Originally Posted by
MumblesBadly
I’ve said this before: Because someone in the administration probably heard Warren talking about her Native American heritage, however tiny, after she was there, saw an opportunity to get add a “diversity” checkmark for the department without needing to a hire a professor with a pre-established identity as one, and slyly encouraged her to do so. I based this on seeing firsthand how college administrators will play games with classifications of things to boost the public perception of their school using the least amount of effort when the opportunity arises.
I also base this on the fact that Warren’s areas of scholarly interest have nothing to do with issues important to Native American tribes, and as such, she didn’t really have her scholarly credibility enhanced by such a reclassification. But in the modern age of “diversity matters” in college reputations, the administration clearly did as long as they could get away with reclassifying Warren as a Native American.
This is all baseless speculation.
There is no evidence at all that Warren was pressured or pushed into changing her race to Native American by colleagues. Everything points to this being her own idea. Even Warren herself has not blamed the decision on anyone else.
Keep in mind that she also laughably was a "contributor" to an awful Native American cookbook in 1984 called "Pow Wow Chow", where some of the recipes were plagiarized from elsewhere. She clearly had some delusion that she was part Native American, and wanted to exploit that at every opportunity.
This whole Native thing was something she enjoyed pushing throughout her adult life, and it not only went unchallenged, but she probably felt it made people see her as more interesting. That's why I'm guessing she kept on with it. She'd tell stories about her Native American family, people would seem interested, and the positive feedback would just keep the whole thing going.
Remember the ridiculous interview about how her parents experienced flak when dating because one was Native and one was white? Then it was found that all of it was bullshit?
Make no mistake about it. All of this shit will come back up if she is the Democratic candidate, and while it's not a huge deal as far as her fitness for office, it does cast a story of delusion and dishonesty upon her basic narrative of being sensible and straightforward.
While what she did in the 70s is long done and overwith, she really screwed herself in recent years by telling these dumb Native American family stories and releasing that DNA test. A simple, "Oops, turned out my family told me wrong, sorry about that" would have mostly ended the issue.