Now, Even Allen's Apologies Are Getting Him in Trouble
2006-09-29
Source: Washington Post
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rss feedSen. George Allen can't seem to win: first, he apologizes for addressing an Indian American with a racial slur and acknowledges that many view the Confederate flag as a hate symbol. Now, the Sons of Confederate Veterans want him to apologize, too.
As he fights Democrat James Webb for a second term in the Senate, Allen has spent the last six weeks battling charges of racism after calling a young Indian American man "macaca" and later being accused of having used a racial epithet toward blacks.
He has vehemently denied ever using the "N-word." He has apologized profusely for saying "macaca." And he has insisted that he has moved far beyond his youthful admiration of controversial symbols like the battle flag.
"What I was slow to appreciate and wish I had understood much sooner," Allen told a black audience last month, "is that this symbol . . . is, for black Americans, an emblem of hate and terror, an emblem of intolerance and intimidation."
Now, even that statement is getting him into trouble.
"He's apologizing to others, certainly he should apologize to us as well," said B. Frank Earnest Sr., the Virginia commander of the confederate group at a news conference. "We're all aware, ourselves included, of the statements that got him into this. The infamous macaca statement. He's using our flag to wipe the muck from his shoes that he's now stepped in."
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