Salon reports that Senator George Allen liked to use the word nigger a lot when he was attending the University of Virginia.
“Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where ‘blacks knew their place,'” said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. “He used the N-word on a regular basis back then.”
To fully understand that allegation it’s important to realize that George Allen grew up in Southern California and attended UCLA for his freshman year. He transferred to Virginia after his freshman year and went on to become class President in his senior year. So, he may have had a bad experience with the UCLA football team. UCLA was where Jackie Robinson played football. Maybe George Allen discovered that the black members of the UCLA football team did not “know their place”. It’s certainly plausible.
I see a patten with Senator Allen. It’s very weird for a kid that grew up in Southern California (and a few years in Chicago) to display a Confederate Flag on his lapel for his Senior picture. What was it about the flag that attracted Allen? I can sort of understand why the flag appeals to some southerners that have a kind of romanticized view of the pre-war south. But it’s hard to see what the appeal would be for a kid from Palos Verdes. And in his high school yearbook? Seems like a political statement to me. And one that smells of racism.
Then there is Allen’s strained explanation of how and when he learned of his mother’s Jewish Lumbroso roots. If I were decended from the former Chief Rabbi of Tunis I would probably be aware of it. Does this sound like someone that is being truthful?
Senator Allen told the Richmond Times Dispatch in 2000 that his grandfather was imprisoned because “he sympathized with the Free French and the Allies and coveted the concepts of freedom of thought, expression, religious belief and enterprise.”
Why would Allen hide his Jewish heritage from the world? Is he a self-hating Jew (he technically qualifies as Jewish) or did he think it would be a political liability?
We can’t forget that he vigorously opposed creating a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Then we have the photo that haunts him.
In 1996, when Governor Allen entered the Washington Hilton Hotel to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations, he strode to a booth at the entrance of the exhibition hall festooned with two large Confederate flags–a booth operated by the CCC, at the time a co-sponsor of CPAC. After speaking with CCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum and two of his cohorts, Allen suggested that they pose for a photograph with then-National Rifle Association spokesman and actor Charlton Heston. The photo appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC’s newsletter, the Citizens Informer.
So, what are we to make of this?
A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word “nigger” to describe blacks. “It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used,” the teammate said.
A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word “nigger,” though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. “My impression of him was that he was a racist,” the third teammate said.
In the interest of fairness, the article sites many former teammates that did not recall Allen as a racist and that had nice things to say about him. I assume he was pretty popular since he was elected class President despite missing the bonding period of freshman year. And, according to his critics, he tended to act one way when around blacks and another way when he was alone with his white friends. I think we all know people like that.
It’s my judgment that George Allen is a closet racist. He appears to be ashamed of his Jewish heritage, despite the distinction of many of his Jewish ancestors.
Beyond that, he’s just weird. He wears cowboy boots. He loves the confederate flag. He talks like a blubbering idiot. His sister has accused him of all kinds of unpleasant personality traits.
Allen’s younger sister Jennifer Allen Richard alleges in her memoir Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter (Random House Publishing, 2000) that Allen attacked his younger siblings during his childhood. [48] She claims that Allen held her by her feet over Niagara Falls,[49] struck her boyfriend in the head with a pool cue,[50] threw his brother Bruce through a glass sliding door, tackled his brother Gregory, breaking his collarbone,[51] and dragged Jennifer upstairs by her hair. In the book, she wrote, “George hoped someday to become a dentist…George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession—getting paid to make people suffer.”
His sister has recanted on some of that, but she wrote it. Clearly she felt like painting him like an asshole in a book, whether she fictionalized some of it or not.
I have issues with the policy positions of Jim Webb, but he is a serious person. He is smart and he has a solid resume. I don’t know how any thinking person could prefer George Allen to Jim Webb.
“…Following the example UCLA set for itself in the sixties, UCLA continued to be a microcosm of the youth culture throughout the early seventies. Topics of national concern such as communism and the expanding war in Vietnam effected student life at UCLA, spurring student protests and an increase in popular music that could unite the students under common ideas. However, students involved themselves in a wide range of activities; and even during a time of such tension, students at UCLA managed to escape by attending sporting events and concerts, and by engaging themselves in current events.
