Revisiting “100% Cablinasian”: 6 Thoughts on Tiger Woods
By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
It sucks when your readers don’t like what you write. It really sucks when they hate what you write. But – and this may reflect badly on my personality – I learn the most from posts that I eff up. It’s the failures that really drive me to try and better at what we do here.
In writing 100% Cablinasian: Getting the Race Facts Right on Tiger Woods, I consulted with Carmen, Latoya and Andrea. After the post was done, I sent it to Latoya and asked her to approve it before posting it. Usually I just write something and put it up – these extra steps were taken because I knew that I was dealing with a sticky subject. Yet even in my preparations, I completely failed to understand how sticky a subject I was dealing with.
So after much thinking, talking, and about 40 emails with Carmen and Latoya, here are six things that I want to say about Tiger Woods. A lot of this I already said last week, but I did it badly. If you were to read “100% Cablinasian” outside of the context of Racialicious and outside of the context of my writing, it propagates stereotypes about black folks. That’s unacceptable, and that’s why I am writing about Tiger Woods again.
Tiger Woods is perceived to be black, and his behaviour is interpreted in terms of blackness.
Within American culture, Tiger Woods is perceived to be black. Two early examples:
Faldo and Tilghman were discussing young players who could challenge the world’s No. 1 player toward the end of Friday’s broadcast at Kapalua when Faldo suggested that “to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up for a while.”
“Lynch him in a back alley,” Tilghman replied.
Asked about Woods’s victory at the 1997 Masters and the traditional victory dinner – at which the new champion gets to choose the menu – Zoeller remarked: “That little boy is driving well and putting well. You pat him on the back and say congratulations and tell him not serve fried chicken, or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”
Woods has been the butt of the anti-black racism since he came on the scene. This is a problem because
a) Hello, these “jokes” are disgusting.
b) Woods is not just black – he’s Cablinasian, or Blasian as he recently texted to Jaimee Grubbs.
But while it was clear before his philandering scandal that Woods was seen as black more than he was seen as Cablinasian, it has become inescapable since. Woods’ philandering is being interpreted via stereotypes about black men: he’s spectacularly unfaithful, and he has a hankering for white women. Within American culture’s racist conception of black masculinity, this is textbook behaviour. In other words his bad behaviour is the result of the fact that he is a black man, married to a white woman.
Some folks are using Tiger’s scandal to reinforce narrow beliefs that black men need to get it together and black women are unloveable. You don’t need me to tell you that that’s just plain racist and ignorant. Instead, what I wanted to focus on in “100% Cablinasian” is how media, comedians and bloggers are using Tiger’s behaviour to probe the issue of successful black men dating white women and distancing themselves from blackness when they become successful. See the Sister Toldja bit that we cross-posted a while back.
Wanda Sykes stopped by The Tonight Show last night to take a few shots at him with Conan O’Brien. “It just got to the point where I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t do anymore jokes on this man. I can’t do it.’ But more stuff keeps comin’ out,” she said. “Women after women after women. I’m like, I had to stop for a minute and go, ‘Wait a minute. Did I have sex with Tiger Woods?’…. Then I was like, ‘Oh wait a minute. I’m black. I’m cool. I’m cool. …
Generally people are using this flashpoint of successful black men dating exclusively white for a quick laugh, and I will admit Wanda’s joke made me LOL.
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