1. Usage in our family of origin.
2. Usage in the larger community - our friends, our schoolmates, and our colleagues.
3. From intentional information sharing and gathering.
No, macaca is not commonly used in the United States, and most of us did not know what it meant. Having immediately discovered that it is an ethnic slur, the next logical question was a consideration of where George Allen could possibly have picked up such a phrase. Now I only learned a few "bad words" in environment #1. I've learned a fair number in environment #3, but most of them from environment #2.
A Wrong Turn?
So if my experience generalizes at all, why did the consensus develop in the blogosphere that George Allen learned the term macaca in environment #1? I took the trouble to go back and read through a fair amount of blog commentary from that time as it evolved. Once it was pointed out that Allen's mother was French Tunisian, a community that uses macaca as a slur, it was concluded that he must have learned this term from her. In the comments that I reviewed, however, a critical component was not stated implicitly. As a result of George Allen's sister's book, many people had already concluded that his family of origin was crazy as bat shit. It made perfectly good sense to conclude that he learned macaca at home after reading some of the book excerpts.
Makaka
I don't know Ukraine, but it is akin to Russian where the letter "c" always has the "s" sound. So the "k" sound is always with the letter "k." Hence, after viewing the infamous video, it was more natural for me to pursue "makaka" rather than "macaca" in pursuit of of the meaning of an unknown word. I immediately found makaka as a Russian ethnic slur meaning monkey. The first place I looked was here:
http://www.answers.c...
That site derived from http://en.wikipedia....
You won't find makaka there now. Someone deleted the makaka entry. According to the disclaimer at the site (and its mirror):
Because of recent vandalism or other disruption, editing of this article by anonymous or newly registered users is disabled (see semi-protection policy). Such users may discuss changes, request unprotection, or create an account.
As a matter of fact, any number of community dictionaries have been "adjusted" since the incident, rendering them useless as a resource. Here's an example:
http://www.urbandict...
Now, George Allen has said that macaca is not in his French dictionary. It is indeed in my print Spanish dictionary. Here is the entry:
macaco -ca adj ugly, misshapen
macaco de la India rhesus
And let me point out that sombitch and mofo are not in my English dictionary either.
The Ukraine
As a potential outsourcing location, Ukraine is a rising star. However, there are human rights issues; see this article as an example. According to Human Rights Watch racism and xenophobia are entrenched problems in Ukraine.
A community site on the Ukraine that appears untouched thus far by political interests is wikitravel. This information is contained in the "Stay Safe" section.
Racism IssuesThe area around U.S. embassy in Kyiv is known for the provocateur groups targeting African-Americans, and there have been reports of such attacks on Andryevski, the main tourist street that runs from Mykailovska down into Podil. Anecdotal experience is that there is underlying racism in Ukraine, indeed much of the FSU. Blacks are sometimes referred to as Mavpa/Makaka - monkey in Ukrainian/Russian; migrants from Middle and Central Asia and gypsies receive much closer and frequent attention from the Militia. Always have your passport (or a photocopy of the main pages if you're concerned about losing it or if you're staying in a hotel that is holding it) as foreigners are treated more favorably than others. This is not to say that it is unsafe or threatening, but it is better to be forewarned of the realities.
Travel information is mirrored all over the internet. The same information is at Guide 360 The information at the bottom of the page (as of this moment, yes, I took a screenshot) indicates that it was last modified at 21:55, 10 May 2006 by Anonymous user(s) of Guide360.com.
George Allen has sat through an enormous body of testimony regarding xenophobia - globally as a Senator, moreso as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Not only does he vote on legislation informed by the status of human rights violations in various nations, he is charged with gathering that information and making conclusions. He is supposed to be an expert.
Those of you who were around during the primary may recall the very particular details of their lives that individuals whose jobs were outsourced gave before Congressional committees. The Congressional Record contains many statements addressing anti-Semitism in Ukraine as related to the Jackson-Vanik restrictions.
