Margo DeLaune, a Harvard graduate and member of the Kiowa Tribe, wrote a column denouncing Elizabeth Warren and her false claims of Cherokee ancestry and Native American status.
Perhaps, in the end, we should appreciate Professor Warren for revealing institutionalized deficiencies at our alma mater that may have otherwise remained unexamined. However, we should nevertheless hold her accountable for the damage she has wrought—by either crassly capitalizing on the plight of the American Indian or indulging in the fetishization of a frequently caricaturized minority group. We ask the fellow Native alumni of Harvard, as well as the University’s current Native students and staffers, to join in supporting Senator Brown. Because when Warren directly facilitates a corruption of equal opportunity philosophy and then disingenuously dismisses valid concerns about her behavior as attacks against her family, she demeans the bravery of our Native forebears who fought so valiantly to resist assimilation and to preserve our various ways of life…
DeLaune hits the issue dead on when she calls Warren’s deceptions “a corruption of equal opportunity philosophy.”
Elizabeth Warren is a wealthy white woman who built her career as an Ivy League law professor by making false claims to minority status. In recent weeks, numerous Native American groups and individuals have called upon Warren to renounce her damaging deceptions. Warren’s response so far has been simply to ignore them.
We’re still waiting for Elizabeth Warren to apologize the Native American community. We’re still waiting for our nation’s leading Democrats — as a group — to join together and call Warren to account for betraying the ideals of diversity and affirmative action that have, for so many years, been fundamental to their party. Will Democratic leaders take a stand for their principles, or will they merely stand for the power of their political party?
Warren seeks to fill the seat once occupied by Ted Kennedy — the man who for so many years served as the most visible and passionate champion of liberal causes in the United States Senate.
Teddy Kennedy once said this: “Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins.”
Those Democrats who continue to support Warren’s campaign would do well to contemplate Kennedy’s words.