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 . . .