Macaca (slur)

Macaca [mɐˈkakɐ] (feminine) and macaco [mɐˈkaku] (masculine) are the Portuguese words for "monkey" (compare English macaque). In Portugal and Portuguese-speaking countries, macaco (plural macacos) is used as a racial slur against Black people.

Similarly the word "macaque" was used as a racial slur by Belgians in their African colonies.

The word is sometimes similarly used in English of dark-skinned people, pronounced /məˈkɑːkə, -koʊ/ or /məˈkækə, -koʊ/.

According to Robert Edgerton, in the Belgian Congo, colonial whites called Africans macaques—implying that they had lived in the trees until the Europeans arrived. The term sale macaque (filthy monkey) was occasionally used as an insult. 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 ad-libbing at the end, Nous ne sommes plus vos macaques! (We are no longer your macaques!) Lumumba was reportedly still stung by being called a sale macaque by a Belgian woman years earlier.

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