MSNBC Analyst Actually Implies Cherokee Nation Is Racist for Rejecting Warren
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has long claimed — with little actual evidence, save anecdotal stories from her family members — to be descended from Native American ancestry.
The dubious claim had sparked a controversy that Warren attempted to put to rest this week with the release of a DNA test that purportedly revealed her heritage.
The DNA test reportedly suggested that Warren may have had a Native American ancestor some six to 10 generations prior, which, if true, would mean Warren was approximately 1/64th to 1/1,024th of Native American heritage … a number believed to actually be lower than that of the average white American.
Needless to say, the hyped release of the DNA test results — which didn’t even test Warren’s DNA against actual Native American DNA, but Central American DNA instead — didn’t go over particularly well with most people, but was deemed especially offensive by the Cherokee Nation, as they took issue with Warren’s insinuation that she might be a part of their tribe.
The Cherokee Nation released an official statement that condemned Warren’s publicity stunt in no uncertain terms, making it quite clear that Warren was not, and never would be, a member of their tribe or any other, nor was she someone who could verifiably claim any Native American ancestry.
Incredibly, the statement from an actual organization of Native Americans against a white woman seeking to falsely appropriate their culture drew inexplicable cries of racism from a progressive black commentator on MSNBC, because, of course everything that goes against a liberal agenda or narrative is summarily deemed to be racist these days, or so it would seem.
Newsbusters reported that MSNBC political analyst Zerlina Maxwell, who is also the director of progressive programming at SiriusXM, decried the Cherokee Nation as racist for their statement condemning Warren’s unproven claim to be of Cherokee descent, ludicrously linking that rather specific condemnation of a white woman to instances in the past of tribes excluding blacks with Native ancestry from becoming members.
MSNBC host Craig Melvin, in setting up the discussion of Warren’s DNA test and the Cherokee Nation’s response to it, asked, “Do we think that the decision (to take the DNA test) itself was a mistake? Do we think that the timing was a mistake? What do we make of the political calculation of Elizabeth Warren releasing these DNA test results 20 days away from the midterms?”
Maxwell replied, “I think it’s a complicated answer. I think that it wasn’t fully a smooth rollout of the DNA testing and the video,” before she laughably asserted that the controversy was now “put to bed” and even more hilariously suggested that Warren’s DNA test results had somehow put President Donald Trump — one of Warren’s most outspoken critics — “on the defensive.”
“But in terms of the Cherokee Nation’s statement, I found that to be ridiculous,” Maxwell continued. “I am also part Cherokee, but I have not taken a DNA test. I’m not trying to join a tribe or claim membership in a tribe, and neither did Elizabeth Warren.”
“So to be clear, I think that while the rollout of the DNA test and the decision to do a DNA test to be able to, quote, ‘prove’ that she is part Cherokee, may not have been the best method,” she added, prior to dropping a racism bomb that seemingly had no relation to the topic at hand.
“I also think that the Cherokee Nation’s response was problematic because it actually ignores the fact that DNA testing historically has been used to exclude black natives from tribal affiliation. And so, that history has been completely lost in this entire conversation, and that’s potentially very unfortunate,” said Maxwell.
The only thing “problematic” and “unfortunate” here is this commentator’s quickness to resort to smears of racism against a group that said something she didn’t like or agree with.
The Cherokee Nation didn’t address the historical exclusion of black natives from tribal membership in their statement condemning Warren’s appropriation of their culture because … wait for it … Elizabeth Warren isn’t a black native.
The fact that this MSNBC analyst chose to reflexively raise the specter of anti-black racism by Native Americans to criticize their condemnation of a white woman inappropriately claiming to be part of their culture is either out of sheer insanity, a pathological need to always be right, or maybe a little bit of both.
This is but the latest example of how insane and unhinged the left has become these days, that a dispute over the patently false claims of minority heritage by a privileged member of the racial majority would prompt one member of a historically aggrieved minority group to accuse another equally aggrieved minority group of racism. It is as silly as it is disgusting, and it needs to stop.
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