh is a gang rapist.
OK, not a gang rapist, but a serial rapist.
Not a serial rapist, but a rapist.
OK, not a rapist, but a blackout drunk.
Not a blackout drunk, but an alcoholic.
Not an alcoholic, but he drinks beer.
OK, he just threw ice at someone once in the 1980's.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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