"

Poorly written Native American section

I want to lay out the major problemsin terms of structure and clarityafflicting the Native American controversy paragraph. As I show below, this inept writing serves to obscure the controversy surrounding her claim to Native American ancestry, which was the most-covered issue in her 2012 Senate Campaign.  

Topic sentence

Competently-written paragraphs have clear topic sentences that state the main point of the paragraph. The ""topic sentence"" of the current, incompetently written paragraph on the Native American controversy is as follows: ""In April 2012, the Boston Herald sparked a campaign controversy when it reported that Association of American Law Schools (AALS) directories from 1986 to 1995 listed Warren as a minority professor."" 

This topic sentence is unclear; a reader who reads it would not see what the controversy was about. Being listed as a minority is not controversial. The issue is that Warren 1) listed herself in a 2) minority-recruitment directory for law schools, on the basis of 3) undocumented claims to Native American ancestry. A competently written topic sentence would convey those three main points. Here is an example of such a topic sentence: ""In April 2012, the Boston Herald sparked a campaign controversy when it noted that Warren had listed herself in a directory of minority law professors, used by law schools for recruitment purposes, despite the fact that she lacked any documented minority ancestry."" That competently-written topic sentence states the controversy in a nutshell. 

I am willing to entertain any number of alternative topic sentences, including those that are unduly favorable to Warren. (I've given up on truly achieving NPOV for this article.) But I am not willing to abide unclear writing.   

'native ancestry'

The current paragraph states that Warren's ""opponent Scott Brown speculated that she had fabricated a native ancestry to gain advantage in employment."" At this point, the paragraph has not stated that she claimed to be Native American, so it is not clear what type of ancestry the term ""native ancestry"" refers to. I have tried to replace ""native ancestry"" with ""Native American ancestry,"" but have been repeatedly reverted.   

'Brown attacked Warren's ancestry'
The current paragraph states that Scott Brown issued attack ads that ""referred to Warren's ancestry."" Whether made out of incompetence or malice, this statement constitutes a BLP violation. The statement indicates that Brown attacked Warren because of her ancestry or race. In reality, he attacked her for (allegedly) lying about her race to get ahead in the employment market.   "