Elizabeth Warren goes native naturally, or, a chromosome of oppressed identity

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to Times news article, "Elizabeth Warren stands by DNA test; around her, worries abound," November 6, 2018:

Embracing identity politics liberalism at its worst, Warren's cheap trick is a discredit to her candidacy. But it is an understandable attempt to capitalize on a logic of identity and representation in response to oppression, exclusion, or marginalization. It is deeply embedded in American political life.

A DNA test is absurdity crowned: there is no biology of culture. The idea goes back to social Darwinism, the invention of IQ (to justify the social inferiority of American blacks), and racial anti-Semitism, with consequences forever infamous. From this racial culturalism (attitudes about culture attributed to ethnicity or genetics), no good has come.

Peoples are affairs of history, not biology. Nature has no politics.

Warren should simply learn about Native Americans and ask what they want and need. A nation is a collectivity and so not an individual but a set. The president represents the nation, including everybody. A collectivity can have multiple identities. "E pluribus unum," "Out of many, one."

Representation is more than the appearance of bodies on a stage. It's at the level of ideas that politicians can do much for anyone. Politics is mostly about a "what," not a "who."

Perhaps only in this country today can a candidate expect that his or her race, gender, religion, etc. would be a sufficient condition for election to rule.

Not conservatives alone know this; the real left knows it; only our "liberals" do not.