WHAT I DO: Write about race and ethnicity for The Associated Press.

WHAT I DON'T DO: Opinions. I'm a reporter, not a columnist. My job is to illuminate the thoughts and lives of other people.

BUT: Of course I do have opinions, which inevitably affect what I write.

SO: I constantly seek out perspectives different than my own. 

I'M ALSO A: Novelist. Aging ballplayer. Magazine founder/owner. Lifelong Baha'i. 

By JESSE WASHINGTON
AP National Writer
May 25, 2012

What, exactly, makes someone American Indian? Even Indians themselves don't agree as they debate the case of Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, whose disputed claim of Native American identity is shining a rare spotlight on the malleable nature of Indian heritage and the long history of murky claims to such ancestry.

Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and Democrat who is running in Massachusetts against Republican incumbent Sen. Scott Brown, was listed as Native American in several law school directories. Warren has said that her “family lore” described Indian ancestors, and the New England Genealogy Association said it found indications -- but not proof -- that Warren had a Cherokee great-great-great grandmother, which would make her 1/32 Indian.

"I'm proud of my heritage," Warren said Thursday. Asked how she knew it included Native Americans, she replied, "Because my mother told me so."

Her opponents question whether Warren chose this heritage to gain advantages available to Indians and other underrepresented groups in academia. (read more)