Times: 2 Ex-Acquaintances of Senator Allen Say He Used Slurs

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: September 26, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — Two former acquaintances of Senator George Allen said Monday that he used racist slurs in the 1970’s and 1980’s, a development that compounded accusations of racial insensitivity that have dogged his re-election campaign in Virginia. Mr. Allen denied that he had ever used such words.

Steve Dixon for The New York Times

Dr. Ken Shelton says he heard Senator Allen use slurs.
One of the two old acquaintances, Christopher Taylor, now an anthropology professor at the Birmingham campus of the University of Alabama, said he heard Mr. Allen use an epithet to describe African-Americans in the early 1980’s.

Mr. Taylor, who is white and was then a graduate student at the University of Virginia, said the term had come up in a conversation about the turtles in a pond near Mr. Allen’s property. Mr. Allen, Mr. Taylor said, told him that “around here” the only people who “eat ’em” were African-Americans, whom he described with the notorious epithet for blacks.

Separately, Dr. Ken Shelton, who was a football teammate of the senator at the University of Virginia and who is also white, said that while in college in the early 1970’s Mr. Allen often used the same racially charged term. Mr. Shelton, whose account was first reported Sunday night in the online newsmagazine Salon, said Mr. Allen had told him that he had moved to Virginia “because the blacks know their place.”

Mr. 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. He also said Mr. Allen had called him Wizard, for Robert Shelton, who used the title as a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

“He wanted to know if I was related,” Mr. Shelton recalled in an interview. “I said no.”

Mr. Allen, a Republican once considered a front-runner for the party’s 2008 presidential nomination, told The Associated Press on Monday that Mr. Shelton’s accusations were “ludicrously false.” And Dan Allen (no relation), an adviser to the Allen campaign, said the racial slur Mr. Taylor attributed to the senator was “not part of his vocabulary.”

In a statement released by the campaign, Anne Waddell, who was George Allen’s wife at the time, confirmed Mr. Taylor’s visit to the Allen property but also said her former husband would never have used such terms.

In the A.P. interview, conducted before Mr. Taylor came forward, the senator said Mr. Shelton’s “comments and assertions in there are completely false.”

“I don’t remember ever using that word,” he said, “and it is absolutely false that that was ever part of my vocabulary.”

Mr. Allen’s campaign also distributed statements in his defense from three other college football teammates and a former trainer for the team. The three players said Mr. Allen had never used racist slurs, and two of them, as well as the trainer, said Mr. Shelton had been nicknamed Wizard — and not by Mr. Allen — because of his magicianlike football skills.

“It appears to me that Kenny Shelton has some deep-rooted problems with his self-identity and a rather hyperactive imagination,” one former teammate, George Korte, said in his statement.

Until a few weeks ago, Mr. Allen appeared to have a solid advantage in his re-election campaign, in which he faces Jim Webb, secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, who is running as a Democrat.

But insinuations of racial insensitivity have hovered in the background of the Allen campaign ever since The New Republic reported last spring that he had worn a Confederate flag pin in his yearbook picture. After that report, two odd episodes in the space of a few weeks this summer prompted new questions and cut into his lead.

The first occurred at a campaign appearance where Mr. Allen called a young Democratic operative of Indian descent “macaca” and welcomed him “to America.” Liberals called the term a racist slur derived from the name of a type of monkey. Mr. Allen apologized for any offense and said he had simply made up the word.

A few weeks later Mr. Allen, who is Presbyterian, grew angry at a reporter’s question about whether his mother had been born Jewish. Mr. Allen later said that after the question came up, his mother told him for the first time that her family was indeed Jewish. His subsequent statements about the matter — attesting that he still ate ham sandwiches, for example — appeared awkward, even to fellow Republicans.

“His mishandling of a name-calling incident, and his ham-handed denial and subsequent revelation that his mother was raised Jewish, have almost eliminated him from the field of serious presidential candidates and even jeopardized his Senate seat,” Matthew Continetti of the conservative Weekly Standard wrote in the magazine’s current cover story, “George Allen Monkeys Around.”

Previous accusations about Mr. Allen’s racial views have centered mostly on symbolism, especially involving the Confederacy.

In addition to the pin in his high school yearbook picture, for example, he later displayed a Confederate flag on his living room wall. As governor of Virginia, he declared a Confederate History Month without reference to slavery. He made a cameo appearance as a Confederate officer in the film “Gods and Generals.” And he once opposed the creation of a Virginia state holiday to memorialize the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mr. Shelton, who described himself as a political independent, said that reports of the “macaca” comment had reminded him of his college experiences with Mr. Allen and that he had decided he should have come forward long ago.

Mr. Taylor, the Alabama professor, said he was a politically active Democrat. He initially wrote of his recollections in a private e-mail message to a colleague after the “macaca” incident. The message was eventually forwarded to The New York Times, and Mr. Taylor subsequently agreed to discuss his recollections of Mr. Allen with a reporter.

Mr. Taylor said that he had been “kind of taken aback” by Mr. Allen’s language because it occurred at their first meeting and that Mr. Allen had known he was talking to a graduate student in anthropology. “Most of us are antiracist,” Mr. Taylor said.

Still, he said, he did not give Mr. Allen “a moral lesson.” He said he had been visiting Mr. Allen to pick up an Australian shepherd puppy and had simply left with the dog.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/26/u...&en=e8e9cd58f1a13098&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

"Mr. Allen’s campaign also distributed statements in his defense from three other college football teammates and a former trainer for the team. The three players said Mr. Allen had never used racist slurs, and two of them, as well as the trainer, said Mr. Shelton had been nicknamed Wizard — and not by Mr. Allen — because of his magicianlike football skills."

I thought this was funny.

 

Of course it's going to be something other people have used before... His campaign isnt stupid. But what "magician-like" FOOTBALL skills would Shelton have shown? Do you think a man who was nicknamed that wouldnt know that was the real reason ?

 

Shelton was a tight end... a position where many "magician-like" plays are made.

 

What? This isnt just about statements he made 25 years ago. It's about a seemingly lifetime affinity for racism. From the lack of support for MLK day, his love of the confederate flag, the noose he kept in his office, the macaca comment, to this stuff coming out now.

The significance of this is that Allen was one time considered a possible candidate for President. Which, I assume, is why Ed Gillespie joined his current campaign.

 

That's true... you're right. N****r is a word used by all. I use it everyday. Totally cool thing to say.

 

Your signature would be cool if it wasnt pasted by someone who is unwarrantedly condescending…

Keep it real, yo.