Culturebox: Wikipedia's "Macaca" Problem

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the good word Wikipedia's "Macaca" Problem The user-generated encyclopedia makes George Allen's faux pas seem more clear-cut than it really was. By Chris Wilson Posted Tuesday, April 26, 2011, at 7:03 AM ET A monkey-specter taunts George Allen. When the former Virginia senator announced in January that he was running to retake the seat he lost five years ago, nearly every news story mentioned his Aug. 11, 2006, campaign stop. Most people need little reminder of what went down on that fateful afternoon in southwest Virginia, when Allen singled out Indian-American college student S. R. Sidarth, who had been filming him all week. "This fellow here--over here with the yellow shirt, 'Macaca,' or whatever his name is, he's with my opponent," he said, looking into the camera. Allen made a joke about how challenger Jim Webb was raising money in Hollywood, and then returned to Sidarth: "Let's give a welcome to 'Macaca' here. Welcome to America, and the real world of Virginia." What we may forget is that no one present at the campaign event appeared to think much of the incident or the gibberish nickname Allen had come up with for Sidarth--everyone except Sidarth himself and his bosses at the Webb campaign. The following Monday, Sidarth told the Associated Press that he felt the senator was "singling me out as a person of color when the rest of the audience was Caucasian." As far as the word macaca was concerned, the AP offered that it's "a term associated with a species of monkeys." (The scientific name for the rhesus monkey, for example, is Macaca mulatta.) The article also noted that, if spelled "Makaka," the word referred to a South African city. The Allen campaign insisted that Allen made the word up, and that he didn't mean anything by it. To continue reading, click here. Chris Wilson is an associate editor at Slate in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Bernanke Will Make History With His Press Conference. But Will He Actually Say Anything? How the Dodgers' Terrible Owner Ruined the Baseball Experience for Fans Shafer: The New York Times Public Editor's Stupid Ideas on How To Cover the Press	Advertisement
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