Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Friday, May 18, 2012

A Kenyan-born Cherokee

Well, it's Friday, so I am going to go on a bit of a rant.

Developments over the past few days have reminded me of one of my favorite peeves in the State Department: racial profiling, or what the liberals call affirmative action.  A few days after I joined the Foreign Service, while at the FS Officer's basic course, known as the A-100 class, along with a colleague I was summoned to the office of the Director of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI).  Neither of us knew why, and while we waited in the outer office, nervous, like school kids called to the principal's office, we wildly speculated about why we had been pulled out of class. We must have committed some grave offense, or a more careful review of our background investigation had revealed some horrid secret, or perhaps it was . . . and on and on. The door opened, and we were ushered into the presence of the Great One, well, the Great One wasn't there, and instead we met two fellows from the HR department. They told us that, "You guys seem really smart. You both write very well. We need your help." I thought, that's it, it's like in the movies; I have been picked for a dangerous job behind enemy lines, next stop Ft. Benning for a quick airborne course, then to the CIA farm for a crash course in covert commo, and then . . . flying off into glory for my country. No. My colleague and I had both come into the FS as economics officers, in what is known as the "economic cone." As the two HR reps nervously explained, the political cone was short two minorities of its recruitment goal; we were to be reclassified as "hispanic" and shifted over to the "political cone."  Let me add that both my colleague and I were considerably more caucasian than George Zimmerman.  My friend, however, had been born in Cuba, and I had a Spanish, as in from Spain, mother. HR had decided that we were now hispanic and--Voila!--their quota for political officers had been met. Neither my friend nor I had any idea what this meant--this was 1978--and all I could think of asking was the lame, "Do we get paid the same?" We both gave up our two-day old careers as white economic officers and became hispanic political officers instead.

Over the years, I would occasionally receive an odd letter or survey asking me for a report on my experiences in the FS as a minority, and reminding me of all the avenues open to me if I felt I was not being treated properly. I never filled out the surveys, and just tossed the letters. A few years after my "reclassification" I ran into another colleague. I'll call him Fred. He was in the cafeteria laughing to himself while he read a letter. He said to me "I am now hispanic just like you." You have to understand: Fred is of German-Polish descent on both sides of his family going back as far as he can trace; he is well over 6'3" tall, and as blond and blue-eyed as you can be. Fred would have been great for an SS recruitment poster as the epitome of the "Aryan Race." Fred has zero connection to Spain, Latin America, or anything remotely hispanic. He had been reclassified because his last name--I kid you not--ended in a vowel. Some personnel guru had decided that his eastern European name sounded "hispanic."

Over the years, I ran into ever more absurdities associated with the liberal obsession with race and ethnicity. One FSO, a male who enjoyed tweaking the system, declared himself a black woman and challenged the system to deny it. This battle went on for years as he engaged the HR and EEO people in increasingly absurd letter and email exchanges in which he challenged them to prove he was not what he stated. At the time, employees could self-declare themselves; if they refused, then a supervisor using "ocular inspection" would classify them.

So now we have a Senate candidate, Elizabeth Warren, who claims or has claimed to be a Cherokee based on a mythical, or at least impossible to confirm 1/32 Cherokee ancestry. She is clearly a liar and used the Cherokee bit to advance her career and compensate for being a mediocre academic. We also see the beginning of stories that note that for years Obama's bio listed him as born in Kenya. I will assume that Obama, in fact, was born in the US--I don't want to get into that issue right now--but it seems, that in true liberal fashion, he was willing to go along with the gag for some sort of advantage. That advantage could have been funding, e.g., scholarship for foreign students, for his elite university education or just as a status-enhancer to enable him to date more "composite" girlfriends.  He is at best a liar, perhaps has committed fraud, and joins Warren as just another race hustler and profiteer.

Ah, the left . . .

11 comments:

  1. And that is the charitable view. Other possibilities are too unsavory for normal society to consider. Do some socialists count on other's of breeding and good will turning a blind eye in order to maintain coverage for their misdeeds? I'm beginning to think this is a vital part of their calculations. Possibly we are doing this to ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dear Diplomad,

    Bravo! Right On!

    And welcome back! I was so sorry to see your blog terminated some years ago. Your insight into the cloacae of the various circles of Foggy Bottom is much appreciated.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What in the world is wrong with "ocular inspections" of actual certificates, official documents, and genealogical research? It's called documentation.

