New Allen Accuser Identified

The New York Times appears to want to complete the lynching of Senator George Allen of Virginia for an alleged racist remark.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — Two acquaintances of Senator George Allen of Virginia said today that he had used racially inflammatory language in the 1970’s and 1980’s, compounding allegations of racial insensitivity that have dogged his re-election campaign since he referred to a young Indian-American as “macaca” a few weeks ago. Mr. Allen said he had never used the language attributed to him by the acquaintances.

Christopher Taylor, an anthropology professor at Alabama University in Birmingham, Ala., said that in the early 1980’s he heard Mr. Allen use an inflammatory epithet for African Americans. Mr. Taylor, who is white and was then a graduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, said the term came up in a conversation about the turtles in a pond near Mr. Allen’s property. According to Mr. Taylor, Mr. Allen said that “around here” only the African Americans — whom he referred to by the epithet — “eat ‘em.”

Color me skeptical, but I believe Anthropologist Christopher Taylor is pictured above with his wife Esperance during a field trip in Rwanda. I say skeptical as Taylor's speciality is African Studies. It's a little difficult to imagine he's the type of guy one would want to hang around the pond and crack wise with about race....

This story just gets more bizarre. Update: I edited out the personal contact information from the CV below.

Summary
Academic: Socio-cultural anthropologist specializing in symbolic, medical,and economic anthropology with field experience in Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and rural France. Primary research interests include: ethnomedical systems and symbolism, violence and culture, refugees, AIDS.

Applied work: Consultant work in international health and development.

Personal
DOB: December 3, 1946 Office address:
MS: married 1994 to Espérance Uwayirege Dept. of
Anthropology

I. Current Position
Associate Professor and Chair Department of Anthropology University of Alabama at Birmingham.

II. Education
1) B.A. Anthropology, Yale University, 1968.
2) Maîtrise Ps Lettres, Ethnologie, Université de Paris 10 (Nanterre), 1979.
3) Ph.D. (awarded with distinction), Anthropology, University of Virginia, 1988.

III. Academic employment experience (in reverse chronological order)
2003-present. Appointed Interim Chair, Anthropology Department, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

1998-present. Research Associate, Sociétés, Santé et Développement, Université de Bordeaux 2 (Bordeaux, France).

1996-present. Awarded tenure, promoted to Associate Professor, Anthropology Department, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

1993-94. AIDS behavioral research specialist, AIDSCAP-Family Health International, contractor to USAID - Rwanda.

1991-96. Assistant Professor, UAB Anthropology Department.

1989-1991. Mellon Instructor, Social Sciences Collegiate Division, University of Chicago.

1988-1989. Lecturer, African American Studies, University of Virginia.

1988. Instructor, Office of Equal Opportunity, University of Virginia.

1985. Lecturer, Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia.

1983. Teaching Assistant, Anthropology Department, University of Virginia.

1982. Instructor, Anthropology Department, University of Virginia.

1982. Teaching Assistant, Anthropology Department, University of Virginia.

1981. Teaching Assistant, Anthropology Department, University of Virginia.

Comments

[make more money]

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[Timothy Burke]

I'm a professor of African history. More than a few people have made racial remarks in my presence. Some of them even knew what my field of specialty was, or before I started graduate school, what my interests and general politics were.

Am I supposed to "come forward" with a list of them now, just in case they someday become politicians? The three guys I worked with one summer on a construction project? The two old Rhodesian farmers I had tea with in Zimbabwe? The advertiser I interviewed in Johannesburg? The weird neighbor from some years back? The frat guy I met once or twice when I was in college?

If you want to argue that Allen shouldn't be evaluated on what he said years ago, that's one thing. Go ahead, knock yourself out. But this is a bizarre, convoluted non-argument.

[nova]

This is the level of political discourse in America. Sad. I am really sorry we cant do any better.

[fouro]

"I picked out your friends to drive my traffic, um, because it was news, maybe??"

Dan, you're being purposely obtuse.

I didn't criticize your ponderings then.

I do now because it plainly shows that you have no qualms about speculation and inference based on little or no evidence in one situation, the Harvey Case, and all offer all kinds of excuse-making and forebearance when it comes to George Allen on the other hand.

With the Harveys, we had a veritable news-blackout at the behest of the DA, save very small trickles of rumor. With George, we've got video, a rush of material witnesses on record including Sabato of all people, and a tsuanami of circumstantial evidence like nooses, stars and bars and snapshots with the CCC, all of which show mens rea or state-of-mind to beat the band.

