cablinasian like me
[1997]
And then Tiger Woods said he wasn't actually "black" at all -- he was "Cablinasian."Woods made his remarks on "Oprah," when he was asked if it bothered him to be called an African-American. "It does," he said. "Growing up, I came up with this name: I'm a 'Cablinasian.'" As in Caucasian-black-Indian-Asian. Woods has a black father (or to be precise, if I am interpreting Woods' reported ancestry correctly, a half-black, one-quarter American Indian, one-quarter white father) and a Thai mother (or, with the same caveat, a half-Thai, half-Chinese mother). "I'm just who I am," Woods told Oprah Winfrey, "whoever you see in front of you."
But just "who I am" remained contested ground. According to Time magazine, Woods' coming out as a Cablinasian caused "a mini-racial firestorm ... Woods' remarks infuriated many African Americans who ... see him as a traitor ... Some blacks saw Woods' assertion of a multiracial identity as a sellout that could touch off an epidemic of 'passing.'" Light-skinned Colin Powell, responding to Woods' comments, "In America, which I love from the depths of my heart and soul, when you look like me, you're black."
Adding fuel to the fire stirred up by Woods' comments are their political implications. Congress is considering adding a multiracial category to the 2000 census, and supporters of the controversial new category immediately seized upon Woods' statement as evidence that the old categories -- black, white, Asian and Pacific Islander, native American and "other" -- are inadequate. Civil rights groups like the NAACP, who are bitterly opposed to adding the multiracial category because they fear it will lead to a loss of black political and economic clout, are not likely to enjoy the spectacle of Woods becoming a poster child for multiracialism.
Woods felt that the left was trying to use him to advance their political agenda and he just didn’t want any part of it.
I’ve been listening real hard for Bill Cosby to speak up on this but haven’t heard... anyone?:)
Yep, Tiger was not interested in being “black” or “minority.”
And, on top of it, a white gal whooped his butt!!