TIGER WOODS: whose race is it anyway?

The year is 1996.

After his third straight US Amateur win, Tiger Woods turned pro and then won two PGA Tour events in that year. In the immediate aftermath of that, Tiger’s father, Earl Woods made a statement.  It was to prove a seminal statement – and prophetic too.  He declared that Tiger would do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity.  He qualified that by saying he would do more than Gandhi, Buddha and Nelson Mandela because Tiger would have a larger forum than any of these great men.

Now ask yourself the question.  Whose interest has Tiger Woods being serving since he started out on the road to golfing fame?  Hand on heart, can you say that he has been fighting for ethnic minorities, taken up arms on behalf of African-Americans-Asians anywhere, projected a role model image through his golf or displayed an altruistic interest in the greater good of people-kind?  With the world stage to play on, Tiger has shown little by way of role model behaviour on and off the fairways but he has benefited immensely from the kudos and adulation of the hero status he has accumulated along the way.

The year is 1990.

You live in America

When you think golf, you think white, middle-class, quite possibly Christian, and you see it as a gateway to networking and business deals.  You wouldn’t be wrong.  The written records will bear witness to the longstanding elitism within the golfing fraternity and the county club set.  Golf was not considered the sport of blacks or ethnic minorities.  They were excluded.  It was as late as 1975 before black players were allowed to compete in the Masters at Augusta and, until 1982 in that hallowed ground, all the caddies in the tournament had to be black.  Servitude and not membership were the order of the day.  As late as 1990, Augusta did not admit black members and conceded only because they would have lost the right to host this tournament. 

The year is now 1997. 

It’s the thirteenth of April of that year and a twenty-one year old man has lifted the coveted green jacket.  He has made history.  He is the youngest winner of the Masters.  His -18 under par finish is quite simply the best finish ever and his 12-stroke lead underscores that achievement but he has broken the biggest record of all: he is black.  Nothing of his ethnicity is taken into account; nothing of what he had said previously about his racial origins is noted: only the colour of his skin matters here for, although the Caucasian-only rule had been rescinded by the PGA in 1961, the concept of racial inequalities still exists on both sides of the black and white divide in everyday life in America. Excitement abounds and much of the furore that surrounds this win is seen as a way of atonement for the white-dominated segregations and the past misdeeds in this sport. 

The new hero of this hour is Tiger Woods. 

And Woods responded in a manner that seemed to embrace his African-American origins by naming Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder and Ted Rhodes – three black golfing giants who had not received full recognition - as the pioneers who had paved the way to his win.  His racial identity was embraced on either side of the colour divide and he was lauded both for his sporting excellence and as a representative of racial breakthrough.  When the hour demanded, the man came forth and the stage was set for the launch of Earl’s predicted forum.

Suddenly, we had hope in a brighter future.

Two weeks later, on the Oprah Winfrey show, Black America lost its newfound hero.  That’s when Tiger announced that he was uncomfortable with the term African-American as applied to him and, for the first time, we heard him describe himself as Cablinasian – a term that he had composed as a youngster.

Cablinasian is simply a portmanteau of the starting pair of letters from the words Caucasian, black and Indian, with Asian added to the end of these letters.  Tiger has chosen this title to embrace the race and ethnicities of his parents – his father was African-American, Chinese and Native American and his mother is of Thai, Chinese and Dutch descent. 

While he has drawn praise from many quarters for this unique stand which honours the origins of his parents, there are those who have condemned him for this action for, by creating this unorthodox name to describe himself, he has added yet another ethnicity to the variety of methods already in use to identify both origin and culture.  It did nothing to restrict categorising people by race either. Instead of classifying him as an icon of universalism as it was designed to, it isolated him from his black African-American roots while diluting the impact he could have made on racial issues.  Some have even accused him of distancing himself from multiracialism to protect himself and his personal interests alone.

Much emphasis has been placed on his appearance on The Oprah Winfrey show and on the insight he gave to the concept of his own ethnicity therein but Woods also appeared with Barbara Walters on prime time ABC television in July 1997. Walters addressed questions of racism and discrimination and asked Woods about his black heritage.  He restated his multicultural credentials as African-American and Asian while acknowledging he was “all these other things”.  Coupled together with his status as a Cablinasian, there was also the Tiger who, as an African-American-Asian, had suffered discrimination, making him at once unique and exotic.  It implied sameness and stability within differences and change and this dual-edged approach seems to support universalism and individualism that, in its outer appearances at least, transcends race, colour and ethnicities. 

He may not see himself as black but he has realized and capitalised on his innate talents from the earliest stages of his life.  At the age of six and under his father’s guidance, the young Eldrick was listening to motivational tapes.  His upbringing was not built on the need to gain equal access or challenge racist practices at every opportunity.  It was all about personal development and an individual’s journey.

We should not have been surprised by his stance if we go further back in time.

The year is 1995

Tiger is about to play at Shinnecock Hills, New York.

It is two years before Tiger wins the coveted Green Jacket and a year before he turns professional. 

It is the night before he plays in the US Open and Tiger releases a statement.

