George Zimmerman is "one-fourth black, four times as black as Warren is Indian, though the New York Times describes him as a 'white Hispanic.'"

Writes Michael Barone, noting that Elizabeth Warren asserts that she is "1-32nd Native American [and] George Zimmerman, the Florida accused murderer, had a black grandmother."

If we're doing plain old arithmetic here, Zimmerman is 8 times as black as Warren is Native American. (At the genetic level, it could be a lot more complex — were the identified ancestors 100%? — but that doesn't explain the error.)

I did the math in my head as I was reading the column, and then — despite the depressing innumeracy — I was completely cheered up, reading the comments and running into rhhardin, who is one of my all-time favorite commenters over here on the Althouse blog. With characteristic succinctness, he says:

"That makes Warren 1-32nd Native American. George Zimmerman, the Florida accused murderer, had a black grandmother. That makes him one-fourth black, four times as black as Warren is Indian"

Eight times.

ADDED: Fractions are hard. It's not so easy to use the calculator. You can turn 1/4 into decimal without straining, but 1/32 is tricky. But if you stop and struggle long enough to encounter your inner Barbie...



... and you feel a little queasy about doing math, maybe your queasiness will carry over into wondering what the hell are we doing calculating racial percentages! It really is quite disgusting.