Senator accused of using racially charged term - NYT

[kstewart33]

September 25, 2006
Senator Accused of Using Racially Charged Term
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — Two acquaintances of Senator George Allen of Virginia said today that he had used racially inflammatory language in the 1970’s and 1980’s, compounding allegations of racial insensitivity that have dogged his re-election campaign since he referred to a young Indian-American as “macaca” a few weeks ago. Mr. Allen said he had never used the language attributed to him by the acquaintances.

Christopher Taylor, an anthropology professor at Auburn University in Birmingham, Ala., said that in the early 1980’s he heard Mr. Allen use an inflammatory epithet for African Americans. Mr. Taylor, who is white and was then a graduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said the term came up in a conversation about the turtles in a pond near Mr. Allen’s property. According to Mr. Taylor, Mr. Allen said that “around here” only the African Americans — whom he referred to by the epithet — “eat ‘em.”

Separately, Dr. Ken Shelton, a former football teammate of Mr. Allen’s at the University of Virginia who is white, said that in college in the early 1970’s Mr. Allen had used the same term often. Dr. Shelton said Mr. Allen had told him that he moved to Virginia “because the blacks know their place.”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/washington/26allencnd.html?ei=5094&en=4060f10fe26a0b7e&hp=&ex=1159243200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

Note: Taylor is a new confirming source since the salon.com article.

[Virginia Dare]

1. Damn, Felix that must have been one big...

mother lovin' closet you were keeping all those skeletons in.

[TheCowsCameHome]

2. He just made up that word. He never heard it before.

Such a proper young southern gentleman. And did you know he was from a football family?

WHO GIVES A F**K, GEORGE? YOU'RE DONE.

[Ediacara]

4. You mean Southern California, right?

What cracks me up about this guy (and bothers and scares me) is that he grew up in the shadow of DisneyLand and moved to Virginia because he was that much of a racist.

[Virginian]

9. Whaaaaat???? ! ! !

Yep, no one in the good ole Commonwealth of Virginny but all us racist. Wanted to be with his own kind. :sarcasm:

I think his father's leaving the LA Rams and taking the coaching job with the Washington Redskins may have had something to do with it. Felix could get in-state tuition rates at UVA.

He transferred in to UVA his Sophmore year. May have ticked off someone important at his old school and needed to run.

Thanks for the insult. It's essential that I have at least one person look down on me for the region of this country in which I live. It builds humility. :sarcasm:

If everyone in this world had an ancestor from every continent, racism would end, but bigotry will always exist.

[Ediacara]

11. I wasn't trying to imply that all Virginians are racist

But from a naïve Californian's perspective, it may look that way.

[LostinVA]

12. Felix is a native Californian n/t

[northzax]

14. um, Virginia doesn't have the best history in the world

with the whole race relations thing, you know? especially 25 years ago (and Allen was on scholarship to UCLA, so the tuition wasn't an issue, I figure) There seems little doubt that Allen was attracted to the less savoury parts of Virginia history, at least as a young man. He was a wanna be redneck, and acted out the worst stereotypes of a southern redneck to fulfill some youthful fantasy world.

And in virginia, there is no doubt he found a large number of kindred souls (er, he's pulling 46 percent in a campaign where he has used racist names and reacted with anger and veiled violence when someone asked if he was Jewish, you'd think in such an enlightened State, those things would bother people) I don't think he's a racist, actually, I think he's even worse, someone pandering to racism to get power.

[Virginian]

19. His predecessor was Doug Wilder.

Doug Wilder was the first AA Governor in the US as far as I know. I could be wrong, I don't know the history of every state.
This means a MAJORITY of us voted for Wilder.

Allen was able to package and sell himself as a more moderate person from what I understand. He also had name recognition. That grin always bothered me. He gave me the creeps (and still does). I felt like he was hiding something. I think that something was his cruelty. He showed just a little of that cruelty in the Macaca incident, it wasn't just what he said, he was deliberately trying to be cruel to someone of darker skin in a purely caucasian crowd.

[northzax]

20. and he is still drawing 50+% of the vote in polls

much from the South, I hope. that's what's disturbing.

[lynne]

10. In 1972 Allen's father became coach of the Washington Redskins -

- and the Allen family moved to Leesburg in northern VA. UVA is about a 2 hour drive from Leesburg.

[KurtNYC]

15. Do you know the history of Anaheim?

He went from the fire to the frying pan...

In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan, at the height of its influence and popularity, decided to make Anaheim a model Klan city. In 1924, the Klan secretly managed to get four of its members elected to the five-member Board of Trustees. Nine of the ten members of the police force were also Klansmen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaheim,_California

Yes that was the 1920s but guess what percentage of the police and fire department are white now?

Klan-aheim.

[bluestateguy]

3. The NY Times is such a pompous ass paper

For Christ sakes just say the gaddammned fucking word!!! :grr:

NIGGER. There. George Allen said the word NIGGER.

Sometimes I think the NYT just wants to be the paper of choice for Upper East Side cocktail parties, rather then tell the cold hard truth.

[fujiyama]

5. What is wrong with them?

It's like they're covering for him...It's almost like they want you to think the "epithet" was less offensive than it was.

They can atleast use it in the following manner: N-gger. You don't have to say, but atleast make it clear that the guy was using the most offensive epithet against blacks out there.

Of course, this is also the paper that covered for Bush during the election by not reporting the NSA wiretapping.

[Joe Bacon]

6. Who's the bigger idiot, Felix or Kinky?

I just saw the Daily Kos posting of quotes from KKKinky and they made me cringe!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9/25/194453/169

[Elidor]

7. You just know Allen is thinking:

"I've talked like this all my life. Why is everyone making a fuss about it now?"

Couldn't happen to a nicer asshole. And really, this guy should be a poster-boy for the GOP, because his is not an isolated attitude. The GOP doesn't just have some racists in the closet: the GOP is a racist party.

[JoFerret]

18. Trouble is, they will learn from this

...change the language and yet remain the unreconstructed racists they always were.

[LibDemAlways]

8. They are starting to come out of the woodwork now.

This is great. I started posting on DU several years ago that George Allen was a racist and relating his love of the Confederacy and the racist graffiti he sprayed on our school walls back at Palos Verdes High. It's so gratifying that others are confirming what I've said all along. The guy is a lifelong racist asshole.

[zonkers]

13. Is this doesn't get the black vote out, what will?

[KurtNYC]

16. The MSM is bending over backward to not just call this guy racist

Yesterday it was "may have racist tendencies" and now this one "using racially charged term" ?!

I swear if this guy was found to have african-americans in chains on his property hanging up laundry (white bed sheets with eye holes) the headline would be:

"Senator Allen may be guilty of reverse discrimination -- No white workers seen at his Virginia plantation"

[LiberalFighter]

17. Only the n******* ate them??? Geesh

Then I guess my uncles who trapped them all the time along with shooting squirrels and fishing must be n******. I must be one too since I ate them when I was younger.

They weren't ordinary turtles either. They was snapping turtles. Bet he was a lilly white turd scared to go near those turtles in his pond.

I bet some of my aunts could outshoot him when hunting deer too.