George Allen Uses the M-Word

A few of us more sheltered types were a bit puzzled when Senator George Allen (R-VA) singled out an American of Asian extraction at a campaign rally and called him a "makkaka."

From Josh Marshall:
Sen. George Allen (R-VA) singles out Indian-American Webb volunteer S.R. Sidarth at a campaign event, calls him "Macaca" and 'welcomes' him to America. "Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia," said Allen.

Josh notes that Jeffrey Feldman did the research:
There has been some question as to what this word 'macaca' means, so I took some time to fire off some searches on Google.

In the remainder of this post I will list key findings under headings of the search terms plugged into google.

'Macaca' or 'macaque' is a nasty racial epithet alright. It is often used by American white supremacists to describe black people. In Belgium, it is a racial slur for 'dirty arab.' Could this be George Allen's Mel Gibson moment?...

[many examples culled from white supremacist sites]

CONCLUSION
The term 'macaque'--also pronounced 'mukakkah'--is a commonly used racial slur on par with the word 'nigger' in the united states.

In Europe, the word 'macaque' is largely a racial slur used to insult people of North African descent. It is roughly synonomous with 'dirty arab.'

Most of the results that came back in these searches took me to well known white supremacy websites--and to posts from the past two or three years. So this is a phrase that is still in use.

Also returned where hundreds of 'ethnic slur' dictionaries online, all of which list this term as a 'Belgian' racial slur.
...

This incident tells us a lot about whom George Allen hangs out with - and more about whom he is.

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