George Allen And Race Problems?

Does anyone else tend to confuse the two guys from Virginia that want to be President? Maybe it's just me, but even though I've seen them on TV and read about them countless times, I still get them confused. I mean, they both try to trade on the "Southern" thing, even though neither one was originally from the South. They both were governors at some point. One had a dad in football, but it's not the one whose dad you could call "Pop Warner." And they both seem to want to be president way to much to be any good at it.

If you share my problem, you should read The New Republic's article on George Allen. (For the record, he is the Republican Senator who used to be governor). I know people will say it's The New Republic, so it has an agenda, etc. Even given that, it still got my attention. And I have no doubt I'll remember who George Allen is now.

You know those people that find religion at some point in their life and are way more over the top about it than someone whose been with it all their life? That's sort of how Allen comes across with the South - and, to some extent, The Confederacy. A cowboy boot-wearin' guy whose campaign manager boasts of his "authenticity" when he spits his tobacco and almost hits an approaching female, he's also a guy with no ties to the South before college whose mother was a Frenchwoman ashamed of her American citizenship who found the country "infantile." The most worrisome stuff has to do with race - particularly from his younger years. Some of the issues the piece touches upon:

• Until he was governor, he had a Confederate Flag and noose prominently displayed at his home. He said these were part of his flag collection and Western motif. (I have a general rule for people in office or who hope to run for office: You should avoid confederate flags and symbols of oppression as part of your interior design. Nothing good can come of it.)
• In high school (in So-Cal) he drove a Mustang with a Confederate flag on the front.
• Classmates from high school are quoted as saying he "plastered the school with confederate flags."
• He wore a Confederate flag pin in his formal senior portrait for high school.
• On the eve of a game against a largely African-American high school, he and some friends vandalized the school with racially tinged (Die Whitey, Burn Baby Burn) meant to look like the work of people from the African-American school. (Allen admits to the vandalism but remembers it as non-racial stuff. The four former classmates and one administrator (who is not an Allen hater, he says he would strongly consider voting for him) disagree with Allen's version).
• Allen cannot be accused of being soft of enforcing rules. As the oldest he was often responsible for putting siblings to bed on time. At various times when they gave him some grief about not wanting to go to bed it seems he: threw a brother through a sliding glass window, tackled a brother and broke his collarbone, dragged a sister up the stairs by her hair.

The first two sections of the article touch upon stuff like this, as well as some things from his time in state government (not wanting a MLK holiday - partially because the day was used to celebrate Stonewall Jackson). But I actually found the last section the most disturbing. This is when the author (Ryan Lizza) interviews Allen.

Allen points to large amount of work he has put into bills involving race over the last 10 years (he has) and talks about how from an early age he seems to have had a pretty deep understanding of the South's racial history and violence occurring during the 1960's. Yet he tries to explain away the questions from his past (which he never denies - though I guess that is hard when there's pictures and stuff) by claiming not to recall exactly or spinning it as something done because he liked to "upset people."

Something here doesn't add up. You can't speak passionately about having understood at a young age the ugliness and importance of racial lynchings and such, but then act in ways which completely fly in the face of this understanding - especially when you live in a swanky part of LA - and that LA is not Louisiana. The story of how his trip to the South at a young age made an imprint on him can't be entirely true. Either it didn't make a big enough imprint that he would do some of the things he doesn't deny doing, or he made the story up in part of his recent spin cycle to clean up his image.

Like George Allen, I went to high school in California. And I had classmates who were into the Confederate flag. Many of these would probably just claim they too liked to mess with people, or they liked the authenticity of the South, or the Dukes of Hazard, or whatever. I'm not prepared to say these people were racist. And I'm not prepared to say they weren't. But I am prepared to say there was something off with them. Even as someone who has serious concerns about modern "political correctness" and "sensitivity" at the best, I find this embrace of the Confederacy must include at least enough ignorance/insensitivity to be worrisome. Senator Allen's explenations in no way alleviate my concerns

I'm still open to Senator Allen or someone else disproving some of the allegations or convincing me I'm wrong on this. But, even given the possible bias one could argue comes from a New Republic profile, I'm fairly disturbed at this point. It would take a lot before I could see myself, in good conscious, supporting George Allen for anything.

Update: See here for a later post on this issue with updated info.