It was a telling statement designed to deflect what he believed would be bothersome questions from the media about his racial background.  He did not mention Cablinasian then but the intent and tone of his release makes it clear that he sees himself as the product of two cultures – African-American on one side and Asian on the other – but he underlines the fact that ethnic background and composition mattered little to him.  He is the new era, colour-blind all American boy.

The year is now 2015.

Doctor Charles Luther Sifford has just passed away.  Charlie Sifford was instrumental in challenging the Caucasian-only rule of 1943, which prevented black players from playing on the PGA tour.  After a long battle to qualify, he was finally admitted to full membership in 1961, thus becoming the first African-American to play on the PGA Tour.   

In a fitting tribute to this iconic black golfer, Tiger reveals the nature of a very close relationship he had with Sifford when he refers to him as “grandfather”.  Later, he acknowledged in an email to The Associated Press that neither he nor his father would have picked up the sport if it were not for Sifford’s monumental impact in challenging, and causing, the PGA to rescind the Caucasian-only rule.

Woods also enjoyed a close relationship with another great pioneer, Lee Elder, the first African-American to play Augusta in 1975.  Just before Tiger teed off on that fateful Sunday of his first Masters win, Elder came to share a private moment with him on the putting green.  To the watching and the waiting, it was clear that Woods understood, and identified with, his African-American heritage.

Identifying yourself does not really matter if the rest of society views you as black and even though Tiger may epitomise the new colour-blind melting pot of American cultural diversity, his sexual scandals brought with them their own particular problems.  These transgressions were not viewed as the tainting of racial purity but the contamination of a commercial brand.  When the scandal of his serial adultery broke, his sponsors remained loyal to him.  The journalists and marketing experts all avowed that the scandal would have little impact on his advertising appeal. 

They were wrong. 

The problem was never a question of morals but rather that a large gap had opened up between Woods’ advertising persona and his public image.  As the revelations piled in, the biggest career in sports folded before our eyes.

Woods image and appeal had always been built on his extraordinary capacity to focus and be disciplined.  When Tiger won the US Open in 2008 while playing with a broken leg, it was not his physical ability that received most comment – it was his sheer single-mindedness, hard work and dedication that saw him dubbed as the exemplar of mental discipline. To the American public, Woods’ approach to his game embodied success not just in golf but also in life itself.

For celebratory endorsements to work, it is paramount that there is a dovetail fit between the identity of the pitcher and the product being pitched.  Woods had everything: wife, family, fortune, fame, a squeaky-clean image and supreme control.  He was at the top of his game.  He was in the enviable position that enabled his image to fit snugly with many brands but, in the blink of a car crash with a fire hydrant, the carefully crafted image had disintegrated in a cloud of woeful sex texts, voicemails and celebrity groupies and all of these things combined to make him look vulnerable and disconcerted.  Tiger’s attractiveness lay not in his reflection of the human condition but in the fact that he was different from the rest of us – never weak and distracted. 

The year is 2017.

The Tiger Woods name sells just about everything but, to his public, he remains a hotch-potch of mixed signals.  It is akin to playing a game of Hide and Seek with a toddler who changes the rules in the blink of an eye because they have no real understanding of what they are engaged in.  Earl Woods is right in one aspect: Tiger has the biggest forum at his disposal with his huge international brand platform but he has neither the skill nor personal integrity to utilise this structure to advance the lot of the minorities of humankind.   Tiger’s inability to venture outside his political comfort zone and stick his nose into the thorns of race, colour and ethnicities disproves the greater part of Earl’s statement.  While Gandhi, Buddha and Mandela were devoted to such ideals as human understanding and world peace, Tiger appears devoted to taking the money and saying nothing that will upset the consumer on any side of the racial divide.  This is a travesty of self-interest and raises the question that his Cablinasian stance is nothing more than an excuse to remove himself from the responsibility of being an icon for his cultural roots.

A few days ago, Nike unveiled a politically charged video campaign entitled “Equality”.  It features LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Serena Williams, Gabby Douglas and Victor Cruz.  Tiger Woods appears to be part of this endeavour by showing his support on Twitter for the advertisement’s message and, on the face of it, it is noteworthy.  Woods spoke recently on America’s need to unite following some controversial statements from the White House but on deeper examination, however, he has only made his stance within the security of the Nike brand and he is a long way from being the Universal Child of his mother’s depiction and his father’s prophecy.

In this day and age, it seems the only race that exists is that of the brand and Tiger has failed to become the anticipated cross-cultural messiah. As is his wont, Tiger continues to sew the seeds of confusion and he remains another rich, talented athlete with his own personal demons.  Role models are designed to be emulated but, apart from his money and golf, what else has Tiger Woods got?  As his game is on the wane, soon there will only be the money and the memories.  His cold-shouldering of all things racial from the very outset of his golfing career can never bestow on him the accolade of icon to the marginalised or the minorities.  He remains a beige shadow of the vision his father had mapped for him and belongs in a Cablinasian bubble of his own making where brand is the race he belongs to and money his ethnicity. 

Perhaps it is best that he remains a hero: heroes live in ivory towers and are so far removed from the common lot of mankind as to make them irrelevant to the daily lives of the masses who do not buy into the belief that brand and ethnicity are the only cultural heritage you own.