Posted on 09/06/2002 7:14:02 AM PDT by CodeWeasel
The pressure on Tiger Woods is mounting, and it has nothing to do with golf: It’s the pressure to blacken up — to be a social activist, a racial spokesman. Throughout his young career, Woods has resisted this, standing on individualism, and universalism. But it would be hard for even the strongest person not to crack.
Right from the start, Woods was a breath of fresh air, in every respect. When he appeared at the Masters as an amateur, Jim Nantz of CBS asked him whether he had a special obligation to be a role model for “minority kids.” The expected answer was, “Yes, of course.” The actual answer was, “No. I have an obligation to all kids.”
Later on, Larry King went at him on CNN. “Do you feel that you’re an influence on young blacks?” Woods answered, “Young children.” This seemed to annoy “the King”: “Just ‘young children’? Don’t you think you’ve attracted a lot more blacks to the game?” Replied Woods, “Yeah, I think I’ve attracted minorities to the game, but you know what? Why limit it to just that? . . . Everybody should be in the fold.” Woods was resolute, never allowing himself to be bullied, never indulging in racial-political games.
Well, almost never. In 1996, Tiger submitted to a Nike commercial which had him saying, “There are still courses in the United States that I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin.” (Nike, like Benetton, likes its ads to show “social conscience.” It perhaps eases the guilt of commerce.) The claim was false, of course, and a company spokesman explained that Tiger’s statement was more a “metaphor.”
But by and large, Tiger has displeased the racialist crowd, going his own way. He is a very independent-minded cuss. After he won the Masters for the first time in 1997, President Clinton asked him to appear with him at Shea Stadium for a ceremony commemorating Jackie Robinson. Woods said, sorry, but he had longstanding plans with friends in Mexico. Many people — including some conservatives — thought that this was hugely disrespectful to the president, and an insult to the memory of Robinson, the great pioneer. Woods was unmoved.
In 2000, the NAACP asked him to boycott a PGA Tour event in South Carolina, in protest of the Confederate flag. Woods wouldn’t go along. He said, “I’m a golfer. That’s their deal, not mine.” Some people viewed this as grossly irresponsible, and maintained that this cocky young man would simply have to “mature” — would have to get hip to the American reality. And yet Woods remained almost eerily unfazed, secure in himself.
‘A GOLFER AND A HUMAN BEING’ In a country where the question of identity is burning, everyone wants a piece of the world’s greatest athlete. Shall we rehearse the racial recipe one more time? Woods’s dad, Earl — a tough, no-nonsense military man — is half black, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter Indian; Woods’s mom is half Thai, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter white. When he was growing up, he coined a word for his ancestral mix: “Cablinasian” (enfolding Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian). When the world first learned about this coinage, it drew hoots and howls from many quarters, with even Colin Powell, on Meet the Press, giving a snort. Asked Tim Russert, “If you have an ounce of black blood, aren’t you black?” Powell answered that he, like Tiger, was of mixed background, but “in order not to come up with a very strange word such as Tiger did, I consider myself black American. I’m very proud of it.” (Thus did Powell come within an inch of calling Woods a Tom.)
Of course, there is much truth — social truth — to this “one drop” business in America. The old saying is, America’s the only country in the world in which a white woman can give birth to a black baby but a black woman can’t give birth to a white baby. André Watts is considered, everywhere, a black American pianist. Who cares that his mother was a Hungarian? (And there is a long, long line of Hungarian pianists.) Tiger is not unmindful of all of this. He gives credit where credit’s due, hailing, for example, black golf pioneers before him, including the legendary Teddy Rhodes (who never got a chance to strut his stuff on the proper professional stage). But neither is he bound by race.
Early in the game, he put out a “media statement,” which he declared would be “the final and only comment I will make regarding the issue” of race and identity (fat chance — but the sentiment was nice). He said, “My parents have taught me to always be proud of my ethnic background. Please rest assured that is, and always will be, the case. . . . Truthfully, I feel very fortunate, and EQUALLY PROUD, to be both African-American and Asian! The critical and fundamental point is that ethnic background and/or composition should NOT make a difference. It does NOT make a difference to me. The bottom line is that I am an American . . . and proud of it! That is who I am and what I am. Now, with your cooperation, I hope I can just be a golfer and a human being.”
Again: Fat chance.
When, after that Masters victory in ’97, he told Oprah Winfrey “I’m just who I am,” and to hell with the “genetic code,” the you-know-what hit the fan. Many people charged him with virtual race treason. Leonard Pitts Jr., a columnist for the Miami Herald, said candidly, “It’s simple. I want to claim him. I want him for my side.” Mary A. Mitchell in the Chicago Sun-Times all but accused Tiger of passing, and said, “It is as if he thumbed his nose at an entire race of people.” Ebony magazine commissioned an entire symposium on the subject. In his contribution, Jesse Jackson said, “Many black people felt that we had this great emotional investment in Tiger and there was an intent by some forces to take him away from us. [By “some forces,” the Reverend must have meant Woods’s own, universalist statements.] . . . We have a sense that he is ours, and we are his.”
