Racism in 2012: "Clearly she's not"

This is Republican Senator Scott Brown.  He's running for reelection to the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.  Several times in his first debate with the Democratic candidate, Elizabeth Warren, he attacked her for claiming "she was a Native American, and clearly she's not."

 So Scott Brown is an expert on who and who is not Native American.  He can tell just by looking.

This is Elizabeth Warren.  As you can see, she's as white as the pure driven snow.  Can't possibly be of Native American heritage.  Apart from no feathers and buckskin, she's clearly white.  Clearly.

Oh wait.  That isn't Elizabeth Warren.  It's Louise Erdrich.  She's the author of more than 20 books: novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, many of them about Native Americans.  She was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.  She's universally known as a Native American author.  She is the daughter of Ralph Erdrich, a German-American, and Rita Gourneau, whose father served as tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.  Louise is an enrolled member of that band. 

This is Elizabeth Warren.  She grew up in Oklahoma (where Cherokee and Delaware Indians were among those relocated in the Trail of Tears), and was told as a child that her parents had to elope because her father's family was wary of her mother's family having Cherokee and Delaware ancestry.  No documents have yet surfaced that trace this ancestry, but that doesn't prove it isn't so.  Warren noted her ancestry on a few registries but says--and all her employers agree--she never called herself Native American on an application. 

There are a whole lot of issues and tons of disagreement within American Indian communities over who is and who isn't entitled to call themselves Indian.  But there is little or no disagreement that how you look--how white you look-- is no guide at all.  There are very few American Indians who don't have a European ancestor, and many have several.

Some Native leaders I know tend to see this in cultural rather than racial terms. It is all very complicated.  But the point here is that claiming that Elizabeth Warren "clearly" is not Native American based on how she looks is ignorant at best, and racist in its implication.  Yes, you can be blue-eyed and blond and be Native American.

Rachel Maddow did a story on this, and though she got Melissa Harris-Perry to talk about race as a cultural construct, they never got to the racist heart of this.  Yes, claiming that Elizabeth Warren is too white to be Native American--and therefore she is a liar, and has lied for personal advantage because claiming this racial heritage got her special privileges--is just a different version of the racism that Republicans are attempting to use in the 2012 campaign.  It's all about us and them, and creating racial divides.

But to assume that everyone white will agree that "clearly" she's not Native American is racism that's proud of itself, proud of its ignorance.  In 2012.  Unbelievable.  I wouldn't vote for this man for any public office.

Update: And just to make the racism here very clear, this video of Brown staffers at a rally ridiculing Native peoples has emerged.  These Republicans are ignorant and despicable.