Allen apologises for racial remarks against Indian-America students

Washington, Aug 16 (UNI) Republican Senator George Allen has apologised for his remarks he made against an Indian-American student S R Sidarth who was assisting his Democratic rival Jim Webb in the closely watched US Senate race in Virginia.

Mr Allen was charged with racial insensitivity and received criticism from all quarters including many Indian-American political organisations.

Mr Allen had on Friday used the word ''Macaca'' (a genus of monkey) to address Sidarth.

Democrats, left-wing bloggers and civil rights groups called him ''insensitive'' and ''racist'' while some conservatives called the Senator ''foolish'' and ''mean''.

Sidarth, a University of Virginia student has been trailing Mr Allen with a video camera. On August 11, at a campaign stop, Mr Allen pointed out towards him and made disparaging comments about his ethnicity, calling him ''Macaca'' and assuming the Virginia-born Sidarth was a foreigner.

After widespread condemnation for his comments, Mr Allen apologised saying, ''I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologise if he's offended by that. That was no way the point.'' His campaign managers have given an imaginative explanation saying the word was somehow an allusion to Sidarth's hairstyle, a mullet.

However, others interpret ''Macaca'' as the genus for macaques, a type of monkey found mainly in Asia.

''Macaca''literally means a genus of monkey, a deliberate racist epithet or a weird ad-libbed word with no meaning.

Mr Allen's defenders rushed to his side, saying the comments, though careless, do not reflect what is inside the senator's heart.

In a statement released yesterday afternoon, Mr Allen said his remarks ''have been greatly misunderstood by members of the media''.

Earlier on Monday, he had said ''Macaca'' was a play on ''Mohawk'', a nickname given to Sidarth by the Allen camp because of his hairstyle. In yesterday's statement, the Republican said he ''made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way intended to be racially derogatory.'' With the video of Mr Allen's remarks available around the globe via Youtube.com and other Web sites, the Virginia controversy became one of the most blogged-about topics on the Internet, according to the Technorati Web site, which tracks entries on 51.3 million blogs.

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