nbcrusader said:
Perhaps you’ve missed the direction of the discussion. The questioning in this thread has not been “This can’t be racism” but “How do you reach the conclusion of racism”. It would be far easier to join the mutual admiration society of those who come to the conclusion without question. But what would be the point of these threads (other than simple emotional release)?
It would surprise me (or leave me aghast, which is a little more dramatic) that the issue is “obvious” when one doesn’t even understand the meaning of the word used. You are correct that there would be no discussion if “******” was used, as there is common understanding and consensus as to its meaning. This turns into an “Allen should have known what the word meant” discussion.
Many have recognized the context of the political rally, but fail to see how an operative for a political opponent would draw the ire of a politician. Has anyone attended a political rally as the “opposition”? And tried to stand in front? And done it multiple times? I recall attending a speech by a Democratic candidate for President on my college campus. I wasn’t political (still am not really), but I thought it would be interesting to hear him speak. Since I wasn’t registered with the campaign as a supporter, you wouldn’t believe the grief I got for simply wanting to stand up front. So here is Sidarth, the lone Webb supporter at the front of an Allen rally. Again. And the prime motive for singling Sidarth out is the color of his skin? If that is the conclusion you want to reach, that is fine. All that has been asked is for a little more evidence of Allen’s prior conduct that would support the conclusion.
I don't know that he missed the "direction" of your argument about Allen's intentions, because so far as I can tell, you have yet to indicate one. All you've done is attempt to deconstruct the racial slur interpretation. And the "mutual admiration society" bit was cheap and unwarranted--just because someone, rightly or wrongly, assumes Allen's intents to be racist doesn't prove that they consider themselves morally superior for thinking that, nor that they're expressing that opinion solely for "emotional release's" sake. But to be fair, there have been plenty of snide remarks from both sides in this thread, so whatever.
What Allen said--if anything
especially because it involved an obscure word--requires interpretation, one way or the other. Again, which of the interpretations Allen has offered do you buy? That he mangled "mohawk" (or perhaps slyly combined it with
caca, "shit"?), or that it was just some random string of phonemes which tumbled out? The former explanation(s) is the only one that strikes me as being an attempt at a real "answer", but for me personally, it just doesn't add up--Sidarth does not have a mohawk, mohawk is a common and not particularly hard word to remember (especially if you've been privately calling someone that for a while), and anyhow why would it come out as the very different-sounding word "macaca"? Allen does not have a history of speech problems. If it was really a sly combination of "mo-" with the Spanish for "shit," then at the very least that's a shockingly vulgar thing for a politician to publically call someone, isn't it? When you were insulted at a political rally, did the politician himself single you out for insult before the audience?
As for the "made it up"/"used it with no idea of its meaning" explanation, that simply doesn't constitute an explanation at all. Sure, people use a word other than the one they
meant all the time, but that fact by itself doesn't establish what they meant. To give a silly example: a few days ago a neighbor of mine enthused to me about the fabulous new diet/exercise/lifestyle-philosophy regimen she was following, and kept glowingly exclaiming how the man who invented and now propounds it "was just
emaciated!!" by it. When I puzzledly asked her why an end result of emaciation would recommend a diet plan to anybody, she replied in a way that made it clear to me that what she in fact meant was
emancipated. So even though she used a word she clearly did not know the meaning of, nonetheless she was able to convincingly articulate what she
did mean: that he was liberated, set free by this diet-and-lifestyle regimen.
INDY explained Hillary's and Biden's comments as dumb ad-libs which bombed. I think that's a fairly convincing explanation in Biden's case, especially since he was speaking to Indian-Americans when he said it, and in context clearly meant to highlight their business successes (though it was a pathetically clumsy and ill-considered way of doing so). Hillary's comment, I am less certain--although it didn't involve a racial slur, and she said it in the context of praising a famous Indian (Gandhi), nonetheless she was clearly trying to make humor out of the fact that Indian-Americans stereotypically often run gas stations, which is highly insensitive at best as "humor." On the other hand, she did later publically apologize, in the process credibly explaining her remark as a poorly considered and insensitive joke. Whether that acceptably enough excuses such behavior from an elected official is up to her prospective constituents to judge. If you want to call some of them hypocrites for forgiving her and not Allen, fine, but that doesn't establish one way or the other what Allen "really meant" either.
As far as potential past evidence on Allen goes, I personally don't see it as necessary one way or the other for evaluating his conceivable range of intentions here, but there are things you could cite in addition to the oddness of already having been fascinated with Confederate flags as a (native) Californian high school student and UCLA freshman. For example, a March 2005 Atlanta Journal-Constitution report described how while governor (1994-98) he dubbed the NAACP "an extremist group" and issued a decidely unbalanced-sounding proclamation of "Confederate History Month." From the Washington Post:
...in the late 1990s...governor George Allen (R) issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War "a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights."...The declaration made no mention of slavery, angering many civil rights groups.
(Allen's Republican successor, Jim Gilmore, changed the proclamation significantly, including adding a denunciation of slavery.) Also, as a candidate for US Representative in 1991, Allen opposed
the 1991 Civil Rights Act, and as a Virginia state delegate he opposed recognizing MLK Jr. Day, arguing (per the Richmond Times-Dispatch) that that day was already set aside to honor Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, and "we shouldn't honor a non-Virginian with his own holiday."
Of course, you could rationalize away all of these things as innocent, if politically ill-advised in the longterm, expressions of Southern conservatism. And you could also cite instances of Allen's support for anti-racist gestures, such as the 2005 Senate resolution apologizing for never having passed legislation to prevent lynching, or his commemorative campaign trip to Selma with civil rights veteran John Lewis (D-GA). But really, what other sort of "supporting evidence" for interpreting "macaca" as a racial slur would you expect to find? Allen is too young to have been a segregationist, and too smart to go around publically spewing the n-word or broadly slamming minority groups, even if he were thus inclined. I just don't see any of this as necessary for interpreting the "macaca" statement as at best coarse and mean-spirited stupidity, and at worst as a poorly disguised racial slur.