Warren should apologize to minorities

Ministers skeptical on Elizabeth Warren

Black leaders want candidate meetings

By Stephanie Ebbert“It’s clear that Scott Brown is trying to go after white, working-class Reagan Democrats, playing divide-and-conquer politics,” said Massachusetts Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. “In tough economic times, when people are out of work and looking for jobs, that’s the kind of politics Republicans play.”

But Rivers said the questions are legitimate and could affect Warren’s image in the black community and the public at large.

“It is within bounds to raise the question of whether or not a white woman used the minority card for her professional advantage,” said Rivers.

“Ancestry is not the issue,” Rivers added, saying that Warren’s handling of the controversy raises questions beyond her heritage. “Did you tell the truth? Because you marketed yourself as the good-guy, straight-shooting-populist, representing-poor-people candidate.”

“Affirmative action—that issue becomes important because it points to who you are,” added the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, executive director of the TenPoint Coalition, who pointed to an assertion that she is 1/32 Cherokee. “I’m thinking to myself, if I was 1/32 white, or of European descent, would I be able to put on an application that I was white? And if you look at a picture of me, you see what I’m talking about. The question is not a trivial one, or one that can just be dismissed as a Republican tactic. And I say this as someone who campaigned for Martha Coakley and I’m independent in terms of my political status.”Column: Warren needs to apologize to Native Americans

By DeWayne WickhamThe Massachusetts Senate race, considered a tossup, could be pivotal. The lingering specter of a white, liberal Democrat who claimed to be a minority in a job where that status could have enhanced her chances for promotion and tenure might decide the outcome of the battle for control of Congress.

That's why Warren must act quickly to put this issue behind her. She needs to apologize to Native Americans, whose struggles for opportunities she minimized by claiming from her position of prestige to be one of them. She should apologize to the supporters of affirmative action for undermining their efforts to bring real diversity to the faculty of Harvard's law school. And in a "come to Jesus" speech to the people of Massachusetts, Warren needs to offer them the kind of contrition that has eluded her when discussing this issue.

Only then, I think, will she be able to turn the focus from her misspeak to Brown's misdeeds in supporting so much of the GOP's right-wing agenda.Comment:  For more on Elizabeth Warren, see Warren:  Who Questions Their Parents? and Cherokees to Protest Warren.