Your solution? To act like Harry Byrd. To show the black wife of a white man who pulled a very frayed rug out from under our boy George's already wobbly repuation. Dan, if you're gonna try and promote Allen-virtue and colorblindness, my guess is he doesn't need your kind of help.

[Socrates Abroad]

Are you a sock puppet? In other words...
Dan, is that you in there?

Goatsetes, unless Dan has somehow managed to both distort space and time and hack in to post from my PC here in China, then no, he's not here.

Being in Asia for the last 10 years or so has distanced me from most of the petty squabbles of American politics, but more recent media reporting that has filtered through is truly baffling in its partisan leanings. That fact is what spurred me to comment and is a large factor, I imagine, in why Dan started this blog.

[Socrates Abroad]

Socrates, your argument is laughable.
Beel

Thanks for that insightful analysis - I'll give it all the weight it's due.

The questions that I mentioned we should ask - of any claims like this by either side - are value-neutral. Querying who sources are and what they claim is something the media is expected, nay required, to do. Strange thing is...they didn't. They merely ran with the story. Sabato's claims, for instance, of having heard Allen personally use the N-word are now falling apart under the weight of greater scrutiny. Apparently he didn't hear Allen say, he merely related the claims of unnamed sources.

Decades-old claims from unidentified accusers? I am the only one struck by the unfairness of the position this places the accused in?

[amai]

I don't get riehl's point (clearly I'm not the only one)--the defense to the charge that allen is a racist/anti black is to assert that he *isn't* a racist, not to assert that people who marry non -whites are lying about him. The charge of racism isn't Kryptonite--its either true or false--Riehl is at liberty to tell us its "not true" that Allen was a racist in College and after and he is at liberty to try to disprove the factuality of the various charges (the noose? the photograph with the CCC? the pushing of the confederate flag etc...). But it seems Riehl has tried the other tack--if the facts are against you: bang the table. Unfortunately for Riehl in the case he cites his argument simply makes no sense.

If Riehl is correct that allen wasn't a racist in college he would surely want to point to instances where Allen actually made friends with non-whites, failed to offend people who ended up marrying non whites, worked for civil rights, or otherwise engaged in *non racist activity*. That's kind of what you would expect in a person who wasn't a racist. In fact, its the default position for people who aren't racist. Its really no defense against the charge of racism in allen's life for Riehl' to expose his own racism and insist that a guy who studies anthropology and marries a non-white woman is somehow subhuman and "not the kind of guy" that a guy like allen would talk to at all so no interaction could ever have happened. Is there really, in riehl's world, something *highly suspect* about an adult white male who a) marries an african american woman and b) works or studies afric?. In my america, that would be far more normal adult behavior than hanging a noose from a potted plant in an office. Can Riehl even put two coherent thoughts together? This particular post by Riehl seems to demonstrate an almost infantile lack of consciousness--I won't say childlike because my five year old has better reasoning abilities.

amai

[Goatsetes Abroad]

Sock-Puppet-ries Abroad,

Are you a sock puppet? In other words...

Dan, is that you in there?

[calling all toasters]

"None of this means Allen is a racist, of course. He is certainly not the same guy today that he was in the '80s."

For one thing, now he uses the M-word.

[Adam Stanhope]

Everybody knows that white men who marry black women are notoriously dishonest.

He probably smokes crack, too.

[Auguste]

Oh, sorry - the first line above is a quote from a previous comment. I didn't realize italics don't work here.

[Auguste]

I think the words racist or sexist have replaced the old cold war era word of COMMUNIST! as the new smear words of choice in political campaigns.

In this analogy, George Allen keeps getting caught wearing a hammer-and-sickle lapel pin and reading the Daily Worker.

(Didn't you get the memo that the right has successfully rehabilitated red-baiting, anyway?)

[Dan Riehl]

But Dan, I can't help but see you for a parasite.

Good grief, oh yes, I picked out your friends to drive my traffic, um, because it was news, maybe?? Talk about outrageous accusations. And from the same fingers with which you accuss Allen of being a racist. Figures.

[Dumbo]

Oh my GAWSH! Is he standing next to a NEGRO PERSON in that picture there???? Please tell me that's just a maid or a nanny!