A fellow golfer, however, asked for a little break. Vijay Singh, an Indian champion from Fiji, told William C. Rhoden of the New York Times, “When I first came to the United States, they approached me about the subject of my race and color. I just said, ‘Hey, listen, I’m here to play golf.’” As for Tiger, “he’s the best thing that’s happened to golf in [years]. Let’s leave it at golf, not color.” But another athlete — Charles Barkley, the ex-NBA star and a Woods friend — has taken a different line. He once said, “Tiger likes to be okay with everybody, to appeal to all people. . . . [But] I tell him that Thai people don’t get hate mail — black people do.” (Barkley has also remarked Woods’s fondness for scuba diving: “I don’t get it. Black people aren’t supposed to scuba dive.” The hoopster’s views on “buoyancy” are unknown.)
This last May, ESPN.com ran an article with a rather exasperated title: “Will Tiger Ever Show the Color of His Stripes?” The author, Greg Garber, noted that Woods could check a full five boxes on the U.S. Census: white, black, Native American, Chinese, and Other Asian-American. (In fact, a bill in Congress to allow multiple check-offs was dubbed “the Tiger Woods bill” — as if in acknowledgement of the New American.) Garber quoted officials from various racial-ethnic groups, all kind of vying. And there was this lovely anecdote: The old champion Curtis Strange once said to Woods, “You have a multi-ethnic background. Is there a group you wish you were part of?” Woods answered, “I guess Boyz II Men” (of R&B fame).
Some are determined to stay unamused. Sports Illustrated had an interview with Jim Brown, the football great and con. Tiger is “focused on golf,” said Brown, and “that’s it.” His interviewer protested that Tiger had set up the Tiger Woods Foundation, geared to helping disadvantaged kids. Brown answered, “Can I tell you something? Everybody does good things, but I’m talking about making major changes in the educational system that would impact an entire race. I’m talking about stopping these young gang members from killing one another. I’m talking about keeping prisons from overflowing. I’m not talking about teaching black kids to golf and get into country clubs. Come on!”
Not many commentators would put it just like Brown, but the sentiment is widespread.
‘DISGRACE’ And you could hear some of it last July, when the controversy over Augusta National erupted. A women’s group pressured the club (which holds the Masters) to admit women members, something it has so far resisted. As it happened, Woods, like the rest of the professional golf world, was in Scotland, trying to win the British Open — and, in Woods’s case, trying to win the Grand Slam, of which he’d already won the first two legs. Tiger was immediately asked what he thought about Augusta policy, and he said, off the cuff, “They’re entitled to set up their own rules the way they want them. It would be nice to see everyone have an equal chance to participate, but there’s nothing you can do about it. . . . It’s their prerogative.”
Tiger was in a delicate position, as a three-time Masters winner and someone who, it seemed, did not equate a men-only policy with a whites-only policy. (Incidentally, the club at which the British Open was being played, the storied Muirfield, admits only men as members as well.) But the media class didn’t see it Tiger’s way, and came down on him with a startling ferocity.
Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post sicced Martin Luther King on him: “Those who sit at rest buy their quiet with disgrace.” C. Jemal Horton of the Indianapolis Star sicced Malcolm X on him: “A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything” (and Woods’s performance was “sickening,” Horton said). The Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page suggested that Woods failed to win the British Open because “his conscience was bothering him.” He also recommended that Woods boycott the Masters and the British Open, becoming, in this way, like Eric Liddell, the Chariots of Fire runner who refused to compete on Sunday. In his concluding sentence, Page warned that Tiger had better get “on the right side of history.”
Many pundits compared Woods unfavorably to Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali, and Smith and Carlos, the two tracksters who thrust black-power salutes at the Mexico City Olympics. They even contrasted him with Gary Player, the white South African who opposed apartheid. Everyone and his brother was brought in to analyze and judge. The Christian Science Monitor published a story — “Should Woods Carry the Black Man’s Burden?” — that quoted the head of the International Society for Sports Psychiatry.
Woods, for his part, backpedaled somewhat, declaring on his website, “Would I like to see women members? Yes, that would be great, but I am only one voice. I’m not even a regular member.” (A Masters champion is an honorary member.) At the recent PGA Tournament, on the general subject of political involvement, Woods observed, “It seems like the more putts I’ve holed and the lower my scores have become, the more knowledgeable I’m supposed to have gotten! . . . I can’t be the leader in all causes. I’m still 26, and obviously I can probably do more as I get older and understand what I can and cannot give my time to. Right now, I’m very focused on my foundation’s development and urban youth.”
