In a story appearing today in The Atlantic, staff writer Vann R. Newkirk holds forth on the idea that answering bigotry and lies with truth is fruitless and even harmful.
In citing Senator Elizabeth Warren’s recent revelation that she does, in fact, have some Native American ancestors, despite the right wing media and Trump’s incessant lying and insults, he falls right into the same old racism he decries. He takes the time to point out that, even if she does have a Native ancestor, she can only be somewhere between 1/32nd and 1/1024th Native American. Then decries the racist doctrine of “not one drop,” even though he is pretty blatantly pointing out that she only has a “few drops” of native blood. What does it matter if she is ½, or ¼, or 1/1024th Native American? Unless, of course, you believe that only people with “enough” native blood should even mention that aspect of their ancestry.
Somehow, I suspect that had she been talking about her Irish or Scandinavian ancestors the author would not spend any time at all parsing what minuscule fraction of her ancestors were Irish.
Newkirk all but ignores Warren’s actual claims in order to suggest that responding to Trump’s insults and lies with truth is at least as damaging as Trump’s insults and lies. He even goes out of his way to include the comment by Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr., who wrote:
“It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring traditional tribal governments and their citizens. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”
Except, of course, Warren has never once suggested that her ancestry warrants any acknowledgement whatsoever from the tribe nor any inclusion in its tribal heritage. She has merely said that she probably has Cherokee ancestors, given that her mother’s family had lived for many years in Cherokee Indian territory that had only become a state a few years before her mother was born (Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907, her mother was born there in 1912).
Is Hoskin claiming that white people who have Native American ancestry should just shut up? Pretend it doesn’t exist? That it is harmful and demeaning to Native Americans that some white people have Native American ancestry? Isn’t that pretty racist? Isn’t that kind of insulting to his own people? Isn’t that merely the reverse of the racist claim that “one drop” is enough to make you non-white, by saying that only people with “enough” Native blood get to even mention it in passing?
In addition, in his “response” to Warren’s announcement, Hoskins makes a number of claims and insinuations about her that are, at best, disingenuous if not simply false.
The essential racism in this entire issue in mind boggling. So let’s just check a few facts:
- Warren has never said she is Cherokee, or that she deserves any place in the tribe. Ever.
- Warren has only ever claimed that her family is part Native American because her mother was believed to be part Native American and her father’s family had objected to their marriage because of it.
- Given the history of her mother’s family, it is likely, though not certain, her Native ancestors were Cherokee. It is not insulting to the Cherokee tribe to infer such.
- Being part Native American has been part of her family heritage for generations, as it is with many, many families in America (whether true or not — my own mother-in-law, born and raised n Oklahoma, believed she was part Cherokee until a DNA test proved her, and her family’s long-held beliefs, wrong).
- Her claim is 100% truthful, as proven by genetic science.
- As proven by numerous interviews with the relevant people, she never received, nor asked for, any special consideration for her ancestry.
These are the facts of Warren’s claim, nothing more.
None the less:
- Trump has taken to calling her Pocahontas, intending as a smirking racist slur.
- The right-wing media has repeatedly claimed she illegally asked for and received affirmative action benefits for her Native ancestry and that those claims are lies.
Racism and lies. Racism and lies.
Trump and the right are racist bullies making racist slurs and telling racist lies. Their lies and this bullying should be fought with truth and decency.
Newkirk responds to this, not by fighting back — or even, really, pointing out the lies, but by saying:
But Trump has no interest in those considerations, nor in the negative reactions among Native Americans to his own attacks against Warren. The key takeaway of Trump’s birtherism stint is that he has proven adept at wielding bullying and gaslighting in service of racial gatekeeping, and he isn’t impeded by facts. The age-old game of racial essentialism and blood policing is itself intended to stack the deck in favor of bullies, to always siphon power from the weak, and to require an ever-shifting burden of proof among aggrieved parties that can never be met. Trump will always win this game because it is rigged for him to win.
In choosing to play along, Warren ratifies the tired game. The order of events that will ensue are predictable. Trump will not retire his slurs. Republican operatives beholden to him will continue to ridicule and poke holes in the evidence Warren has presented. There will be no substantiated bets. Everyone will fight a little longer over an ancestor from the 1700s. And the people hurt most by the bullying—by the slurs and a government increasingly fluent in bigotry—will be those who are still carved out, and who have no real say on where in the hierarchy they stand.
In this, Newkirk declares surrender and defeat even as he pretends he is taking some sort of high road defending the powerless and abused. He has decided that Trump will do as Trump does, so why fight, why tell the truth, why not just give up and pretend it’s not happening? He suggest the high road is silence and inaction. He is wrong.
The only weapon we have against the liars of the right is truth.
We must wield our only weapon with as much force as we can muster. That the liars will continue to lie is irrelevant. It’s kind of the point: Speaking truth to powerful liars dilutes their power — siphons power from the powerful (to use Newkirk’s construction). Warren responded to Trump and the right’s lies with truth. Unassailable truth, proven by science. Will the right lie more about her truth? Of course they will, they are liars and they lie.
But that’s no reason to give up.
For someone like Newkirk to declare defeat in the face of lies and suggest truth just go home and hide is a bit disgraceful. For him to suggest that Warren should have shut her mouth and simply ignored the bullying and lies is insulting. To suggest the Warren’s truth somehow harms people of color and people directly affected by the right’s racism MORE than the racism itself is vile.
Truth never hurts. Choosing to twist truth to make it hurtful is wrong.
There are people on the left who like to suggest that responding to lies with truth just gives the lies more oxygen and keeps the lie going. We have decades of empirical proof that such thinking is misguided at best, if not simply wrong, and stupid wrong to boot. The right will lie. They do little but. They will continue to lie no matter WHAT we do, respond, not respond, flap our arms like a chicken, whatever. They are going to lie. Trump is going to lie even when the truth would be more useful to him.
So we MUST tell the truth, scream it from the rooftops, scream it in the face of the lies, drown out the lies with truth. EVERY TIME THEY LIE. Anything else is surrender and defeat.
Newkirk could have made his story about the value of truth in the face of lies. He could have made it an uplifting story about a powerful woman standing up to liars and bullies. Instead, he chose to make Warren’s story about himself and his own feelings about racism. And he chose to suggest that the way to fight racism is to accede to it and give up in the face of racism and lies. He was wrong.
The ONLY way to DEFEAT a bully is to CONFRONT the bully.
So what was he thinking?