Elizabeth Warren's ethnicity & my own family: the politics of seeming vs. being.

this is the sort of video where I have
asked myself what kind of mood you'll want to strike them accordingly do I want to seem very personal and reflective about how what this means to me and reach out to the audience what does this mean to you do I want to see more kind of professional and pull on that deep background I have in political science and philosophy the controversy of the moment is that Elizabeth Horan crossed the line in some electioneering shenanigans in her ongoing contest against Bernie Sanders and then suddenly the whole left-wing woke up and looked back the long history of Elizabeth Warren's dishonesty and kind of manipulative misleading shenanigans I said he will annoy all this stuff we were pretending doesn't matter suddenly seems like it really does matter a most notably little-known guy from Flint Michigan made a podcast reflecting on the extent to which the whole left-wing had been choosing to ignore Elizabeth Warren's claims about her own ethnicity but when you let yourself stop and think about it it really really matters it matters that Elizabeth Warren put her name forward for a cookbook of Native American cuisine indigenous peoples cooking that she submitted recipes like yet to shore up this claim that she is quote unquote a woman of color because she signed up for and received the status and benefits of being a woman of color being a part of an oppressed and disadvantaged minority not only as a student but also as a professor the universally perming her employer the university formally celebrated that she was their first woman of color as a professor I think in the Faculty of law and all of this was based on the claim that in some sense she has a meaningful connection to indigenous people of North America now look in some ways the question of what ethnicity really means is the same whether you're talking about African Americans or Native Americans or the Jewish experience or the Chinese experience and in some ways each of these examples each of these questions of what it means to be a member of an ethnic group in some ways it's really unique all right my ex-wife is partly of African ancestry partly she has never signed up for and never received recognition as a woman of color I think if she were in New York City nobody would treat her as a woman of color maybe once in a while someone would ask if she was part Hispanic or something if she had some like maybe someone and you know what actually if we're being all the way honest black Africans when they met her this happened a couple times during my marriage with my first wife there would be black guys from Africa who'd be like they could tell but you could tell she puts in some tiny tiny fraction of African ancestry that did happen a few times when we were together alright so I mean you know there's my ex-wife and then my ex-wife's mother is twice as African and then my ex-wife's grandfather is twice as much African again but nevertheless even at that stage or the family tree people couldn't tell that that guy was African in many contacts he was treated as white and then this funny thing happened called the Holocaust and al maybe you never heard about this there was this political party called the Nazis and they started rounding people up and putting them into concentration camps and this dude my ex-wife's grandfather he was put into a concentration camp on the suspicion or the assumption that he was Jewish and so what happened his African ancestry saved his life series of witnesses came forward including some people he knew who had some kind of connections in the Nazi Party out of they were members or officers or what a series of witnesses came forward and said no no no he's not Jewish he's North African black he's some kind of you know mixed mixed ethnicity person from North Africa and he's he's not Jewish to let him out of their concentration camp and it's it saved his life Oh reports this you know Elizabeth Warren claims to have more than zero indigenous ancestry she got the DNA test and it is as close to zero as any measurable quantity of DNA can be I really do wonder with the quality of today's DNA test could it just be an error because it's so close to zero there are all kinds of people get DNA tests and they say they're partly of Spanish ancestry and they know they're not they say that partly of Asian ancestry and they have the records of the family they know they're not could it just be an error in a little Smith once that I don't know but in terms of my ex-wife's family tree already for most African known ancestor that grandfather he looked white European enough that most of the time people treated him as white and in one remarkable circumstance he was persecuted as being Jewish what is ethnicity in the 21st century what is the experience or even the oppression or the cultural knowledge that we're supposed to have participated in to be positively identified as that ethnicity even if it were true that Elizabeth Warren has one ancestor great-great-great-great great grandparent even she has one ancestor who was Native American how old can Elizabeth Warren write down on a piece of paper that she is a woman of color and get these benefits in the university how could she write out a recipe pretending that she personally has some kind of involvement with Native American culture and tradition and cooking that she know the cuisine I mean my my ex-wife I can't remember any time in her life we're really positively or negatively her status as being a partly African ancestry had a big impact in her life for me the memory that stands out the most was when employees at the hospital treated us like crap when she was giving birth to my daughter and