Some food for thought:
Stop using the 'M' word casually. Yesterday I took SusanG to task for calling Allen "All hat and no M." Today, Kos calls Allen "Senator M."
We're all big on framing so I'll give you a frame:
1) If this word is racially insensitive (and it is) and is a deliberate racial slur then
2) We should not be using it casually. Period.
3) If we do use it casually, we destroy our own frame of the issue. In other words it seems like... it can't be THAT bad.
Well... it is bad. And we need to hold Allen and ourselves to that standard, satire/humor or not.
More over the fold.
If Allen had said (which I'm sure he has)any number of other slurs, which I won't repeat here, for other groups, we would not in a million years call him "Senator
___."
He said what he said to:
1) Deliberately demean and intimidate a person of a different color.
2) He said this word with full knowledge of its meaning in French (his mother is French-Tunisian) and its derivation as an epithet in other parts of the world.
3) I'm not sure how we can use this same word in a flippant, off-hand manner. Especially when there were Kossacks who posted who knew precisely what it meant and how demeaning that term can be.
I like this comment by SoCalLiberal:
It's equivalent to the n-word among French colonists in North Africa. Now you may be wondering why this would mean anything. George Allen is just some southern white trash redneck and this poor guy, S.R. Siddarth, is an Indian-American. George Allen's mother immigrated from Tunisia, she was French born (that should be enough to get all the French hating voters in Virginia to vote against him). I think that when we start laughing at the word "Macaca", we help bolster Allen. After all, he wasn't wrong because he said a funny sounding word that rhymes with "caca" (after all, all Hawaians would be guilty when refering to their senator Daniel Akaka), he's wrong because he's a racist.
This comment from inclusiveheart also illustrates the point:
So far I have refrained from telling the story about the first time I heard the term "monkey" used to disparage black people sitting at my Great Aunt's kitchen table and being utterly disgusted even then. You see, my best friend was black - well worse in these low-life circles - she was the child of a white mother and black father and she was a whole lot nicer than my idiot aunt who married into my family. Anyhow, it is a bad term and there is a big difference between reporting that it has been used and adopting it in one's own vernacular. Thanks.
The single best diary on the subject is The Vocabulary of Racism by Irishkorean:
Asian Racist slurs are the "Mad Libs" of the Ku Klux Klan. It's about what you can make up on the spot, rhyming, staccato, so long as it clearly isn't a real word. That's the thing about Asian Racism, the vocabulary changes every time a Racist opens their mouth.
That's what happened to S.R. Siddarth. Text book Asian Racism. George Allen Made up a word, used it to identify an Asian Man, and welcomed him to America.
Somebody points at me, makes up a word, and welcomes me to America (I'm born and bred red, white, and blue). That's when I start Swinging. Because that is how Asian Racism works.
There is a lot of confusion if you're not Asian, about how Racism works in this regard. Often the "Afro-Racism" model is used to identify it. If it doesn't fit that model then you're not sure if it is Racism or not. I see lots of folks taking a step back, and not hammering Allen like he deserves. The confusion is understandable, as Afro-Racism is the predominant form in our country.
But whatever you do, have no fucking doubt in your mind as to what George Allen did.
George Allen used Asian Racism, in its most common form. It's not a distant Tunisian/French, learned from a distant relative--whatever...
It was Text book Asian Racism. He made up a word on the Spot to demean an Asian Man. This is how Racism works for Asians, and how it has always been used on me.
Take the poll. My bottom line:
It sounds like we are active participants in Allen's racist rhetoric to flippantly roll the M word into all of its potential uses. We wouldn't do that with any other word or a word about another group that experiences racism. Next time you use that word other than in factually reporting the story... STOP.