[nova]

I think the words racist or sexist have replaced the old cold war era word of COMMUNIST! as the new smear words of choice in political campaigns. Just accuse someone of being a racist or sexist and let the media do the rest. Just like in the good old days when Joe McCarthy would shout "There are communists in the State Dept". See the movie THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE for how this works.

[fouro]

There's so much river that no levee can hold Allen back from himself. But Dan, I can't help but see you for a parasite. You got a shitload of hits out the deaths of my friends, the Harveys, over this past year--pondering all kinds of nefarious doings into their deaths. I knew then how little they would delight in that fact, and now I believe it doubly so based on your worldview and your venality.

Be that as it may, as you trawl your "innocent" CV and snapshots for fellow bottomfeeders and wonder aboout 30-year old recollections, I'm recollecting. After quick google to make sure he's passed on, I recall the purchase of 2 puppies from a man in 1977. A chocolate and a black lab. I bought them in Richmond, from an architect named Haig Jamgochian. He lived in an odd house on Rockfalls Drive, one with it's own quarry. He drove a puke green International Scout. I even recall what he said as we were waiting for his son to retrieve the AKC papers: "Nah, I just like playing with dynamite." I'd asked him about the quarry and whether the equipment at its edge was used to bring up rock. "Nah, I just like playing with dynamite."

30 years ago, Dan. I was 16 and change. The puppies are long dead. A lot has happened in the intervening years, and I still rememeber the names and details of a relatively inconsequential event. You seem fascinated with crime and it's elements. You know the mind works far better than you give credit for. Except when you don't care for the workings it reveals.

[Beel]

Socrates, your argument is laughable.

[jh]

Let's see, how to defend against use of the n-word? Oh, I know! The charge was made by an n-word lover!

Really dumb.

[tb]

"Why are these claims coming now?"

They're coming now because a reporter decided to do a story on it after Allen chose to act like a racist freak at a campaign stop. The timing is Allen's own fault.

[Socrates Abroad]

With all due respect, kj, I did read the article.

Point 2, Consider the source, is still valid. Mr. Allen, according to Taylor, knew he was talking to an anthro grad student and still used a racial epithet. Allen may have been incredibly stupid and said it. Even assuming he did, why did Taylor fail to come forward in the decades following? I appreciate being outside the States and distanced from news and events, but Taylor had 3 additional years in the nearby state of Alabama (I'm from Georgia) to raise questions and still failed to do so. The fact doesn't clear Allen, but it is curious.

That brings me to your criticism of point 2.
"I don't know about you, but I basically remember all my encounters with outright racists in the last 10 years (I'm only 31)."
I'm only 35, and I can't remember some of my college professors' names, much less parts of their course content. But all of that is irrelevant - you are not Taylor and we know nothing of whether he possesses your own claimed memory prowess.

"It's quite shocking and memorable and quite easy to see why the professor remembers given the context."
What context? Again, the 'encounter' with Taylor was a brief aside apparently made while Taylor picked up a dog. Hardly the stuff of legend, or in other words barely memorable. But Taylor claims to remember it vividly *now* and has failed to mention it in the intervening decades. Again, curious.

As for the Ryan Lizza article, let's take a look at this "pattern of racist behavior" you allege:

displayed a Confederate flag in his living room
kept a noose hanging on a ficus tree in his law office
an honorary membership at a Richmond social club with a well-known history of discrimination
replaced the only black member of the UVA Board of Visitors with a white one
issued a proclamation drafted by the Sons of Confed Vets declaring April Confed History and Heritage Month
ran a radio ad decrying a congressional redistricting plan whose main purpose was to elect Virginia's first post-Reconstruction black congressman (in his first race, which he lost)
voted against a state holiday commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.
co-sponsored a resolution expressing "regret and sorrow upon the loss" of William Munford Tuck

Taking these points apart piece by piece would be exceedingly easy but I have neither the time nor inclination, so I'll cover a few in brief. A Confederate flag...in his home? A noose...in his law office? I consider both, especially in such private venues, to be innocuous, the former because I'm a Southerner and the latter because I can appreciate swift justice a la "hanging judges." I would have also agreed with the MLK holiday decision, since the date would have fallen on a date to honor Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and, more importantly, I don't think state employees need yet another holiday. Tuck, according to Lizza, opposed segregation but spending a third of his life in public service, including a stint in the Marines during WWI, at least warrants some recognition of his passing, which Lizza clearly fails to do. As for replacing the black UVA Board of Visitors member with a white one, the incident's gained a great deal of press with only that fact mentioned - no one seems to have asked if the black member actually needed to be replaced.

