A few years back, I did a few pieces that discussed the Government's set-aside programs that granted special access to contracts for people with the right ethnicity, presumably as penance for past discrimination. In some cases those contracts could be done without competition, particularly for Native Americans.
One such piece came down hard on the set-asides, citing in one case a person in a commercial who had just discovered she was a quarter Indian, even though she had had no idea of it. My point was that a person who didn't even know she was a quarter Indian had clearly not experienced discrimination and therefore had no right to claim any harm that needed to be rectified by giving her a no-bid contract.
In another, I asked how much of this or that preferred ancestry was necessary to enter into the program and get set-aside contracts, or reparations, or any preferential treatment -- such treatment, I argued, if it were even to be done, should reflect actual harm to the specific person (not their ancestors).
So Elizabeth Warren.
Back in one of those columns, I mentioned her case of getting preferential treatment in college admission and some early jobs based on claiming Native American ancestry. A commenter asked if she were ever going to take a DNA test to see, which at that time she had not.
As you probably know, Elizabeth Warren DID, in fact, eventually take the test, which showed that she was in fact about 1/1024th Native American. That means one of her 8-times great-grandparents was an Indian; the other 1,023 were not.
I have always been willing to cut her some slack on that; she's in her 70s, and growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950s, she was told that she was part-Indian and believed it -- we didn't have Ancestry back then to confirm or deny it, and Oklahoma was particularly likely to have its residents have a healthy titer of Indian blood.
I'm almost the same age, and I can assure you that, as a child in Oklahoma, I would have believed any reasonable assertion my parents had made about being "part Indian." I wouldn't have asked "how much" -- back then, before preferential treatment and casinos, it just would have been a neutral attribute.
Later on, when she recorded herself in applications for colleges and early jobs as being Native American, it was a different situation. Yes, she likely believed herself to be part Indian -- again, going on family lore, with nothing else to say otherwise. But at that point, she knew that a claim of Native American heritage was actually advantageous. By that time (the '60s and '70s), being anything but a white male was worth a few preference points in leftist New England.
So yes, she believed back then that she legitimately took preferential treatment -- admission to colleges, jobs -- based on giving the institutions the ability to claim they had taken in an "Indian" in their student bodies and given one a job. They happily checked one of their hard-to-check boxes and signaled their virtue, while someone else lost a spot in the class or a job with the employer.
Like I said, I cut her some slack for those claims -- then. She legitimately believed she was entitled to that preferential treatment, not for any discrimination she had ever encountered, but because the rules said "Native American", and she was told she was one (though how Indian she was supposed to be is lost to the ages, and she'll likely never say).
But now we know. She took a DNA test, and if her reporting of it is to be believed, she has virtually no legitimate claim of Indian ancestry save for the possibility of an eight-times-great grandparent born around 1680 or so.
So why am I writing this? Clearly, now-Senator Warren has suffered not a shred of discomfort or prejudicial treatment for her early claim of native blood. Yes, there has been a heap or two of ridicule for claiming it, especially strong since the blood test, but I distinguish between the before and after -- decades of believing, but now a decade of knowing the contrary.
Maybe only a couple people were affected by the early claims. Maybe she won her first senatorial election in Massachusetts only because enough voters who weren't going to vote for her switched as a pro-Indian virtue signal.
Either way, how much would it hurt to apologize to anyone who may have been hurt? Wouldn't an apology for something that ultimately caused minimal damage, and was excusable, be received as a wonderful gesture?
I know that, despite my opposition to every policy she favors, I would do a positive piece on her were she to release an unprompted statement like this one:
To my constituents and my fellow Americans -- As you know, a few years back, I volunteered to take a DNA test to verify my ancestry. As a young girl in Oklahoma, my family had always told me that the family had Native American ancestors and we were of Indian blood to some extent. I certainly believed my family; after all, I had no reason to doubt the family stories, and there were no tests available at the time.
As a student and then early in my career, at times when the topic came up on applications, I indicated the native ancestry that my family had told me was the case. I understood even then that it may have afforded me an advantage in selection for schools and positions. Of course, at the time I thought it was appropriate, since I believed myself a member of that group.
As we now know, the test showed I had only negligible Native American ancestry. I believe my family truly believed what they thought to be their background and mine. But that means that any advantage that I have been given in my career has not been deserved. More than that, it is possible -- maybe even likely -- that at least somebody has been denied an opportunity that was lost to them because of a preference given to me.
I need to put this issue to rest. I would like to take this moment to offer a sincere and heartfelt apology to anyone whose career or life has been affected by my claims of Native American ancestry, however honestly made when it was what I believed to be the case. I realize that any such person might not even be aware if they were indeed affected, but I prefer to be the the kind of person who feels the pain of injustice no matter the form. Thank you and I am so very sorry.
I admit that I would be very shocked if she were ever to do such a thing. But I would devote an equally sincere apology to her and have a very non-grudging respect for her were she to do it.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton. Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.