She never claimed it was anything other than family lore. Despite charges to the contrary, she never once sought to use her supposed ancestry to gain an advantage. Her college application had a box to check if you were seeking to be admitted as a minority or under an affirmative action program, and she checked the "No" box. When she was granted tenure at Harvard Law, according to arch-conservative Republican Charles Fried who was on the tenure committee, the subject of her supposed native American ancestry never came up at all, and no one other than Republican critics has claimed otherwise. There's no reason to think that she was making up the story about "family lore" since she never made much of it or tried to take advantage of it.
Meanwhile, I think it's naive to suppose that Trump's insistence on calling her Pocahontas is entirely free of any racist overtones. It's certainly not meant as a compliment, and the way he repeated the taunt during the Navajo talkers ceremony -- like a verbal tic on his part -- was bizarre and disrespectful.
|