Tag: DNA

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A Fraction of a Reaction

“A little dab’ll do ya.”

That was from Brylcream, not 23andme.

President Donald Trump has been mocking Senator Warren, relentlessly, for her claims to native American heritage, calling her “Pocahontas.”* Some have dubbed him “racist” for doing this, but his point was plausibly anti-racist. In 1995, Harvard Law School ballyhooed her as its first “first woman of color” hire. 

 Some argue Warren benefited from this racial categorization, but that’s not been shown. Warren has ceased labeling herself Native American and defended her belief that she was of Cherokee or Delaware descent based on family lore as well as her physiognomy (“high cheekbones”). 

“Let’s say I’m debating Pocahontas,” Trump declared during an uproarious routine at a Montana rally back in July, promising the crowd that “when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage,” he would toss her a DNA kit and offer: “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.”

Under pressure, Warren took a DNA test.** And (inadvisedly?) made a big deal about it.

Upshot? Six to ten generations ago she may indeed have had one ancestor who was a native American. The post-​test squabbles have been mostly embarrassing, but Trump at least had the wit to note the lower end of Warren’s native mix was “1/​1024, far less than the average American.”

The “memed” jokes on the Internet have been hilarious.

But who gets the last laugh? While we allow ourselves to be done in by little dabs of trivia, the great crises of our age build ominously. 

At what ratio, though, I don’t know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* And then apologizing to the real Pocahontas for the comparison.

** The full story of who she went to, and the reliability of her DNA report, is itself bizarre and complicated. See “Did Elizabeth Warren Just Kill Identity Politics?” See also Tim Pool.

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judiciary

Innocent

What kind of world do we live in?

That was my thought when I heard how Sharon Snyder got fired for doing right.

The 70-​year-​old worked in a Kansas, Missouri, court for over three decades. She was fired for providing a public — public — document showing how an inmate could successfully request DNA testing.

Twenty-​seven years ago, Robert Nelson was convicted of rape. Nelson was no angel back then. He was also sentenced for robbery; the sentence for rape would begin after he had served the time for robbery.

When his sister appealed to Snyder in 2011, Nelson had filed two previous requests for DNA testing, both denied. Snyder gave her a copy of a motion that had worked in a different case. It worked again. A crime lab determined that Nelson’s DNA was not that found at the crime scene.

He was released with decades left to serve on the rape charge.

Then the judge who had denied Nelson’s first two motions, David Byrne, fired Sharon Synder for violating court rules. Whatever validity those rules may sometimes have, they were wrongly applied here.

We live in a world where persons like Byrne feel justified in firing a woman for helping a wrongly convicted man escape many years of unjust imprisonment. That makes me angry. But — it is also a world in which Sharon Snyder acted to save that man from suffering any more of that unjust prison time. Thank you, Sharon Snyder.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.