An unstained escutcheon

I’m instructed that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, and that being white means being heir to a history of racism, conquest, oppression, cultural appropriation, and microaggression. If, as with Elizabeth Warren, you have a family tradition of a drop or two of the proper ancestry, you’re home free.(*)

Not much wiggle room there, since that is part of the story, and pointing out the rest of the story just makes you sound like "Nya! You're another!"

There’s another solution, proposed 136 years ago:

GENERAL: Why do I sit here? To escape from the pirates' clutches, I described myself as an orphan; and, heaven help me, I am no orphan! I come here to humble myself before the tombs of my ancestors, and to implore their pardon for having brought dishonour on the family escutcheon.

FREDERIC: But you forget, sir, you only bought the property a year ago, and the stucco on your baronial castle is scarcely dry.

GENERAL: Frederic, in this chapel are ancestors: you cannot deny that. With the estate, I bought the chapel and its contents. I don't know whose ancestors they were, but I know whose ancestors they are, and I shudder to think that their descendant by purchase (if I may so describe myself) should have brought disgrace upon what, I have no doubt, was an unstained escutcheon.

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(*) We had such a tradition ourselves until somebody spoiled it by doing a genealogical search. Irish, not Cherokee.

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Weird. The embedding video starts at the beginning, rather than the moment (?t=3801) that I quote. The link should work, though.