During the late 60’s and early 70’s, the war in Vietnam was the source of much national debate and protests, especially on college campuses throughout the nation. In late April of 1970, when President Nixon made a surprising decision to invade Cambodia and expand US involvement in Vietnam, student frustration increased and more protests sprung up on college campuses. The death of four students at Kent State, Ohio increased tensions throughout the nation and led to more violent demonstrations at college campuses, including UCLA. On May 5, 1970 UCLA had one of its largest and most violent protest in its history, causing the school to be declared in a “State of Emergency” and to be shut down for four days by California’s Governor Ronald Reagan.
Through the first months of 1970, the events of the Angela Davis scandal continued to plunge UCLA deeper and deeper into its very own “Red Scare.” The measures taken by the Board of Regents and the university administration thrust the school into the national spotlight and opened public debate regarding the issue of academic freedom. Chancellor Young, torn between the demands of the Regents and the university’s Academic Senate, attempted to keep the peace on campus. Mirroring the tensions of the time, the proceedings of the scandal infuriated a freedom seeking student body to the point of demonstration.
UCLA continued its dominance of athletics into the seventies. Forwards Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe led John Wooden’s Bruins to National Championships in 1970 and 1971. During 1970-1971, the Mens’ tennis team won back-to-back championships under Coach Glenn Bassett. Haroon Rahim, Jeff Borowiak, and Jimmy Connors were amongst the players who led the Bruins to the NCAA titles. During these two years, the Bruins won National Championships in Track and Field in 1971, Water Polo in 1971, and Mens’ Volleyball in 1970 and 1971. UCLA football was in a transition period during 1970 and 1971. In 1970, under Head Coach Tommy Prothro, the Bruins came in 2nd in the Pac-8. Between 1970 and 1971 the Bruins experienced a change in head coach. In 1971, under new head coach Pepper Rodgers, the Bruins struggled and finished with an 8th place finish.
Music was everywhere in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and UCLA was no exception. Music continued to stay popular in and around UCLA, as one could find up to five concerts a day in the West LA area. The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s Undergraduate daily newspaper, had abundant musical allusions including advertisements for instruments, concert announcements, ads and coupons for new albums, musical reviews, and many more things having to do with both popular and classical music of the time. Indicative to the 60s, things continued to change concerning music at UCLA: requests were made for history of rock classes, the Daily Bruin changed its outlay to involve more music, and students began to question what music would become. All in all, music in the late 60s was reaching its peak, and UCLA experienced and embraced every bit of this.
Some of the events that highlighted the early seventies and history in general at UCLA included the firing of Angela Davis and the scandal which followed, the winning of numerous NCAA Championships, underlined mainly by John Wooden and the Basketball Championships of 70 and 71, the introduction of many new courses, numerous musical concerts including shows by Frank Zappa and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, speeches by United States Senators including Strom Thurman, the reintroduction of the draft lottery, the founding of the internet, the closing of the school by Governor Reagan after Kent State, and the Los Angeles Earthquake which killed 60 people….”
http://www.english.ucla.edu/ucla1960s/7071/index.htm
Wooden’s UCLA Basketball program was THE model for successful integration efforts.
thanks for this. Bill Walton has also written about his experiences at UCLA in this time period. It was an interesting place. Too interesting for George Allen, evidently.
he will probably get more votes because of this.
Don’t forget the “LA” after the “UC”, and yes, you’ll see plenty of confederate flags down there. Out here and in the industrialized North it’s called “de facto” segregation. And leave us not forget Watts, 1965. As they note in the LATimes article, not much has changed.
Don’t know about Philly, but in LA you can cross a street and be in a different country.
This summary misses the most explosive detail to emerge so far: the Salon article, sourced to several people including Dr. Ken Shelton, who used to play tight end on the UVA football team when Allen was quarterback, say that on one deer hunting trip, Allen asked where the local “niggers” lived, and then put a severed doe’s head in a mailbox at a black family’s house.
That’s a hate crime. That’s deadly serious. Like Bush, Allen should be in jail, not just in the doghouse.