Even though its origins date back to the 2006 US Mid-Term
Elections, is macaca an example of an “Americanized racial slur”?
By: Ringo Bones
To those still unfamiliar with this relatively young member
of the American English lexicon, macaca became the American Dialectic Society’s
Word of the Year back in 2006 when the then incumbent US Republican Party
Senator George Allen used it during the 2006 US Mid-Term Elections while campaigning
for his US Senate seat in Virginia when it was probably the first time ever
used while caught on camera. Back then, most Americans where still unfamiliar
with the term until continuous media coverage of the said video footage made
everyone who closely followed the US Mid-term Elections alleged it to be a
“racial slur”.
Even though Allen pleaded that he was unaware of its
reported racial context, a Francophone equivalent of the word macaca – i.e. the
word macaque that eventually used to name a genus of monkeys – were used by
French colonizers in Africa during the Victorian era as a disparaging term to
the black African natives. Relating to the Allen controversy, macaca was unsurprisingly
named as the “most politically incorrect word” of 2006 by the Global Language
Monitor.
The video of US Republican Party senate incumbent George
Allen nicknaming a young Indian-American man attending one of his rallies as
“macaca” as Allen asked the young man to come up on stage before Allen referred
to him as an example of the success results of the American Dream. Unbeknown to
Senator Allen, the young Indian-American was an aide to senate rival US
Democratic Party Senator Jim Webb named S.R. Siddarth whose full name is a far
cry from ever closely resembling a homophone of the word macaca, thus
highlighting the “institutionalized racism” of the conservatives populating the
ranks of the US Republican Party.
Whenever a US Republican Party stalwart goes on a racist and homophobic rant - how come it always result in a new word being added into the American English language lexicon?
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