    In fact, our Progressive racists would have used DNA testing, by now, and established acceptable percentages of preferred racial genetic markers but for the loss of their political discretion. Ideologically correct and very pale Warren can self-declare as a minority, and, if challenged, be passed on the grounds that complexion and feature don't necessarily reflect racial heritage.

    An "angry white male", on the other hand, is more likely to flunk the ocular test.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "...or what the liberals call affirmative action."
    I like that.
    Someday I would like to see your perspective on the whole 'birther' issue. Almost no one knows from where Obama came. Specifically because he has been so creative in the telling. It is a talent most common in politicians.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I believe that the birther issue is a false trail.

    Your earliest experiences in international air travel would be invaluable in analyzing how Obama's mother could have travelled from Hawaii to Kenya and back, first as a very pregnant 18 year old and then as the too young mother of a weeks old baby.

    How would she travel? How difficult would the trip be for a mother travelling alone? How many legs for the trip?

    ReplyDelete
  6. My view on the "birther issue" is as follows. I think Obama was born in the USA but found it convenient to lie about that and claim to have been born in Kenya. I suspect, and I only suspect but cannot prove, that this is why we do not have access to his college records. He pulled a fraud and claimed to be a foreign student; he most likely did this to get some sort of grant or scholarship. This might explain the mystery of how he paid for the elite and expensive institutions he attended. He pulled a fraud which suddenly almost bit him when he ran for President.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My alternative view:
      I think that Obama's American citizenship was renounced when his mother took him to Indonesia and married Soertero. He then failed to reclaim his American citizenship when he reached legal age (as US law would have allowed him to do). Now you and I would fight like dogs to keep our citizenship, but Obama was raised in an anti-American environment and would no doubt have thought his past American citizenship was a worthless, perhaps even shameful, possession.

      If he refused to reclaim his citizenship, as I contend, then that would explain all of the mysteries:

      Why hide his birth certificate -- unless it contains a notation about his adoption by an Indonesian stepfather and a change in his citizenship? Note also that his change of name would have been recorded on his birth certificate record in Hawaii, so his paperwork would now be filed under "S" (where maybe no one is looking) and not under "O" (which is why the governor of HI had to admit that he couldn't find the record). (I read this info about adoption records on the Internet, so I know it MUST be 100% correct.)

      Why hide his school records -- unless they revealed Indonesian citizenship, with the same financial benefits you attribute to a fraudulent claim of Kenyan birth? Also note that he attended a school in Indonesia that restricted enrollment to Indonesian citizens, which supports my speculation that he (or rather his mom) had renounced his American citizenship and he became an Indonesian citizen.

      Why hide his passport records, which would explain how he traveled to Pakistan when American citizens were not allowed to -- unless the passport wasn't an American one?

      So my view is that whatever nationality Obama could have claimed at birth was renounced when he moved to Indonesia and that he never reclaimed American citizenship. The big secret is not where he was born, but what citizenship he now holds. I bet he is not an American citizen at this time. All the toying he is doing with the birthers is merely to distract them from the true problem.

      Delete
  7. In 1983, California, I was, well, bumming my way through life as a young 20-something. I was looking for full-time work, and every week I was in the (I think they still called it) unemployment office. One week, a month and a half in, the earnest "counselor" asked, with a sigh, "You don't happen to be Indian?"
    An epiphany. "Cheyenne, on my mother's side, great-grandma." And with that, a drawer opened that had all sorts of full-time jobs of folks of Indian heritage. Where I was stupid, is that I didn't document that and use it later. I could be a US Senator.

    ReplyDelete
  8. @I'll take fact, hold the narrative: Has anyone considered just how expensive international air travel was in the early 1960s? All that flying around would have difficult to swing as an 18 y/o.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I have a hunch that DiploMad's speculations about Obama's true birth and the real reason why his college records are sealed may be on to something.

    In my short and inglorious career at State I was a consular officer. Everyone had to do that stint early in their careers, but I was "coned" that way. Well, even mediocre people with some consular training get to be fairly sharp about sensing fraud in visa applications.

    BTW, about State's identity politics, there was a lovely, warm pleasant secretary of Cuban birth whom I met, who caused the ethnic bean counters of the affirmative action office no end of trouble because both her parents were Central European Jews who had to first flee Hitler (refuge in Cuba!) and then had to flee Fleabag Castro.

    I had the same problem with my older son's Stateside Middle School. We checked both "white" and "Asian/Pacific", and were called to task about how we could check only one. I asked the principal which parent he wanted my son to deny, and got a dirty look.

    ReplyDelete