Thread by @tamanosou

Since Sanders and Warren broke up there's been all sorts of he said she said stuff happening. Before I thread on this let me make something clear: I don't vote for white nationalists so I won't vote for Sanders. Not thrilled with Warren, but if she gets the nom I'll vote for her.

Firstly, it's not right that Sanders doesn't understand the nature of white supremacy and is trying to excuse racism. Secondly, he needs to keep Obama's name out of his mouth particularly given this is MLK weekend. But like I said, he's not ever getting my vote.

Let's get into Warren though and the whole native or not a native thing. Given how DNA works I have a feeling she did actually have a first nation ancestor. BUT she's not raised indigenous. She's raised white and she presents white. She also has and had not tribal links.

So, as far as I'm concerned, whether or not she is actually native is up to the Native Americans and they've more or less said, "lols, no." To me that's basically the end of it.

Or it would be if she hadn't claimed it on official documents.

Uh, so ... I'm going to whitesplain something because I think this might be something about white people that isn't actually widely known:

White people often more or less fabricate a racial identity for ourselves other than white.

We do this

1. because most of us don't know why that's hugely problematic.

and

2. because white is boring. Particularly to people who don't understand no. 1.

Here's how it would work. I'm super white. My mom was mostly Danish with a little English/Irish added in and my father is Hungarian. As in born in Hungary, speaks the language, is a nuclear physicist Hungarian. (Sidenote: all Hungarians are nuclear physicists.) So I'm WHITE white

Except in American white people land I could say that because Hungarians are originally made up of Central Asian steppe tribes that I'm half Asian.

Now, yeah, that's absurd. I'm not half-Asian, I'm half-Hungarian. But this is the sort of logical leap a lot of white people make.

Keep in mind people are self-reporting their race in a lot of these cases so just to seem interesting a lot of white people will put in "mixed" or "other" even when it's totally not what that section is meant for.

And it's not *meant* to be harmful. White people who do this aren't trying to get a special advantage or engage in cultural appropriation ... they just think it's "interesting."

Which is why a lot of white people didn't understand why Warren claiming native heritage was bad.

I also want to stress I am not excusing white ignorance or Warren's actions. Because this sort of thing reinforces white supremacy and it is the responsibility of white people to educate themselves to a degree that they aren't stupiding into racism.

But Warren also handled it poorly. She made a mistake and rather than turn it into a teachable moment she got defensive. Wrong call there. I mean, yeah, the damage was already very much done, but she could have talked about her white privilege, or tribal sovereignty etc.

You can have a cool family history. That's fine and fun. My mom and grandma INSISTED that my great great grandfather was the bastard son of King Christian VIII of Denmark. Apparently, he was educated at court. So that's a nice story. Doesn't make me a duchess.

In actual fact what probably happened is that one of the Queen's ladies got pregnant and the wanted to keep her at court regardless and so when her son was born they just ... didn't give him a last name ... wink wink nudge nudge.

Regardless of whether I'm actually a member of the House of Oldenburg that story is JUST a story. I can't use it for titles or land or money. It's just something that my family's passed down. Consider - white people - stories of non-white ancestors in the same light.

If you absolutely know then yeah, you're mixed and that's super cool and rather good for your health actually. But if you're not sure, act like your great great great grandaddy may or may not have been king of Denmark. Because probably, he wasn't.

I do admit this is a bit of a flawed metaphor though because royals are historically super horny.

But anyways, stop excusing Warren for this and DEFINITELY don't copy her behaviour. She had a chance to talk about native rights and racial inequality and ... nope.