So several points:
-- If George Allen remains uninformed about the litany of human rights violations in that region, he is not doing his job. That's an understatement. In particular Americans, African Americans in particular, traveling in the area need to be informed about potential safety issues.
-- In his various capacities, George Allen receives detailed summaries on a regular basis of the various human rights problems. Makaka could be one of them. It is well within the realm of possibility that the word makaka has literally crossed his desk.
-- George Allen has sat through hours of the particulars of human rights violations. It is many times more likely that George Allen heard macaca/ makaka in the course of his work (this is Allen's Environment #3 identified above) than it is for the average citizen.
-- It is also many times more likely that George Allen heard macaca/ makaka in casual conversation with colleagues and coworkers than it is for the average citizen (This is Allen's Environment #2 above).
-- Allen's minions have tried to give him cover by removing internet pages and editing where they can.
And From the Ashes Arises the New Allen: Champion of Tolerance and Equality
Having called a person of color macaca, the only remotely possible salvation for a sitting Senator in George Allen's position had to be over the top. As it was. The bizarre statements on the part of Allen's campaign served as a distraction - a story in itself. No one - and I mean no one - could salvage a post-macaca George Allen in any remotely normal way.
Is Wadhams a terrible campaign manager? NO, as a one man diversionary force when the situation calls for it - and this situation did call for something that extreme - he is an excellent campaign manager. With his over the top statements, he's managed to become the symbol of all that is crazy and ugly in the Allen campaign. I don't believe the Allen campaign is currently is disarray as much as they are leaking that they are in disarray as they pretend to throw Wadhams to the curb. They want to make it seem as if they are in disarray, as George Allen "quietly" exorcises the demon, Dick Wadhams. We are then left with a recovered George swear I done changed Allen. Yet again. Humble and contrite. Every mother's dream. Bullied by the meanies on the blogs. Appealing to our sympathies. Talking about his mom.
The fact remains. George Allen, Senator, Member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Chair of the European Subcommittee, called a person of color an ethnic slur. To his face. On camera. Dick Wadhams is but a distraction and a tool.
Such good work! :)
Here's a quick note courtesy the Chilites:
As another day comes to an end
I'm lookin' for a letter or somethin'
Anything that she would send
With all the people I know
I'm still a lonely man
You know, it's funny
I thought I had her in the palm of my hand
I didn't know Allen was working in Foreign Relations. If he does and doesn't know such basics, then he's an ass and the sooner he's removed the better. No wonder US is having so much trouble with EU if people like him are in charge
In my Romanian class (nearly 50 years ago), a particularly manic and rambunctious classmate was called "maimutza," or "monkey." But that was good-natured and had no racist connotations.
macaque macaque (demi-) ;
insulte (raciste) ; étranger (asiatique?) ; insulte (générique) ; qui a une sale tête, laid
Oh ! tu sais, quand on ne connaît personne dans un pays, ni la langue des macaques, on ne sort guère de sa tôle
No, except "we didn't like them" :)
To people in US, all of the post-WWII Eastern and Central Europe (under the influence of USSR; what we called "demo-ludy" or "democratic peoples". You think about it, and every country had a "democratic" or "people's" in its full title) we all may have seemed like a bottle of homogenized milk but, in fact, we were a pot of a very rich stew :) It's like Bush thinking that all Muslims are Muslims and not being aware of the differences between Shiites and Sunnis (never mind Sufis and others).
Romania and Albania were on the outs with everyone else, and not just because of the language differences (Romanian isn't Slavic and neither is the language used in Albania; I think it's of Greek origin, but can't be sure).
Poles and Ukrainians have hated one another "since time immemorial" (XVth c) -- specifically because Ukraine had been a part of Poland, before it became a part of Russia and then USSR (Lithuania and White Russia had a similiar relationship historically, though less hatred was generated). During WWII and just after, the butchery that went on (both sides) was *horrible* (Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" is but a taste).
