Tiger Woods: Didn’t Join The Club?

by Warner Todd Huston | December 8, 2009 2:54 pm

Now, I thought we wanted a world without color? I thought we wanted a world where “love” beat out misogyny, a world where people were “just people”? Yet we are still in an era where the Associated Press[1], with a serious tone and a straight face, reports the story of Tiger Woods daring to favor “white women” as paramours. And astonishingly it is Tiger that is portrayed as somehow in the wrong to like white women and the “black community” that somehow legitimately feels aggrieved? This after a presidential campaign where the Democrat’s lead candidate was often portrayed as “not black enough.”

I have been blogging since 2001 and in all that time you’ll find few stories about the adulterer du jour. Granted I am a politics blogger, but I didn’t even much care about the John Edwards debacle and I’ve but barely mentioned the Mark Sanford dust up. When it comes to this sort of stuff, I usually find myself bored with it all. On top of that, I have no interest in sports at all. I mean zilch.

So, why a piece about Tiger Woods of all people, you may ask? Because this racism racket has become the biggest hypocrisy of American culture, that’s way. It has become a fine-for-me-but-not-for-thee situation where the “black community” can advocate for separatism for themselves while excoriating everyone else for even daring to broach the subject. When the black community takes up the issue for itself everyone else is supposed to nod approvingly and say they are due the discussion because of “the past.”

The AP’s “race and ethnicity writer” Jesse Washington[2] indulged all the stereotypes imaginable in his story beating up Tiger Woods for liking white women and for daring not to identify as a “black man.”

Of course, it is well known that Tiger is not merely black. Tiger has in the past jokingly claimed to be a
“Cablinasian” (Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian) person because of his mixed heritage. But who cares what he is? At some point , isn’t it only important that he is the most talented golfer in history? Likely he feels the same way, yet here is Jesse Washington beating him up over his parentage, regardless.

In his piece, Washington reports on all sorts of folks in the black community snarking at the golfer for his proclivities but not because he’s a serial adulterer but because he dares to choose white chicks to do it with. He isn’t “black enough,” he “vexes” blacks because he has “declined to identify himself as black,” and it’s all because “we like to see each other with each other,” Washington tells us.

Washington even notes that blacks are far less likely to date interracially than other races by citing a Pew Poll that found that, while 94 percent of blacks say it’s “all right for blacks and whites to date,” they are less likely to do so. And it’s all because they want to segregate themselves from “them” which would be the rest of us.

“There is a call for loyalty that is stronger in some ways than in other racial communities,” said the author of the study, George Yancey, a sociology professor at the University of North Texas and author of the book “Just Don’t Marry One.”

Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not buying it.

I hate to break it to Washington and “his” people, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t require an expectation of color-blind equality from others, but not to expect it from within your own community. You cannot tell everyone else that color shouldn’t matter and then excoriate any of your own people that decide to act on a color blind ideal by straying, in whatever sense, outside the community. It is intellectually dishonest and damaging to your own psyche to act in such a schizophrenic way.

This talk of Tiger Woods, or Barack Obama, or Michael Steele, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams — or Bill Cosby, for that matter — not being “black enough” because of their mates or ideology is no different than some cracker from the 1920s telling a mixed race couple that they are breaking the law with their love.

If we want a color blind society, we have to focus on being Americans, not being a black American or a white one. Tiger Woods’ choice of a mate is immaterial to his fame. That he’s sleeping around might impinge on his character, of course, but that he’s doing it with someone that is not black isn’t.

Lastly, I say this while practicing what I preach. For those that might ask what I’ve done to live up to my own prescriptions, I can assure you that I have. After all, as an average, everyday caucasian American male, I have not married “white” (much to my grandparents chagrin mind you, God bless their souls).

The fact of the matter is that race is not a very important factor in determining what a person is worth. His actions, his principles, his dedication to his family, county and work are the only measure worth taking

Heck, the only thing I have against Tiger is that he didn’t marry an American, but went for a Swede!

Endnotes:
  1. Associated Press: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091206/ap_on_sp_go_ne/us_tiger_woods_race
  2. Jesse Washington: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-07-18-1294860619_x.htm

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