"This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great," Allen said.The crowd laughed, and Allen continued, suggesting that his opponent, Jim Webb, was out in Hollywood trying to raise money from "movie moguls," then added this:
"We care about fact, not fiction. So, welcome, let's give a welcome to macaca here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."Even before it was pointed out, with great enthusiasm, what macaca might mean, there was already a problem: that volunteer in the yellow shirt, S.R Sidarth, is a native of Virginia who happens to be of Indian descent. The "Welcome to America" comment, an obvious assumption that Sidarth must be an immigrant, (and a recent one) was itself insensitive.
There has been much effort online to explain the word macaca. Since we're going by his spoken word, we have no idea how Allen might have spelled the word, but the spelling "macaca" is consistent with the way he pronounced it. If he had pronounced it a little differently, he might have been trying to say, "macaque," which is considered an obscene racial slur against blacks in North Africa. It could also refer to a genus of monkey, which implies that if more than a slip of the tongue, it was a racial slur.
Allen's camp claims that the "Welcome to America" comment had nothing to do with Sidarth's race; instead, they say, Allen was trying to point out that he was campaigning even in rural, Western Virginia communities, not focusing all of his attention on the beltway area of Northern Virginia. Either way, since all of Virginia -- last time I looked at a map -- was already a part of America, that explanation seems to fall a bit short.
As for the macaca comment, Allen's camp first explained that it sounded like "Mohawk," a nickname that Allen's staffers had apparently used for Sidarth. Sidarth, however, does not wear his hair in a mohawk, and if Allen was trying to use a word that "sounded like" mohawk, why not just say "mohawk?" That explanation falls more than a little short.
Then Allen said that he had no idea what macaca really meant. If he didn't know what the word would mean, why would he use it to address someone?
Allen apologized, (if you can call it that):
“I apologize if my comments offended this young man."Note the classic political game-playing: he didn't apologize for making the comments, only for them having been perceived as offensive. That's like a child apologizing to his mother for her having seen him with his hand in the cookie jar, but not for having tried to sneak a cookie.
It is possible that Allen really wasn't aware that a "macaca" was a kind of monkey or that "macaque" was a racial slur. But then again, those who are racist are often also accused of ignorance, and rightly so. So if you believe that this was an intentional racial slur, you have to decide for yourself where the alleged ignorance begins and where it ends.
Likewise, the same question comes up when Allen's supporters suggest that it would have been stupid for Allen to make such a remark to a camera that he knew was recording his every move and word. Of course if the surveys tell you that you have the election all but guaranteed, perhaps you really don't give a damn what you say because you're convinced that no matter what, you'll win. And even if it wasn't surpreme confidence that clouded his judgment, and even if he really didn't know of the word's meaning or intend to make a racial slur, a person could be so unlucky as to have picked a word he'd never heard of out of thin air to use in reference to a dark-skinned person, to find out that the word was a racial slur, then find himself plastered all over the internet with the comment isn't someone I'd try to buy lottery tickets with.
On Wednesday, Sen. Allen apologized directly to Sidarth for the remark.
In the early part of the last century, politicians could say whatever they wanted, and even if a print journalist was present, they could always claim that they didn't really say what was printed. But broadcast journalism changed all that: a controversial conversation suddenly was beamed from coast to coast.
Now, thanks to the internet, those remarks can be uploaded, downloaded, emailed and viewed constantly by anyone, any time. Thanks to sites like YouTube, it's possible to get the politicians' remarks in their own words on demand.
Two key questions remain: how much will this hurt his re-election bid, and how much will it hurt him if he hopes to run for president in 2008?
He's not getting my vote.
