What does the term "macaca" actually mean? A shady definition like "a french ethnic slur" isn't good enough for me.
It's a Belgian/French ethnic slur for people of dark-skinned North African descent. Allen probably heard the word from his mother, who is an immigrant from French colonial Tunisia (she is of French descent). What's funny is that Sidarth (I've actually met this guy) isn't even North African at all, but Indian instead.
Ok, but I still don't know what it means. It seems to be as fairly harmless as the term "cracker".
I believe it literally means Monkey - you know, like Howard Cosell's "look at that monkey run". But it can be used similar to the word "niger" in french.
It was a dumb thing to say. A friend of mine inside the Allen campaign said George really didn't know what the words meaning was, he just picked it up from some of his staff that did, that used it to refer to the young man. Using slang terms one doesn't understand in public really isn't that bright, most notably for somebody in politics. The whole "welcome to America" thing was all George though, and that has it's own context and insinuations, and when added to the slur makes George seem fairly racist on the surface.
