Elizabeth Warren’s supporters are gloating after the senator released DNA results proving, once and for all, that she is extremely white. In fact, Warren is so white that she has to go back six to ten generations to find the faintest hint of a non-white person in her lineage. She is so white that, at best, she is possibly around three percent Native American, but probably closer to .001 percent. The depths of her whiteness boggles the mind. She’s so white that you might expect her to receive an endorsement from Richard Spencer.
Of course, Warren is spinning the news in the other direction. The senator says that years of using her “Native American heritage” for professional and personal gain have now been vindicated by her microscopic speck of potential Indian DNA. I say “potential” because the test used samples from Mexico, Peru, and Colombia as a stand in for Native American. So it is more accurate to say that Elizabeth Warren might, possibly, according to scant evidence, have a relative who was born in Mexico 300 years ago. In any case, Warren is rejoicing at the news and the Left seems to have joined the celebration.
Perhaps there is reason to celebrate after all. If the Left embraces Warren as Native American based on a potential Indian or partially Indian or at least Mexican ancestor who lived two or three centuries ago, then they have also embraced the end of identity politics. The whole point of leftist identity politics is to divide the country into two groups: persecuted minorities on one side and evil white folk on the other. Those in the Persecuted Group can cash in their persecution for personal advancement, political gain, sympathy, or whatever other advantage. Those in the Persecutor Group must suffer correlated losses in order to even everything out.
But if a person can escape the Persecutor Group and set up camp among the Persecuted simply by insisting that there was probably a minority in her family tree somewhere along the line, then the Persecutor camp will soon be empty. Almost every white person has some non-white DNA. Trace anyone’s lineage back 300 years and you’ll probably find quite a bit more diversity than can be discovered on the Warren family tree. Indeed, go back far enough and none of us are purely white. But if none of us are purely white, then all of us are victims, which leaves no one to do the victimizing.
So, I say we accept Warren as the Cherokee she claims to be. I say we also accept each other as whatever ethnicity we all claim to be. Then we can all be victims together. Or we can all be victimizers together. It won’t much matter at that point. Identity politics has become obsolete.