Perhaps you also failed to read Lizza's article, which concludes in part that "None of this means Allen is a racist, of course. He is certainly not the same guy today that he was in the '80s."

But then again, maybe you'll be labeling me a racist next. I guess I should also be wondering what people who knew me 20 years ago will now be surfacing to claim I said.

[Jim Harrison]

O I get it! Since Taylor is guilty of miscegenation, he obviously can't be trusted.

I don't know why rightists are so upset about all this publicity. The racists statements have an upside for Allen, who is running in Virginia and, like any other Southern Republican, needs to solidify his base of left-over segregationists. I guess the ideal solution is to wink, wink, nudge, nudge about your racial feelings instead of speaking truthfully; but being upfront about your racism is not without an upside. At least the good ol' boys won't wonder whether or not you are just faking it for political reasons.

[kj]

Um Socrates Abroad. This is why it is important to go to the source material before trusting a blogger like Dan. Read the article and you'll see this:

Mr. Taylor, the Alabama professor, said he was “kind of taken aback” by Mr. Allen’s language because it was their first meeting and Mr. Allen knew he was talking to a graduate student in anthropology. “Most of us are antiracist,” Mr. Taylor said.
Still, Mr. Taylor said, he did not give Mr. Allen “a moral lesson.” Mr. Taylor said he had come to pick up an Australian shepherd puppy and left with the dog.

Sort of ruins your 3rd point, eh?

As for your #2. I don't know about you, but I basically remember all my encounters with outright racists in the last 10 years (I'm only 31). It hasn't happened often where someone unexpectedly surprised me with unironic racist language, but I remember those times pretty clearly. It's quite shocking and memorable and quite easy to see why the professor remembers given the context.

And #1. This is about timing and a pattern. Allen now has a pattern of racist behavior established by Ryan Lizza of TNR, the Macaca incident, and a few others. That's when a racist remark you remember becomes significant and when you might report it. Otherwise, no one is going to care. Perhaps all these people are lying, but do you actually believe that Allen doesn't have a history of racist remarks. Read the Lizza article. Obviously the guy had an unfortunate infatuation with Southern racist culture.

[Andy Ternay]

Hey Socrates, just like Sidarth from the Webb campaign must have looked just like someone who Allen would want to crack wise with about race?

[David Allen]

Lynching? You actually have the balls to use the word "lynching"?

No, what is happening to Allen is Karma. Lynching is what happens to "uppity" black people who insist on equal rights with whites.

Uppity racists get elected governor of Virginia, get lucrative pundit posts at Fox News, or start their own "Excellend in Broadcasting" network.

[Socrates Abroad]

Enough with all of the pretentious condemnation of Dan's post.

Posting the CV was helpful for some readers: an American living outside the US, I had no idea whatsoever who Taylor was and was curious about his recent attacks upon Allen.

Allen's a politician and public figure, so his life's regularly subject to public inquiry. If someone attacks him, why is it racist, prejudiced, or discriminatory to identify who exactly was making the claims of racism? Let us recall that 3 of the individuals claiming Allen said the N word in the Salon article are cited anonymously.

Questions about this situation immediately come to mind:
1) Why are these claims coming now?
*Thanks to Taylor's CV that Dan posted*, we know that Taylor has been back in the States working in Alabama since 2003. So Taylor is only coming out now with his recollections, some 3 years later.

2) How credible are these claims?
Again, *thanks to Taylor's CV that Dan posted*, we know that Taylor isn't a crackpot. That said, just how much stock can be put in someone's memory of an event some 20 years ago? Actually, this was less an event - Taylor wasn't present at a cross burning, physically assaulted, or otherwise subjected to something similarly jarring - and more a casual aside. And yet he remembers all of the particulars?

3) How about considering the source?
Something Dan raised by the *photo and CV* - and that critics here failed to realize - is that "[i]t's a little difficult to imagine he's the type of guy one would want to hang around the pond and crack wise with about race...." Precisely. Even assuming Allen were a racist 20 years ago, Taylor hardly seems the type he would have professed any racist leanings to.

Republican, Democrat, independent, libertarian, what have you...we should all be more than wary of unusually timely accusations of (racist) statements apparently made some 20 years prior and in some cases by unidentified accusers (3 of 5 by my count). That smacks of a witchhunt and gives the greatest pause to those of us who value freedom of thought and speech.

