Kiowa Tribe Member Cole DeLaune has an op-ed in the nation's largest Native American news website, Indian Country Today stated that "the only racism on display has come from the Elizabeth Warren camp."
Various critics of Brown first enjoyed the opportunity to wax moralistic when the Senator broached the subject of his opponent's decades-long history of ethnic self-identification during the first debate of the campaign season on September 20. Condensing the extensive and unwieldy topic into time-limited opening remarks, Brown correctly noted that the Cambridge professor had advertised herself as an American Indian in a professional context, "and, as you can see, clearly she's not." The Senator since clarified that he was invoking a common idiom to emphasize the substantial evidence that suggests Warren is neither culturally or genealogically Native: as documented realities show, her dishonesty is easily discernible. Of course, sanctimonious fury arose, and the backlash mischaracterized Brown as deploying a myopically superficial definition of race as skin deep. The chorus disseminating this perspective would do well to refer to the comments made by Warren in early May, when she defended the claims to Cherokee and Delaware heritage that remain unsubstantiated to this day by declaring that she has, "high cheekbones...like all the Indians do." Evidently, policing semantic constructs and political correctness is an inherently selective pastime, since Warren herself has invoked reductive stereotypes and external signifiers of ethnicity when she felt they bolstered her fabricated narrative.
Enter the recording of Republican aides mimicking a gesture once popularized for commercial incentive by progressive stalwarts Ted Turner and Jane Fonda. The seconds of inanity captured on the tape in question offend only basic standards of taste: the hyperbole of the scene clearly operates as a satire of the ridiculousness of Warren's increasingly outlandish improvisations rather than as an expression of anti-Indian animus. But, of course, few authorities wasted any time in taking Brown to task . . . for the conduct of third, fourth, and fifth parties. The rush to ascribe moral responsibility to the Senator for the foolishness of others presents a stark and chilling contrast to the absolution Professor Warren has enjoyed for the appalling prejudice she herself has displayed.
Mr. DeLaune has seemingly nothing but contempt for our friends at Blue Mass Group and other Warren defenders. He ends the op-ed with this powerful paragraph.
Racism is on full display in Massachusetts, and it has been so repeatedly since late spring. Senator Brown has comported himself with honor and integrity throughout the course of the election, and assigning culpability to his name for an incident that he has already publicly reprimanded is injudicious in the extreme. Ignoring Professor Warren's disdain for Native Americans essentially validates it, and conjecture that she will position herself as an ally to indigenous peoples defies her persistent and reprehensible intolerance for them on the stump. Elizabeth Warren is no friend of the Indian unless you consider scorn and derision the hallmarks of camaraderie.
