I’ve ignored the mini controversy over whether Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was entitled to claim minority status on the basis of being one-thirty-second Cherokee, for the very good reason that I don’t give a damn. Now, though, some on the right have dug into her ancestry and discovered that the great-great-great grandmother who may or may not have been a Cherokee was married to a man who was ”apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.”
Considering how little I care about people’s ancestry and how even less I ascribe good or evil deeds of people’s ancestors to them, this has zero bearing on my view of Warren as a candidate. Given the provenance of the research, I’m not even 100 percent sure it’s true. But I hope it is, just because it’s so damn funny.
