{"id":22943,"date":"2012-05-06T23:33:24","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T23:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22943"},"modified":"2012-05-07T16:39:02","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T16:39:02","slug":"elizabeth-warren%e2%80%99s-birther-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22943","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Warren\u2019s Birther Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/04\/elizabeth-warrens-birther-moment\/\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth Warren\u2019s Birther Moment<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2012-05-04<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.noblemaillard.com\/Academic_homepage\/Home.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kevin Noble Maillard<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Law<br \/>\n<em>Syracuse University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>If you are 1\/32 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cherokee\" target=\"_blank\">Cherokee<\/a> and your grandfather has high cheekbones, does that make you Native American? It depends. Last Friday, Republicans in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Massachusetts\" target=\"_blank\">Massachusetts<\/a> questioned the racial ancestry of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elizabeth_Warren\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth Warren<\/a>, the Democratic Senate candidate. Her opponent, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scott_Brown\" target=\"_blank\">Senator Scott Brown<\/a>, has accused her of using minority status as an American Indian to advance her career as a law professor at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas. The Brown campaign calls her ties to the Cherokee and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lenape\" target=\"_blank\">Delaware<\/a> nations a \u201chypocritical sham.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a press conference on Wednesday, Warren defended herself, saying, \u201cNative American has been a part of my story, I guess since the day I was born, I don\u2019t know any other way to describe it.\u201d Despite her personal belief in her origins, her opponents have seized this moment in an unnecessary fire drill that guarantees media attention and forestalls real debate&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8230;The Republican approach to race is to feign that it is irrelevant \u2014 until it becomes politically advantageous to bring it up<\/strong>. Birthers question <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Obama\u2019s<\/a> state of origin (and implicitly his multiracial heritage) in efforts to disqualify him from the presidency. They characterize him as \u201cother.\u201d For Warren, Massachusetts Republicans place doubts on her racial claims to portray her as an opportunistic academic seeking special treatment. In both birther camps, opponents look to ancestral origins as the smoking gun, and ride the ambiguity for the duration&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire opinion <a href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/04\/elizabeth-warrens-birther-moment\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elizabeth Warren\u2019s Birther Moment The New York Times 2012-05-04 Kevin Noble Maillard, Associate Professor of Law Syracuse University If you are 1\/32 Cherokee and your grandfather has high cheekbones, does that make you Native American? It depends. Last Friday, Republicans in Massachusetts questioned the racial ancestry of Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic Senate candidate. Her opponent, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,3015,6,26,20,25],"tags":[10647,4330,4329,1234,3712,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-22943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-native-americans","category-new-media","category-politics","category-usa","category-women","tag-elizabeth-warren","tag-kevin-maillard","tag-kevin-n-maillard","tag-kevin-noble-maillard","tag-massachusetts","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}