Warren's Claims About Her Racial Background (a) Poorly-Supported; (b)...Even WORSE! Z0MG TEH OFFENSIVE!!!!!!!11111

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(a) There are apparently substantial scientific reasons for questioning EW's interpretation of her genetic test.
   That's significant. I personally don't care much for EW. But I understand the allure of family lore--and I think we can all understand it when it comes to American Indian ancestry. Some groups are just cool, and we'd mostly feel cooler for being descended from them. What's so bloody (as it were) hard to understand? If I found out that I had American Indian blood in my veins...or Viking blood...or Zulu blood...or Spartan blood...hell yes I'd be all about it. Who wouldn't? Jesus. I say again: it's like the left has never met any human beings. I'm telling you right now that if I ever found out something like that--or even had some thin reason to believe it--you would never hear the end of it.
    OTOH, Warren seems to have leveraged her alleged/possible racial background to gain an employment advantage in academia. That's dicier...and the left certainly can't be ok with that. I'm inclined to agree that you need better evidence if you are going to use your alleged race to gain such advantages over others.
   But (b): Warren is being sucked down into the incoherent maelstrom of identity creationism. The PC left has always had a strong tendency to accept some version of relativism / social constructionism / subjectivism /etc. There's a lot of very bad philosophy at the core of PC--much of it committed to some version of word-magic, belief-magic, and/or culture-magic. Whereas your identity really is who and what you are, the left wants it to be: who and what you think you are. Furthermore, the left has come to use 'identity' primarily to gesture at their well-known class of obsessions: race, sex, "gender," whatever. This combination of things inclines them toward saying things like Warren's biology doesn't matter. It (allegedly) doesn't matter because Indian tribes reckon membership in a way that is, apparently, partially biological and partially social/cultural--as is their right. What certain people believe about it also supposed to be a factor.
   But look: that doesn't mean that Warren isn't American Indian. Because that term is, apparently, roughly ambiguous. It can reasonably refer to your race or some complex including something about your cultural heritage. I took EW to be making a claim about her race. (Which claim may or may not be provable for reasons gestured at in the link.) One might respond that she ought to have known better...than anyone claiming NA ancestry ought to have investigated more. And that point has some force. However: someone who has nothing but Navajo ancestors is NA, in the racial sense. Period. Even if they are refused recognition, and refused membership in any tribe.
   Anyway, there are legitimate objections to how Warren handled this...but nothing is gained by adding PC nonsense about "identity" into the mix. (Which is not to say that the conventions and theories of American Indian tribes themselves aren't relevant--because they do seem to be. But it's more complicated than it's being made out to be.) There can't be much doubt that, for the purposes of current questions about affirmative action (and "diversity") in the U.S., it's race that matters.