the irony was the the employees who were in a sense most racist against us they were themselves North African immigrants to France right they were they were North African people and they looked down on us like the two of us were both North African immigrants like themselves so that was but it was a really messed up situation but that was more like self-hatred on the part of these people rather than racism and it's conventional sense and you know I could I could understand it from their perspective what they did was wrong and evil and it made you know what could have been the happiest days of my life the days of my daughters were it made it a traumatic experience really I'm not overstating it was horrible being in a being in Oz where people were racist against me they had all these stereotypes about North African immigrants the subset kept saying this insulting stuff to us and they were themselves North African immigrants or the direct descendants of North African immigrants in that part of France the south of France is really messed up about about ethnicity totally different category I mean me they perceive me as North African so yeah if I look like I'm North African maybe people use their imagination and they look at Elizabeth Warren and think that she's she's partly Native American but be that as it may um how could Elizabeth Warren make the claim to knowing a recipe to submitting a recipe to a cookbook as being part of Native American tradition Native American culture my ex-wife doesn't know any African recipes it's not like her great-great grandfather passed down on African cuisine to him my ex-wife's mother doesn't know any African ancestor it doesn't know African cuisine or African traditions or African religion or African language all right it's already too many generations ago for even my ex-wife's mother to submit a rescue event so how would I feel how would I feel looking at the next generation if my daughter if my daughter then like made a big deal out of this tiny fragment of DNA that she has linking her back to Africa and it's legit it's real um I remember one case very clearly where a black guy he saw pictures of me with my daughter and he sent me email saying oh hey I can tell your daughter is is partly black as part of the back so some people some people can discern this in my daughter that she has some tiny fragment well how would I feel if my daughter grew up and was like playing that card in the university like leaning into and claiming to be a woman of color claiming to be even african-american or claiming to be part of the African American experience when she walks the streets of New York City police officers do not treat her as black any of these people my ex-wife or you know my daughter there is no sense in which they can even participate on that level with the african-american experience and there's no sense in which they ever have in their lives no look I mean cuisine is a funny thing if you want to I could become a master of Chinese cuisine I have no Chinese ancestry and then I guess I could submit to a nice coat though but this is this is getting this is getting a little bit weird and disturbing ethnicity in the 21st century is is a category where perception is everything and then it's easy to think in terms of a full symmetry where we have perception on the one hand and then we have reality on the other hand but we're often dealing with situation where there's perception and then there's nothing real we can counter pose to that perception okay probably all of you who are regular subscribers to my channel all of you know me for a few years you all perceive me as Jewish okay guess what I'm just as Irish as I am Jewish but I'm Percy to be Jewish okay I have a sister not a half-sister I have a full-blooded sister and she looks Irish she looks scots-irish let's be let's be real here she looks we could even say she looks more Scottish than Irish but doesn't matter okay um there's a whole history of colonialism there we're not gonna get into with the colonization of Londonderry in Northern Ireland okay let's just say Scottish Irish let's hyphenate the two together okay that's what my sister looks like because you roll the dice with DNA and that's how she turned out guess what my family name would be if we didn't have a fake name in my family tree if I had my father's father's father's names that were continuous coming down the farther side of him my name would be McGinty and I would have grown up being perceived as Irish or Scots Irish or Scottish Irish right and people would have said about me oh yeah McGinty yeah big guy people and people would just use their imagination and perceived me as Irish despite like my ethnic features that I got and probably you know like if I was in school with my sister if the two of us were standing there I got a big problem oh yeah those are the McGinty kids this is old man McGinty's kids those are those Irish kids and my sister actually looks Scottish Irish and then you just use your imagination and perceive me as ours you know what participating in that cultural identity in that ethnicity in the Canadian culture I can imagine how that would've inspired me to move in a certain direction or even to exaggerate certain kinds of stereotypical behaviors I can imagine that back when I was 16 years old and I still kind of drank alcohol and went to clubs and carouse and stuff that like the the sense of being Irish of participating in an Irish identity that that might've encouraged me to get into more stereotypically Irish behaviors as an Irish guy I can imagine how in terms of like the politics of the day because when I grew up terrorism in Ireland was still a real ongoing thing there was open when I was a kid Ireland and the clash and Ireland in the