[pj]

I'll give you one thing, it is important to have skepticism when someone comes forward in the middle of a political campaign to share a memory from long ago that puts a politcal opponent in a bad light.

For example, the guy who claimed, for the first time in 30 years, to have been a passenger on Kerry's swiftboat when he was first wounded. The other three men on the boat said he wasn't there, and he had not claimed to be there until Kerry ran for president. Also, the naval records didn't indicate he was there. But the press lapped that bullshit story up.

So be skeptical of this guy, but notice he's one of several people making this claim, and it isn't refuted by contemporary records and longstanding accounts like the swift boat liars.

And DJW's counterpoint is hilarious.

[JT Davis]

You're a riehl pig.

[lowellfield]

How does any of this undermine his claim to have overheard Allen dropping the n-word? Wait, that's a dumb question. I think I know what you're getting at.

Disgusting.

[Miracle Max]

I'd like to know why you posted a) a picture of the man with his wife, and b) his C.V.

I would also like to note that you stripped out his contact info, but it's there in the link for any asshole to abuse.

[Jeff in Texas]

I get it-- this man not only likes people with brown skin, but he apparently speaks French! He even has a degree from some frog school. Good lord, who could credit anything this guy says? But wasn't Allen's mom part French, AND Jewish? This is all so confusing. Things were so much better when WASPs only married WASPs.

[c4logic]

I love it when people line up to defend the indefensible. You're like the desperate investor who holds on to a worthless stock long after the party is over. The CW is in on this one: George Allen is a redneck wanna be who has consorted with White Supremacists, concealed his own ethnicity, and teed off on the head of his opponent's campaign worker and fellow Virginian, who happened to born in the USA. The man is a fake. He's a phony. He's a bully. He's a toady. He's a race baiter. He's a hater. He's a loser. And anyone who supports him is a loser. This is not leadership.

[Blue and Proud]

Very ugly Dan.

[Aaron Baker]

The only issue of importance is whether Professor Taylor was being honest when he attributed the remark in question. That, because of of his specialty, or because of who he's married to, he might be more offended by such remarks than some others is neither here nor there.

[djw]

Let me get this straight--your premise is that if George Allen--the man who looked into a camera and called someone macaca--were a racist, he would of course be very careful about choosing the appropriate audience for bigoted remarks? Really?

[Pinko Punko]

Love the "lynching" remark. Care to raise the stakes? Maybe George Allen is having his own personal Holocaust, capital H?

[Esteban]

Dan is a silly little man. He burps on TV when he can. Giggles and gains a fan.

[bill]

Dan you are as much a racist as the rest of the MSM and it is high time the people knew it. This is really below you. Maybe you want to retract this type of blog entry? We are watching.

[mark]

You're right, that's rilly, rilly bizarre. Totally.

What the hell was Allen doing hanging around with a Negro-lover? Does the CCC know about this? Well, I'm sure Allen has an excuse: he's just another clueless jock.

Reminds me of the time a ditzy woman that I had just met told me how much she preferred living in Orange County rather than the SF Bay Area. "It's mostly white people," she explained. Only then, by seeing the change of expression on my face, did she realized that I was a race traitor.

Something similar probably happened between Allen and Taylor. Allen carelessly and casually associated with a race traitor. It would be mighty white of you to fogive Allen this indiscretion.

And about Shelton ...

“It appears to me that Kenny Shelton has some deep-rooted
problems with his self-identity and a rather hyperactive
imagination,” one former teammate, George Korte, said in
his statement.

Same thing. Race traitor. But they're hard to avoid. So please don't be too hard on Allen.

[Felix]

Senator Macacawitz...

[Tano]

Hmmm...

A professor, with degrees. Accomplishments.

Must be a liar.

What the hell is your point here Dan? You sure are giving us a pretty good picture of the twisted (lack of a) mentality of RW bloggers.

You say the story just gets more bizarre? And you post the guys CV?

Would you care to explain just what you find bizarre here? Othre than your own thought processes?

Next thing we can expect to learn is that Larry Sabato bought a baklava once. Nuff said, right?

[Big Tent Democrat]

Larry Sabato. Heard of him Dan?

[western washington]

This is hilarious. What comes around goes around. The Republicans deserve it as much as the Dems. I hope that the two parties keep this sh*t up so they both implode and we get a legitimate, incorruptible, clean third party focusing on real issues that doesn't pander to the right and left lunatic fringes.