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.
