AAMP!itude

pardon my macaca

It seems the news story of Sen. George Allen (R-VA) calling an Indian American tracker by the name (or label) of "macaca" has legs.

Last Friday, the tracker, a worker or volunteer for Allen's Democratic opponent, James Webb, was videotaping Allen at a rally in Breaks, Virginia.

In his remarks to the audience, Allen pointed out the Webb worker, who had been following the senator around at different campaign stops. Allen referred to him as "Macaca". He also challenged the tracker and Webb to expose themselves to a part of the country (or the state) that wasn't fake. What he said was:

"Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

(Perhaps he was highlighting a remote area of Virginia. If you look at a map, Breaks is in the southeastern corner of the state (or should I say, commonwealth), near the border with Kentucky. It's in Appalachian country.)

The Washington Post put the story on the front page of Monday's issue:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081400589.html?nav=hcmodule

They also editorialized about it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401114.html?nav=hcmodule

The issue bounced around the blogosphere. My favorite discussion of it is found at sepiamutiny.com, a forum for South Asians.

I'm not sure how much other regular press picked up the story, but at least AP did:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060816/ap_on_el_se/allen_campaign_volunteer

And the Post followed up on the controversy:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/15/AR2006081501210.html

If you go to that page, there's a serious picture of S.R. Siddarth, the guy that Allen referred to.

In his initial apologetic remarks (some would say, pseudo-apology), Allen's spokesperson said the Senator was trying to refer to Siddarth's hairstyle, which he called a mohawk.

If you look at Siddarth, that ain't no mohawk.

And how does "mohawk" morph into "macaca"?

Is macaca really slang that Allen picked up from his mother (a Jewish French who grew up in Tunisia)? Or is it slang that he picked up from some Belgian or Dutch racist? Either slang refers to persons of color as maccaques or monkeys.

My own theory is that he was refering to Siddarth's skin color by way of a fellow Senator, Daniel Akaka (D-HI). The latter has a slightly dark complexion.
So he could have been combining Mohawk with Akaka. Or he could have been hailing Siddarth as "my Akaka".

Allen would not strike most observers as particularly fleet of tongue, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that he would say some gibberish that sounded racist. I know that his detractors are quick to resurrect his past transgressions, going back to high school. See the comments to my initial posting on Sen. Allen back in 2004:

http://aamplitude.baltiblogs.com/archives/2004_02.html
(scroll down to March 3)

What gets me is that he is well on the way to becoming his state's version of William Donald Schaefer. I guess every state is entitled to their own politician who puts their foot in their mouth. In Maryland, we have Schaefer, and Virginia has Allen.

It just seems de rigeur in these times. After all, President Bush (#43) has done a fine job of mangling the English language, over the years.

(And extending that to inappropriate or miscontrued actions, how about that "1-second Texas massage" that Bush practiced on German chancellor Merkel at the G-8 summit? I recently realized that such behavior is highlighted as a no-no in sexual harassment prevention classes. [An interesting side note: from a brief struggle to skim a German magazine article, I don't think the Germans perceive of Bush's massage in the same light.])

Posted by raacluse at August 16, 2006 02:11 AM