Macaca (term)

Macaca is a dismissive epithet used by francophone colonials in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population. It may be derived from the name of the genus comprising macaque monkeys. The word macaque has also been used as a racial slur. The macaque's genus name, Macaca, is a latinization of the Bantu (Kongo) ma-kako, meaning "monkey".

Related words

• The first European settlers in the Congo Free State derogatively referred to natives as macaques, according to an anonymous Italian account.
• Later, in the Belgian Congo, colonial whites continued to call Africans macaques and insist that they had only recently come down from trees. The term sale macaque (filthy monkey) was occasionally used as an insult.
• The word (spelled makak in Dutch or macaque in French) is occasionally used in Belgium (both in Flanders and in Wallonia) as a racial slur, referring not to Congolese but to Moroccan or other North African immigrants or their descendants.
• In the ceremony in 1960 in which Congo gained its independence from Belgium, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba gave a speech accusing Belgian King Baudouin of presiding over "a regime of injustice, suppression, and exploitation" before ending "We are no longer your macaques", as the Congolese in the audience rose to their feet cheering.
• In the Adventures of Tintin written by Belgian writer-artist Hergé, Captain Haddock uses the term macaque as an insult, along with other terms with racial overtones.
• In a 1994 essay, literary scholar Patrick Colm Hogan discussed the racist symbolism surrounding the name Makak, the protagonist in Derek Walcott's 1967 play Dream on Monkey Mountain.
• English gossip columnist Taki Theodoracopulos referred to Bianca Jagger, who is of Nicaraguan origin, as macaca mulatta in 1996. Theodoracopulos has frequently used racial slurs in his published work.
• Famous Brazilian cangaceiro (bandit) and folk hero Lampião used the Portuguese variant macacos (plural) to refer to government soldiers (also called Volantes, see Cangaço). The volantes were called monkeys because of their brown suits and their willingness to obey their bosses.

Macaca and the 2006 Virginia Senate Race

Main article: Virginia United States Senate election, 2006 § Macaca controversy

On August 11, 2006, at a campaign stop in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, U.S. Senator George Allen twice used the word macaca to refer to S.R. Sidarth, who was filming the event as a "tracker" for the opposing Jim Webb campaign. Sidarth is of Indian ancestry, but was born and raised in Fairfax County, Virginia. Allen's mother, born Henrietta Lumbroso, is of French Tunisian descent and some have suggested that she may have learned the pejorative during her childhood and introduced it to her son. Allen publicly apologized for his statement and asserted that he in no way intended those words to be offensive. Both pundit John Podhoretz and a campaign staffer for Al Weed have called Allen "Macacawitz", referring to the September 2006 discovery of Allen's Jewish heritage.

See also

• Macaquitos