Jagdish Singh, left, and Gogol Ganguli hold signs refering to recent comments made by Sen. George Allen on Wednesday. (AP)

WASHINGTON, 18 August 2006 — No politician, let alone a rising star and presidential hopeful, wants to spend his time in public insisting he’s not a racist.

But Wednesday afternoon, Sen. George Allen, a Republican from Virginia who is running for re-election and entertaining presidential hopes for 2008 sat among 20 or so Indian-Americans of South Asian descent to show that he’s not. “It was a mistake, it was wrong, and it was hurtful to people,” Allen said of remarks he made that the Indian Americans — and other critics — found racially offensive.

Allen met Wednesday with Indian-American political leaders concerned that he referred to a rival’s campaign staffer as “Macaca” and told the Virginia native of Indian descent, “Welcome to America.” Members of the US Indian Political Action Committee said they have received hundreds of e-mails about the comments Allen made Friday at a speech that S.R. Sidarth was videotaping for his Democratic challenger, Jim Webb. “Obviously this is something that has us very, very concerned,” said Sonjay Puri, a northern Virginia businessman and founder and director of the PAC, which claims 30,000 members.

“The remarks are very insensitive.” Puri said before the meeting that the context of Allen’s remarks was intended to offend. “If you read his comments in their totality, it becomes very clear no matter how you explain the phrasing it is insensitive to a young kid who is of Indian American descent,” Puri said.

Puri, who described himself as nonpartisan, said the PAC has had good relations with Allen and he has been receptive to the group’s political interests on issues including the economy and immigration. But he added that said Allen faces a “lot of bridges to be mended.” Allen’s campaign declined to comment on the meeting, deferring to Puri and other organizers.

The word Macaca comes from a genus of monkeys, but Allen has said he just made up a word that sounds similar to “Mohawk,” a nickname Allen staffers gave an Indian-American named S.R. Sidarth because of his partially cropped hair.

Sidarth, a volunteer with the Senate campaign of Allen’s Democratic opponent, former Secretary of the Navy James Webb, had been carrying a DV camera hoping to catch Allen in a gaffe. It worked. Allen said: “So welcome, let’s give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America, and the real world of Virginia.” Sidarth later told ABC News that his first reaction was to be shocked, that he “couldn’t believe that it happened initially, and then the second reaction was sort of ‘What? I can’t believe that he is using race in the political area.’”

Allen’s gaffe set off a political explosion in Washington. Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball asked: “Is George Allen committing suicide?” Even Rich Lowry of the conservative National Review — who wrote a glowing front-page profile of Allen — said the episode “showed that Allen has a mean streak that showed here.”

The headline on the Wonkette blog, which normally pays little attention to Virginia politics, said it all: “Breaking News: Hakuna Macaca, Or, George Allen Puts Foot In Mouth And Sucks, Hard.” Others took the issue more seriously, debated whether Allen’s comments reflected some deep racism, or rather, was a harmless incident being twisted into something nefarious by Allen’s political foes.

Salon.com detailed the fact that the term “macaca” is “racist shorthand for blacks” with North African origins; nothing Allen’s mother was born and raised in Tunisia: “In North Africa, the word ‘macaca,’ often spelled ‘macaco’ or ‘macaque,’ is far more than a string of random syllables. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word dates back to the mid-1600s, as a Flemish approximation of the Bantu word for monkey in the Congo and southern Gabon.

The word migrated north, taking on all the racist connotations that followed African colonization. By the early 1800s, Jacko Maccacco, a famous fighting monkey, could be found on display in Westminster Pit, a notorious London arena for dog fights. The word had entered the common vernacular, and it eventually became a racist shorthand for blacks,” wrote Salon.com.

The incident has raised questions about Allen’s readiness for the 2008 campaign. University of Virginia political commentator Larry J. Sabato said, “It was a clumsy stupid gaffe, just an amazing thing for a supposedly veteran politician to do.” Especially since Allen was quite obviously being filmed at the time. “Maybe it was an attempt to play to an all-white crowd in southwest Virginia,” said Sabato, “but it’s also quite revealing about Allen’s attitudes toward race.”