by AJ Rice
I think we finally found Elizabeth Warren’s secret grandmother.
It turns out Elizabeth Warren told 1/1024th of the truth when she laid claim to being a Native American back in 2020.
Well, maybe it was 1/64th true – according to the results of the DNA test she took to back up those claims.
Warren’s cultural appropriation of Native American identity pales beside that of Sacheen Littlefeather, though. For decades, Maria Louise Cruz – her real name – claimed to be of White Mountain Apache heritage. She dressed the part in full Land o’ Lakes regalia – even though her heritage was Mexican-Canadian, as explained by her sister, Rosalind Cruz.
“It’s a fraud. It’s disgusting to the heritage of tribal people. And it’s just insulting to my parents.”
“Sacheen Littlefeather” even had the effrontery to lecture the audience at the 1973 Academy Awards about the maltreatment of American Indians – on behalf of Marlon Brando, who protested the awards that year by not showing up to accept his award for Best Actor in the timeless masterpiece, “The Godfather.”
“Sacheen Littlefeather’s” other sibling, Trudy Orlandi, thinks the motive for playing Indian was profit. She “found it more prestigious to be an American Indian than it was to be Hispanic.”
It’s hard for me to keep track of how liberals calculate which fake race hustle earns them the most money.
The actress-activist’s sisters believe that “Deb” – which is what they called “Sacheen” – got her pretendian name from the Sacheen Ribbon Company, which “made the thread they used to make clothes as children.”
“Sacheen” – who died earlier this month – lived long enough to get an apology from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the “treatment she received for refusing Brando’s Oscar for him.”
Another appropriator is Rachel Dolezal, a 100 percent white woman who “identified” as a black one – and became president of the NAACP – until she was forced to resign in the wake of revelations that she’s even less black than Warren is Native American.
These events are all of a piece with Joe Biden’s recent claims, such as the one about his son having died in Iraq and – prior to that – of having been “sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community.”
Emphasis on “sort of.”
Back in 1970 – when Biden entered politics, people of Puerto Rican background constituted 0.39 percent of the population in Delaware. It’s hard to be “raised” in a “community” of less than 1 percent of anything.
These claims are every bit as insulting as it is to assume the heritage and culture of others for political (and pocket-lining) purposes. But liberals not only feel no shame in doing just that, they seem to have a penchant for doing it. This is how identity politics is played. It tells us something about how liberals really feel about the “people of color” for whom they feign respect.
As the Guardian put it with regard to the Dolezal fiasco: (She) “changed her appearance, revised her history and constructed a new family. She adopted a series of African-American ‘dads’ and presented to the world a black son, who turned out to be her brother.”
This amounted to worse-than-blackface “skit,” because it was meant to fool black people into believing she actually was black – just as Warren attempted to fool her supporters about her “native American” heritage. This goes beyond mockery into something far more contemptuous of the people they tried to fool. It smacks of “stolen valor” – the term for appropriating a military record (and decorations) the individual doesn’t have – and didn’t earn.
Ever heard of Barry Dunham? He was the 44th president of the United States. How about Robert Francis O’Rourke? Are you smelling what I’m stepping in?
Yet, even when caught in actual blackface – as in the case of the former governor of Virginia, Ralph “Coonman” Northam – liberals invariably give other liberals a pass. Northam wasn’t forced to resign when photos of him doing the “mammy” routine surfaced. He was defended by his fellow liberals, who cited “an extraordinary effort to connect with black constituents across Virginia, a process that Northam says broke him down and built him back a better person – more aware of the ugly reality of race in America.”
Let that sink in.
The man who dressed like Al Jolson and mocked black people “connect(s)” with black people and is “more aware of the ugly reality of race in America.” Such as his mocking of black people, perhaps?
That, by the way, is something his Republican successor, Glenn Youngkin, has never done. Liberals, on the other hand, tried to portray Youngkin as a “racist” by sending fake racists to stage a fake in-support-of-Youngkin tiki-torch lit rally at one of his campaign stops.
These cigar-store “racists” were almost as real as Elizabeth Warren’s claims about her “native American” heritage – the “evidence” of which her “Fact Squad” appears to have systematically scrubbed from the record in anticipation of a possible presidential run in 2024.
Warren’s “triumphant” tweets, web page assertions of native American kinship, and YouTube videos have been whited-out, so to speak.
She subsequently boarded the Mea Culpa Express and did the usual rounds, making apologies to those whose identity she attempted to appropriate. “Senator Warren has reached out to us and apologized to the tribe,” said Cherokee Nation spokesperson Julie Hubbard. “We are encouraged by this dialogue and understanding that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws, not through DNA tests.”
Especially when those tests reveal as much Cherokee “DNA” as Rachel Dolezal’s “African American” heritage.
Warren was eventually forced to concede the self-evident. “I am not a person of color; I am not a citizen of a tribe.”
Who’d have guessed?
“We are encouraged,” Hubbard went on, “by her action and hope that slurs and mockery of tribal citizens and Indian history and heritage will now come to an end.”
Which they won’t – until white liberals such as Elizabeth Warren, “Sacheen Littlefeather,” Rachel Dolezal, and Joe Biden stop pretending they are what they are not – mocking all of us along the way.
– – –
A.J. Rice is president and CEO of Publius PR, Editor-in-Chief of The Publius National Post, and author of the #1 Amazon bestseller, The Woking Dead: How Society’s Vogue Virus Destroys Our Culture.
Photo “Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden” by The White House.
