Controversial Question: Is Tiger "Black"?

[Ole_Tom_Morris]

There is an ESPN/ABC article here http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=852445
about the small number of minority players on the PGA tour. The article mentions several times that Tiger Woods is black. The trouble is, Tiger Woods is not black, except in the sense he happens to have a dark complection. He is most accurately described as oriental or Asian American. Granted, his father is African-American, with the usual admixtures of American Indian and European ancestry. Is it not racist to refer to some one as "black" because a small portion of their ancestry is African? This reminds me of the miscegenation laws of certain states that defined a person as black if they had one African-American grandparent -- as though African ancestry was some kind of contaminant, like ink spilled on a white cotton shirt. Your thoughts?

[hig4s]

ugly troll

[Ole_Tom_Morris]

  hig4s said:

ugly troll

Actually, I think Tiger's kinda cute, with those limpid brown eyes and toothy smile. Or did you mean me??

[sevenfourate]

Im all man believe me,BUT, i think he's a good looking dude UNTIL he takes the golf hat off.He musta been born with it on - along with a cut down 6 iron if you believe Earl Woods ! lol

[muda]

i think he's cablasian.

[Rafcin]

why is it so important? I can't get it. It might be due to the fact, that I didn't grow up in this country - I just don't see racial issues the same way. Who cares... why can't we all just get along

[Ole_Tom_Morris]

  Rafcin said:

why is it so important? I can't get it. It might be due to the fact, that I didn't grow up in this country - I just don't see racial issues the same way. Who cares... why can't we all just get along

Well said Rafsin! I am just railing against our tendencies to classify people in ways that are not logical. And maybe joking about Tiger being part of the "Asian Invasion" of big time golf, rather than being the PGA's token African American, as many journalists and PGA spokespersons would like to have it.

But golf in the U.S. has a shameful past with regard to race, and I do not mean to belittle the issue, or poke fun at it. Example: I have a 1975 book called The Encyclopedia of Golf published by Viking, foreword by Arnold Palmer, with Herbert Warren Wind (who died a few days ago) as advisory editor. Should be complete and authoritative, right? One day, I picked up the book to check when Lee Elder joined the PGA tour. No Lee Elder. No Calvin Peete. No Walter Stewart or Bill Spiller or Chi Chi Rodriguez either. This book goes into painful detail about who was champion of Yorkshire in 1935, or who was top amateur in Long Island in 1928, and gives short bios of people I never heard of, but does not mention a single black golfer. Did you know there was a black professional golf tour in the U.S.? As far as this "encyclopedia" goes, the black tour and black golfers did not exist! The only Latinos mentioned are Lee Trevino and Roberto DeVicenzo, who could hardly be left out, Trevino being the hottest name in golf at that time. For a long time, the PGA refused fine golfers membership because of their race, and all-white tournaments refused minority golfers the right to compete. This book, 110 years after the end of the Civil War, 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education , and 10 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, carried things a step further, and blotted out whole lives and endeavors as though they never existed. (Of course, to our credit, we in the U.S. have long celebrated and admired African golfers, but only the lighter-skinned variety, like Locke, Player, Price, Els, and Goosen.)

[mediaguru]

All I know is his wife is blonde....ooooohhh

[iacas]

If Tiger's black, then Vijay is black. The article keeps talking about Tiger as the only black guy on tour. Sorry, not true.

I think that Tiger's influence on minorities is still about five years away. He joined the Tour in, what, 1995 or 1996, so he "influenced" people who were 8 to 10 or so. They're only 18 to 20 now - let's let those kids get to 23 to 25 before we say he had no influence at all on minorities.