The left has created quite a conundrum for itself. As a consequence, it has no moral language to justify its condemnation of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for her decades-long decision to self-identify as a Native American.
The leftists we see on television, depicted in the form of Democratic Party spokespersons such as Sen. Corey Booker of New Jersey, and Sens. Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, see the world through a postmodernist lens. While secular humanists dismiss religion and believe in science, reason, objective truth, and freewill, postmodernists believe in everything; consequently, they believe in nothing.
Postmodernists see humans as social beings, shaped by a particular culture and times, operating in a world without objective realities, and moral constraints. While humanists believed man could eventually solve man’s problems through science and human ingenuity, the postmodernists reject such ridiculous pie-in-the-sky notions.
What should matter for the left was Warren’s self-identification that caused her to list herself as Native American in the Association of American Law Schools and in hiring materials for Harvard University Law School, where she was touted as the university’s first tenured Native American law professor. Had this self-identification not become controversial, she might have run for president as the nation’s first Native American candidate.
Although the postmodernist left argues that a person can be whatever they see themselves as being, they reserve the right to create social constructs geared at punishing those they see as apostates from their cause. Therefore, a biologically black person can become white on the basis of their actions or beliefs. For example, black conservatives such as Kanye West and Candace Owens have been called white supremacists and dismissed as Uncle Toms and Aunt Janes, as has yours truly.
Their criteria for assessing truth claims are malleable depending on the circumstances. Therefore, a white person like Dolezal, who chose to join the black race and fight for the struggle, can be black because she acts and thinks like a liberal member of the group. On the other hand, Warren, a leftist who presents herself as fighting for the downtrodden, is lambasted because she doesn’t advance the progressive agenda of the postmodernist when it comes to the preferred race narrative, and she lacks Dolezal’s credibility with the group.
The postmodernist left needs to make up its mind about truth claims, science, and social constructs. Remember, truth is relative for them, and the existing power structures reflect European dominant values and principles. If the left, however, can accept Christine Blasey Ford’s “truth” about her alleged encounter with a teenaged Brett Kavanaugh while dismissing all evidence to the contrary, then surely its leaders can accept the DNA results that give Warren her 1/1,032 percent of native blood. I contend the left should accept Warren’s “truth” since their truth is relative.
There is a bigger problem posed by people such as Warren and Dolezal that hurts racial and ethnic minorities. It is the gaming of affirmative action programs by people who engage in ethnic fraud. Ethnic fraud occurs when someone who isn’t a member of the beneficiary group designates one’s self as a member for purposes of collecting a benefit.
There is reason to believe a lot of ethnic fraud does occur. No doubt this is soon to be followed by lots of sexual-identity fraud. The mushy system invites abuse. We don’t require DNA tests for individuals who self-identify as protected minorities, which now would include individuals who check one of the growing numbers of LGBTIAQ categories.
Warren is problematic because she allowed herself to be celebrated as a Native American achiever breaking records to become a first in many categories. Cheated out of that recognition was a Native American from the reservation or with enough documented native blood to obtain tribal papers. By all practical purposes, she gamed affirmative action and benefited from doing so.
When she applied for the NAACP position, she listed her race as “white, black, and American Indian.” It seems in the case of Dolezal, she decided if you can’t beat them, then join them. She literally joined the black race as a self-identifier with street cred.
Years ago, economist Thomas Sowell looked at preferential policies around the world (India, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Israel, Malaysia, Nigeria, and the United States) and concluded that whenever a government creates a benefit based on race or ethnicity, polarization ensues and the beneficiary class quickly expands beyond the known population size of the protected minorities (see Sowell’s 1990 book “Preferential Policies: An International Perspective”).
What we have with the left’s Warren conundrum is merely the tip of the iceberg. Oh, that we could only return to the modernist and the allowance it gave us for objective truth. We are now like the people of ancient Israel during the time of the Judges: Each man does what is right in his own eyes.
American laws, polluted by a nonsensical postmodernism soaked into the minds of several generations of college graduates, have left us without a reliable anchor.
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