Hillary Clinton's selection of Elizabeth Warren as her running mate would offer an outstanding opportunity to derail the Clinton Campaign simultaneously with affirmative action.  Even if Clinton does not select Warren, Warren's example can and should undermine race preferences at universities, employers, and elsewhere.

Names like "Fauxcahontas" and "Lieawatha," along with photomanipulations of Warren in Native American headgear, are entertaining, but they send a counterproductive message.  We should instead promote Warren as a role model for college applicants and job applicants confronted with the prospect of discrimination against majority groups.  This will undermine the race preferences in question and make Warren serious distraction for the Clinton campaign during the home stretch to November.  The principal talking point is that Warren's successful evasion of affirmative action shows that it is socially acceptable to use the same approach to defeat racist preference systems.

By her own admission, Warren had no connection to the Cherokee community when she applied to Penn and Harvard. Thus, it's hard to imagine that either school thought she could provide their students with the benefits of diversity.  But neither school cared; checking the Native American box was enough to get the job.

"The Box" Is Not a Job Qualification

The phrase "box-checking" refers, in fact, to checking off whatever box is most convenient in a job or college application, or not checking it if you are an Asian.  It is ethically not at all different from what some gay people once did to join the Armed Forces; they did not check the box that would have identified them as homosexuals and therefore ineligible.  At least one did not check the box even though he could have legally avoided service in Vietnam by doing so.  Their subsequent honorable discharges show that their sexual orientation did not affect their abilities to perform their duties.

Race, ethnicity, and gender (except in acting jobs, in which a character must be of a particular race or gender) are similarly not job qualifications, and questions about them can and should similarly be evaded.  Elizabeth Warren has shown every job applicant and college applicant in the country how to do it, and her serious viability as a vice presidential candidate underscores the social acceptability of box-checking.

Talk show host Michael Savage complains that he had to abandon his first career because "white males need not apply."  This is another strong argument for college and job applicants to imitate Elizabeth Warren's example as long as they can do it with even some credibility.  The Obama administration's recent edict to the effect that you can use the bathroom that matches your "gender identity" is an open invitation to select a convenient "ethnic identity" as well.

You Never Knew You Were Hispanic, Did You?

A wide variety of people can, to one extent or another, legitimately self-identify as Hispanic simply because the Spanish Empire was once the largest in the world.  It included a large part of North as well as Central and South America, and even parts of Europe outside the Iberian peninsula.

• Anybody whose ancestors were from Spain or its extensive colonial possessions is Hispanic.  If you're from a multigenerational family in California, the Southwest, the Mountain States, Texas, or Florida, who is to say there is not at least one Mestizo or hidalgo in your ancestry?  It might be useful to take Spanish as a high school elective and learn about the Spanish heritage of your part of the country if you want to pursue this course of action.
• Nobody of Benelux ancestry who cannot account for every one of his or her ancestors can claim that there might not be one or more Spaniards in there somewhere.
• Sephardic Jews are Hispanic by definition.  (This would admittedly not have helped Michael Savage, because his ancestors were Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, Jews.) Moroccans also might be able to claim Hispanic status because of the large number who were driven out of Spain with the Jews in the late 15th century.
• Most people of Italian origin can self-identify as Hispanic not only because Spain was once part of the Roman Empire, but also because Naples, Milan, Sicily, and Sardinia were once parts of the Spanish Empire.
• Portugal also was once under Spanish rule, and the ancient peoples of the Iberian peninsula (e.g., Lusitanians and Celtiberians) doubtlessly intermingled.  This would of course encompass Brazilians as well.

Here are some well known Hispanics, only some of whom (e.g., Cameron Diaz) have Spanish surnames.  Rita Hayworth and Martin Sheen are, for example, of at least partially Hispanic origin.

The "One Drop Rule" Makes You Almost Certainly Black

The "one drop rule" says that even a trace of black ancestry makes you a person of African origin.  "As we shall see, this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen."  Robert A. Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold elaborates as to why the Klansmen in question should think about this rule carefully before they use it to justify their racism.  They might easily discover that they are personally what they despise.

Many Roman citizens had been "black as the ace of spades" and many slaves of the Romans had been as blond as Hitler wanted to be--so any "white man" of European ancestry was certain to have a dash of Negro blood. Sometimes more than a dash.

Heinlein then adds of a Southern politician who had built his career on the premise of white racial supremacy, "[A]nd his blood type was such that the chances were two hundred to one that its owner had not just a touch of the tar brush but practically the whole tar barrel."  This is probably true of many multigenerational families in the Old South, and even people with blue eyes are not exempt.

People of Greek ancestry can doubtless make the same claim, noting especially that people of that era seemed to have few prejudices against intermarriage with other races.  Greek mythology reports, for example, that the hero Perseus married the Ethiopian princess Andromeda, who would of course have been a black person despite her depiction as a Caucasian in numerous works of art.  At least one Asian Indian, meanwhile, circumvented a racial preference by passing as black.

I cannot give legal advice, but people who contemplate "box-checking" should be far more circumspect on anything that involves a federal contract.  It is actually illegal to provide false information to the federal government despite numerous successful efforts to evade set-aside requirements.

The bottom line is, however, that the same progressive Democrats who support affirmative action goals and quotas do not have a problem with Elizabeth Warren's prospective vice presidential candidacy despite her successful use of "box-checking" to circumvent, evade, and defeat affirmative action.  If it is socially acceptable for Warren, it is socially acceptable for anybody else.

William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.