Everyone envied Yugoslavia -- both for its edge regarding political independence from USSR and because of its slightly freer market economy. That changed, of course, once Tito died and the whole thing fell apart.
Bulgaria. The language is Slavic, the religion is Greek-Orthodox, the population is half-Turkish. Nobody paid them much attention, though we took advantage of their being "within the bloc" and went there to swim in their warm sea (Baltic will freeze the goolies off a brass monkey, even in July. Plus it's polluted)
East Germany was simply an extension of USSR politically speaking, but with a non-Slavic language. I highly recommend watching the film "Goodbye, Lenin" for an insight to East Germany, both pre and post '89
Etc, etc. As far as I could see, we (Poles) liked only Hungarians and, to an extent, Slovaks (though not Czechs; market-envy in operation). Hungarians liked us right back -- that is, they'd help us clean up and apply bandages after they'd give us a wallop for being Russians (Polish and Russian are both Slavic languages; Hungarian is not. It's much closer to the Indo-European origins and it shares the "melody" and some of the vocabulary with Finnish)
The whole "bloc" was a carnival, with many different "booths" :)
Regarding outsourcing... It's been a litle different than American outsourcing -- mostly, after '89, Poles "went West" to work, as temporary/unskilled labor (my cousin's son-in-law spends 5 months a year in Germany, working as a farmer. His wife is a CPA in Poland and earns half as much in 12 months) -- more like the Mexico/US balance before we started to close the borders and all of the temps stayed rather than risk multiple crossings.
Because of that, one of the French candidates in a recent election ran on "immigration issues" and featured a Polish plumber who was taking the jobs away from French citizens (the guy on the poster became so famous in Poland, he's now in films and no longer needs to "go West" to earn a good living
But it's also true that more and more of Western capital is being invested within Poland -- factories, banks, etc. The current govt (about to be booted, if my sources are correct) is unhappy with the situation, especially with EU's rather liberal social policies. They're mini-Bushites; very nationalistic (something that USSR firmly *sat on*, for its own reasons) and want God's rule in every aspect of everyone's life.
Sorry for the excessively long comment. But I think that "peoples" who don't learn at least the rudiments of history and culture other than their own will always be at a disadvantage. At my prompting, my son chose history as one of his electives in highschool, but his teacher was *primarily* a football coach... I'd go for a parent/teacher conference and he'd tell me that my son was "very intelligent". Duh. I'd try to engage him on any subject (even Africa, which had changed, a lot, since "my time", so it was a shaky ground for me) and I *still* knew more than he did... Pfui.
She was a well-educated woman; I believe she knew seven languages. But it was decades - literally - before she discovered that the language she had learned as a child was Finnish. I suppose she just never encountered anyone from Finland. But I also suspect she was blocking out some of it.
I don't know that much about the evolution of languages; I know that Hungarian is very different from other European langugaes (only because my son had a Hungarian friend).
libra, do you keep up with the news online in Polish? Just curious.
Yes, I do, to an extent. I don't read any of the major newspapers, but there's an online newsletter, which is a distillation of Polish-only (with an emphasis on Warsaw, which is "my" city anyway) news which I've been reading for several years. It was started by the Physics dept of the Polish Academy of Science (Learning?), originally just for their own co-workers who were abroad temporarily. But it quickly became popular among many Poles abroad who had access to 'puters.
It has a clever name: Donosy. At one level, the term means simply "reports". But, because of Polish recent history (Nazi occupation, then communism), it's mostly used when an informer "reports" on someone (for whatever nefarious reasons).
In the years after my parents died but before most of my friends in Poland had easy access to 'puters, Donosy was my "linguistic lifeline" -- I was beginning to forgeet my native language and a daily dose helped me keep it up.
Sorry to put this -- again lengthy and OT besides -- comment on RK; didn't know how to contact you privately...