newspaper thing I could imagine how maybe that would have been a bigger interest for me you know um Hillary Clinton's kid Chelsea Clinton I forget the kid Hillary Clinton had with with Bill Clinton she did her PhD thesis on the politics of Ireland the peace process and the terrorism and so on for me not an interest still to this day not really interested okay you know I can imagine how if my father is lying still had that name McGinty that Irishness could have been a huge part of my upbringing and could still be part of my life today in a sense whether I cared about or even if I despised it but like Here I am living with this name McGinty and probably nobody would have ever even noticed that I look Jewish because we see what we want to see and the same way people convince themselves that Elizabeth Warren looks Native American people would have convinced themselves that I look Irish and the irony is genetically I am Scottish Irish I'm just as much Scottish Irish as I am Jewish but instead growing up the way I did looking the way I did Judaism and Jewishness and the politics of Israel have always been this huge part of my life have always cast this huge cloud over my life and look talking about my ex-wife and my daughter in their case African s and blackness were not a part of their life but maybe if they had looked slightly different maybe if when you rolled the dice and the DNA came out maybe if they had looked a bit more like their grandfather maybe all of that would have been totally different and the African and black or african-american mixed race cultural experience would have been a huge part of their lives also Elizabeth Warren lied intentionally lied and cultivated a mythos around herself of being Native American of participating in Native American culture of even representing Native American culture even if it was only to the extent of recipes to that cookbook as if she has a connection to that kind of cuisine and that culture Elizabeth Warren promoted herself as a woman of color as a student and then as a professor and then insulin accepting accolades as being the first woman of color professor and I think we're living through a period of time where we all feel the extent to which our participation in a given ethnic category is to some extent elective and voluntary right and yet it's still real and it still matters I knew people who were Native American in the Saskatchewan who looked who look the same as my current girlfriend Melissa who looked a hundred percent white European okay in what sense were they Native American despite appearances well for one thing if you actually go back and look at the portraits that are in like the British National Portrait Gallery or the French collections if you look at the painted portraits of what Native American Chiefs look like when they first had contact with Europeans and they had intermarried Europeans at all they never looked all that different the difference in the ethnic appearance of First Nations immigrants it's not that striking it's very subtle and the vast majority of people who have survived the genocide and slavery today they are of mixed ancestry we're not going to digress into the long history of why that is they have some European ancestry mixed in with their Native American ancestry and in some cases they have 3/4 Europeans history but I knew people in Saskatchewan who were students at First Nations University who had a meaningful connection to that culture because they actually did cook the cuisine they actually were involved in being Parliament in complaining to the government Abba Polti revolt in the activism and the protests okay they actually were going to religious ceremonies in a tent you know where they inhale tobacco smoke and they chant and they dance they were actually part of the culture and the politics a few of them were struggling to hold on to the language too few it was incredibly rare to meet First Nations people who are making the effort to keep the language alive which is a tragedy okay but these were people who even if they looked a hundred percent white and we have a really significant footnote there that even 300 years ago a lot of them did not look that different from Europeans with a very subtle difference in their their appearance um a lot of them have a really meaningful involvement with that history and that culture and that ongoing political struggle and yes it's a choice that's a choice Elizabeth Warren could have made she could have been the world's most famous wealthy powerful and successful advocate for Native Americans and First Nations rights but to my knowledge she has done less politically for Native Americans than Bernie Sanders she's done less politically than Nixon Richard Nixon is a really interesting history with that that that wasn't what she did with her life wouldn't everything be different today if she hadn't rolled let's just say maybe she could enroll the same University I did at First Nations University taking specialized courses in the history politics and language of of Native Americans of indigenous people learning those languages is incredibly hard work okay so we're moving into a period of time when I think the standards for authenticity are once again shifting and we have to move away from a purely negative assumption that you're only part of an ethnic group if you suffered oppression because of your appearance or be of your status as part of that ethic group and we have to move into a fundamentally positive view that you're part of that ethnic group because you chose to contribute positively to that political discourse you chose to contribute positively to that culture even if it was something as simple as preparing recipes as caring about the cuisine in that cultural tradition