Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) revealed with great fanfare the results of her DNA test this past week, and it turns out she’s 1/36th Cherokee. I mean 1/512th. More accurately it was 1/1024th.
President Trump brushed off immediate calls for him to pay her $1,000,000 (he had previously promised to pay $1,000,000 to charity if she proved she was American Indian) but he essentially said “Who cares?”
And really, who cares?
There’s a TV commercial for one of those ancestry services that always grates on me when I see it, where a middle-aged woman who previously assumed she was of Scottish decent discovers her ancestry from four or five generations ago was actually German.
“I had to trade in my kilt for lederhosen! Hahahaha!”

Let’s take her literally for a second: What on earth is she going to get out of wearing lederhosen now? She didn’t grow up with German culture, she had no one in her family doing traditionally German things. So, what difference, at this point, does it make that someone who lived and died 300 years ago, was in her family tree? For that matter, what does that mean to any of us?
Look, having pride in your ancestry is completely understandable. If you grew up in a home where your parents cooked dishes specific to your heritage, and you want to pass that down to your children and share that collective attribute about yourself and your family to the world, etc., I get that. You consider that part of your identity, which you have every right to take pride in.
And the United States is a unique country of various cultures together mixed into a yummy stew. And it is and should be a stew, by the way, not a quilt. A quilt has clear lines between patches, clear boundaries. America’s stew might have some vegetables and chunks of meat and spices that give it amazing flavor, but it has a common rue that makes it one delicious dish. E pluribus Unum – Out of many, one.
The problem with people like Elizabeth Warren is that she focuses so much on one’s identity being rooted solely in heritage. In other words, people’s skin color and racial status (and gender and sexual orientation for that matter) are the single most important characteristic of who they are. Not their character, not their behavior, not their actions, or words, or life choices… none of those things.
A lot of people have problems with Elizabeth Warren’s perceived deceptions over the years, that she took advantage of the perception that she was American Indian to get ahead in academia and politics. I have a bigger problem with the idea of her ethnicity being a factor at all. She was apparently really good at explaining law to students. In other words, she was great at her job. Whether she was half or 1/1024th Cherokee had absolutely nothing to do with her ability to teach.
For that matter, why should anyone be granted favor based simply on their heritage?
 
Mike Koolidge lives in Rochelle and hosts the regionally syndicated radio program The Michael Koolidge Show (www.koolidge.com) heard daily on 14 radio signals, including Rockford’s 1440 WROK from 9 to 11 a.m. live every weekday morning. Public officials and citizens can reach the show anytime at radio@koolidge.com or 815-561-7130.