Senator Accused of Using Racially Charged Term
2006-09-26
Source: New York Times
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rss feedTwo 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 Alabama 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."
Dr. Shelton, a radiologist now living in North Carolina, said that on a hunting trip Mr. Allen had sought out the home of an African American and affixed the head of a dead deer to the mailbox. And Dr. Shelton said Mr. Allen had also called him "wizard" after Robert Shelton, who used the title "wizard" as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
"He wanted to know if I was related," Dr. Shelton recalled in an interview. "I said, 'No.' "
Dr. Shelton's account was first reported Sunday night by the online news magazine Salon.
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