As Old Document Surfaces, Warren Apologizes Again

1986 Texas bar registration shows identification as 'American Indian'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 6, 2019 6:11 AM CST
Updated Feb 6, 2019 6:50 AM CST
An Old Document Worsens Warren's Native American Issue
Elizabeth Warren speaks in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Jan. 22, 2019.   (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

Her private apology has moved public: Sen. Elizabeth Warren tells the Washington Post she is sorry for identifying as Native American for nearly two decades. "I can't go back. But I am sorry for furthering confusion on tribal sovereignty and tribal citizenship and harm that resulted," the Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday. "I am also sorry for not being more mindful about this decades ago." The apology came as the Post revealed Warren's 1986 registration card for the State Bar of Texas, on which she neatly printed her race as "American Indian." The card (see it here) appears in keeping with Warren's earlier assertion that she didn't use ethnicity to further her career, though. Filled out after her admission, it notes the information contained is "for statistical purposes only" and unlikely to be disclosed to anyone.

Warren, who released DNA results showing a distant Native American ancestor, also reported herself as a "minority" in the Association of American Law Schools directory each year from 1986 to 1995, though the Boston Globe reports she was considered white when hired as a law professor by the University of Pennsylvania and later Harvard University. Warren requested her ethnicity change to Native American at UPenn in 1989, two years after her hiring. It was several months after starting at Harvard in 1995 that Warren approved a change to list her ethnicity as Native American, as it was until 2004. Warren stressed that her apology applied to this period of her life, though Republican National Committee rep Mike Reed isn't won over. It's "a politically opportunistic apology" for "a lie that will continue to haunt her presidential ambitions," he says, per CNN. (Warren plans to tax ultra-millionaires.)

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