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Caucasian-only rule had been rescinded by the PGA in 1961, the concept of racial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.