Sen. George ‘Macaca’ Allen has been plagued by racial issues since at least his teenage years. In his suburban Los Angeles high school yearbook, young Allen, son of a famous pro football coach, was photographed wearing a Confederate pin. In college, he drove a truck with a Confederate sticker on the bumper and later decorated his law office with a noose hanging from a ficus tree.
Despite his Southern California upbringing, during his political career in Virginia, Allen has created a Southern good ol’ boy persona, including a softly modulated but distinct Southern accent.
Race, and more specifically, racial purity, is still a hot button issue among conservatives, particularly in, but not limited to, the South. It is extremely doubtful that Allen would have been elected governor or senator in Virginia if Republican voters had been aware of his Jewish heritage. In fact, according to Jewish religious law, because his mother was Jewish, Sen. Allen is technically Jewish, even though he was raised Christian.
The revelation that he is racially “impure” in the eyes of many in his racist conservative base could cost him reelection. While that would be a good thing, it is rather pathetic to watch how he dodges the issue and obviously lies about his own knowledge of his family background:
On Tuesday, Allen said his mother, Henriette “Etty” Allen, grew up in the Christian faith. She is a French-speaking native of Tunisia.
Allen and his siblings also were raised as Christians. He said he became aware only recently that his grandfather, Felix Lumbroso, who had been imprisoned by the Nazis, was Jewish.
“I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including the Lumbroso family line’s Jewish heritage, which I learned of from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed,” Allen said in the statement.
Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams would not specify when Allen’s mother told him about her ancestry. As a child, Allen knew Lumbroso, who is now deceased, Wadhams said.
Allen accused Webb’s campaign of peddling the notion that he is embarrassed by his heritage, a claim Webb spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd rejected as “completely, totally false.”
Fox defended her questions. She said she wanted to determine if there was a political reason Allen was not forthcoming about a Jewish ancestor. “I don’t know why it would be so upsetting to him,” she said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I was shocked at how he took offense to the question.”
Fox had also asked Allen whether he had learned the word “Macaca” from his mother. Allen had applied the word to a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent during an Aug. 11 rally before a mostly white crowd. In some cultures, including Tunisia, the word is considered a racial slur.
Allen glared at Fox for a moment, then said, “I hope you’re not trying to bring my mother into this matter.”
References to the nationality of Allen’s mother prompted the first report of his Jewish ancestry on Aug. 25 in The Forward, a Jewish daily newspaper, said its editor, Ami Eden.
“There was some talk at that time that perhaps he picked this up from his mother, and it was an easy way to get to the story behind the headlines,” Eden said in a telephone interview from New York.
