When the story about Rachel Dolezal broke, the world rightfully laughed at her.

Here is a woman who is so obsessed with racial politics that she, a middle-class white girl, found her skin to be so offensive to her that she literally did what was necessary to pass herself off as a black woman. After getting caught, she even doubled down by trying to adopt the more African sounding name of “Nkechi Amare Diallo.”

The public thought she was insane, including the left, who was unironically shouting that boys could be girls and vice versa while the story was at its height. Dolezal’s bid to capitalize on the story by starting up the new trend of being race-fluid didn’t take. It would complicate matters too much for the identitarian left. They need racial issues to be a set thing in order to keep up a thriving privilege narrative and racial divide for healthy voting blocs, and so that kind of fluidity was rejected outright.

At least, at that moment, the right and left were in agreement. Swapping ethnicities is just silly.

Unless you’re a Democrat politician that is.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been struggling against her whiteness for some time. As a Senator, there isn’t really anything special about her. She’s a wealthy, upper-class white woman who has no stand-out characteristics in her personality. As far as she goes, she’s another brick in the Democratic wall.

What Warren does have is a need for attention, a politician’s mind, and a friendly media. She knows how to use her camera time to put on a show, and that the media will do whatever it takes to put her messages front and center. Even then, that’s not a special talent. Pelosi, Harris, Hirono, and Jackson Lee have that mastered as well, only Pelosi is minority leader and the other three have apparent ethnic backgrounds.

Warren needed an edge, and as we all know, she chose to claim Native American ancestry. She was laughed at by the right as tribes denounced her claim due to not finding her lineage in any of their carefully kept records. Regardless, she continued to double, triple, and quadruple down on the claim. She had to because if she didn’t she would just be white.

Besides, the same left that was busy laughing at Dolezal was mum on Warren, and that was go-ahead enough for her to reject her whiteness.

What’s the problem with being white? Whiteness, to the identitarian left, is something of a curse. All of your words hold less weight, and you could even be dismissed or attacked for having “privilege,” which is the scarlet letter of leftist politics. White people are the enemy, and Warren’s power would decrease significantly if she was a privileged member of the identitarian left, which she promotes with gusto. Whiteness holds little value.

However, being a minority means having victimhood, and victimhood is the currency of the identitarian left. Being Native American holds a lot of victimhood value due to the past crimes of the United States against the tribes that once lived here. Having that much currency could net you a lot of power, and pave the way for all sorts of leadership and job opportunities to institutions that are friendly to left-wing social justice values like, say, Harvard.

Warren has now proven that she has Native American ancestry, but mostly has proven she has about as much Native American ancestry as everyone else. Likely everyone reading this has about the same amount of Native American blood in their veins as Warren does. She’ll tout it as proof she’s who she’s been claiming she is, but as Joe Cunningham wrote, “there is now scientific proof that her claim is more of a joke than anything.”

But the left still isn’t laughing at Warren. Why would they? In their eyes, she now has some cred.

And therein lies the ultimate goal. You get major credibility from the left for rejecting whiteness in some form or fashion. Warren took the most brute-force tactic she could in doing so, but there are different routes.

Self-flagellating white leftists are seen screaming at other people for being white while being white all the time, or writing articles about the problem with whiteness from the comfort of their white middle-class/upper-class neighborhood. The New York Times and Washington Post are filthy with self-hating whites who are more than willing to echo Ta-Nehisi Coates about how white people cause the world’s problems. Antifa, a primarily white domestic terrorist group, is consistently attacking white people for being white both verbally and physically.

Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke has attempted to subtly sidestep his whiteness by adopting a Spanish nickname and was rejected from membership on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus because he has no Hispanic lineage. O’Rourke’s leftist allies believe this should change, and that he should be allowed in because of reasons!

Even former President Bill Clinton enjoyed being called the “first black President,” despite the fact that his policies put many black males away for years for non-violent offenses. He was called that because it made the Democratic party as a whole sound more appealing to minorities.

While we may look at Warren as an odd duck who is hysterically trying to justify her ridiculous claims, it’s somewhat not her fault she’s striving so hard to be something she’s not. The same can somewhat be said for Dolezal. Both are driven by a cultural rejection of a skin color by their own tribe.

Warren needs to be Native American because it gives her the boost necessary to continue to be important to her own side, and to be able to declare a certain sense of victimhood, which in turn gives her a semblance of authority. The left’s obsession with race and identity politics demands it.

When you think about it, you almost feel sorry for Warren.