Vijay Singh: Categorically Black?

by Latoya Peterson

Over on the Hyphen blog, Erin writes about Vijay Singh, golf star and winner of the 2004 PGA Tour Player of the Year award.

In an entry titled What’s the New Black? Shifting Sands of Race, Erin takes a page from Jeff Yang (who made the argument that Barack Obama’s life story resonates with the Asian American experience) and speculates on Singh’s racial categorization:

In interesting counterpoint to that is a conversation I recently had with a friend who speculated that Vijay Singh — and not Tiger Woods — may be professional golf’s “colored person,” if by that we mean a category that renders invisible, unwelcome, or second-class those who are tarred with it. Singh has been cast as an uppity and hypermasculine threat to a gentleman’s game; he gets a fraction of the press he deserves, and seems to be the guy that the establishment would love to watch fall on his face. So, pointed out my friend Sameer, might it be said that Singh is categorically Black in a way that also transcends biological race?

Thoughts?