That’s what he clings to, when these questions come up: that foundation. That’s what his defenders cling to, too. See, they say, he’s doing his part! (Tiger has even used these words: “I’ve done my part. That’s what my foundation is all about. I’m trying to do my share.”) And yet, what Tiger is doing more broadly — setting golf records, conducting himself in classy fashion, rising above racial-political madness — will do more for the “causes” than anything else. But what causes? Those of American unity, reason, good will.
A SPECIAL ROLE It’s true that Tiger has awakened interest in golf in black Americans in particular. I saw evidence of this with my own eyes. In the 1990s, I lived in Washington, D.C., and nearly every weekend would go down to one of the city’s few ranges to practice. Place called Hains Point. The weekend after Tiger won the Masters for that first time — April ’97 — I went down to the range as usual, and the place was absolutely crawling with black young people, whacking at it for the first time. You couldn’t help grinning. And Tiger Woods hadn’t brought this about by any statements, or speeches at rallies, or denunciations. He’d done it simply by being himself — by existing, by doing his job, by excelling.
Just the other week, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger’s predecessor, in many ways, got it exactly right. After playing with Woods in an exhibition, he said, “Tiger really got put on the spot with a question about, ‘Why aren’t you doing more for women?’ It was all I could do to bite my tongue. I say, ‘What more can he do?’ Tiger Woods, just by being Tiger Woods, is doing a lot. He is doing a lot by the example he sets every day, the role model he is, the foundation he runs” (ah, that foundation always has to sneak in there — a security blanket; the former was enough).
That was too much — way too much — for Michael Wilbon, columnist for the Washington Post. He said, “Jack Nicklaus doesn’t get to frame this conversation because it isn’t about golf or championship competition. It’s about social conscience and obligation as a person of color in America, and in that area, Nicklaus is no expert; he’s not even in the game.” In other words, “It’s a black thing — you wouldn’t understand.” You could put in on a T-shirt (but then, somebody already has).
Without question, Tiger will never be “black” enough for some — for the “blacker-than-thou” crowd, as Thomas Sowell once put it. A few days ago, I saw a headline out of the nation’s capital: “D.C. mayor ‘proud’ of his term; [Anthony] Williams disputes he’s not ‘black enough’ to lead city.” There are some who hate colorblindness — they fairly spit out the word — more than they hate racism itself. At least racism is something they can understand, being a type of racial obsession. A wag once said, “Philo-Semitism is the higher anti-Semitism.” We might contemplate something similar in the realm of race.
Tiger, much against his will, is the rope in a kind of tug-of-war. All of us, indeed, want a piece of him. The racialists want to claim him — want him to be sort of the Maxine Waters of the fairways — and we anti-racialists want to claim him too. A lot of conservatives view him as one of them: He’s devoted to excellence, he works in near solitude, he is utterly disciplined, he has a snappish independence, he asserts the right to be free from politics, he’s hard to push around, he’s financially shrewd (“tight,” his father says), he despises whining, and — perhaps not least — he has a barely disguised contempt for the media! (At the PGA, a reporter asked him what was the “worst aspect” of being Tiger Woods. With a smile, Tiger pointed to the journos assembled for the press conference and said, “Easy: This.”)
Michael Wilbon writes, “Tiger so has our attention, he has no idea what an agent for change he can be.” Oh? Perhaps Tiger, who has lived with teeming, demanding crowds since he was a tyke, knows a bit more about this than the rest of us do. And why can’t he be an agent for change in a universalist, colorblind, anti-racialist direction? Why can’t his change tend toward transcendence? Writes Wilbon, “There’s every reason to believe, given his intelligence and who his father is, that Tiger will develop his own social conscience.” How amazingly condescending. What do you think his protests for One America — “all children,” “everybody should be in the fold” — are, if not a social conscience? Wilbon: “A lot of people in this world are waiting to hear his voice.” You mean, you haven’t heard it? The bottom line is that I am an American. I’m just who I am. A golfer and a human being.
Wilbon: “I’m one of those who believe that, when it’s time, Tiger’s voice will be clear and unwavering.” It has been. It’s just that a lot of folks haven’t liked it. And they will hound him and hound him until he says what they want to hear. They’ll never leave him alone. Never, never. Can Tiger hold out, be true to himself and the ideals he has already articulated? That would be as amazing as his golf record.
LOL he dissed X.42 he know what a media whore x.42 is -- sounds to me like the kids has good instincts LOL
More top level athelets should be more like Woods. Do your job, and shut up. To many think they are far more important than they are and try to inject themselves in places they do not belong. Tiger, thus far, has kept his actions on the course. Lets hope he continues this.
I hear that the Williams sisters are something like that too (even though their father apparently isn't).
They have brought up their race on several occasions and complained of racism. Though it has been a while.
I became a Williams fan (not sure which one) when she won the US Open and asked Clinton when he was going to cut her taxes.
With this background it looks like the biggest stereotype Tiger broke is that Asians can’t drive ;>
Tiger seems to be a pretty cool guy
That was Venus I believe, and I was ROTFLMAO when I heard about that, what a huge dis..
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