Tiger Woods: Mapping the Changing Ethnic Terrain
Tiger Woods, perhaps the top golfer of all time, calls himself Cablinasian. Woods invented this
term as a boy to try to explain to himself just who he was—a combination of Caucasian, Black,
Indian, and Asian (Leland and Beals 1997; McKibbin 2014). Woods wanted to embrace all sides
of his family.
Like many of us, Tiger Woods’ heritage is difficult to specify. Analysts who like to quantify ethnic
heritage put Woods at one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter white, an eighth
Native American, and an eighth African American. From this chapter, you know how ridiculous
such computations are, but the sociological question is why many people consider Tiger Woods
to be African American. The U.S. racial scene is indeed complex, but a good part of the reason
is that Woods has dark skin, and this is the label the media placed on him. The attitude seems
to be “Everyone has to fit somewhere.” And for Tiger Woods, the media chose African
Americans.
The United States once had a firm “color line”—barriers between racial-ethnic groups that you
didn’t dare cross, especially in dating or marriage. This invisible barrier has broken down, and
today such marriages are common (Statistical Abstract 2014:Table 63). Children born in these
marriages have a difficult time figuring out how to classify themselves (Saulny 2011). To help
them make an adjustment in college, some colleges have interracial student organizations.
As we enter unfamiliar ethnic terrain, our classifications are bursting at the seams. Here is how
Kwame Anthony Appiah, of Harvard’s Philosophy and Afro-American Studies Departments,
described his situation:
“My mother is English; my father is Ghanaian. My sisters are married to a Nigerian and a
Norwegian. I have nephews who range from blond-haired kids to very black kids. They are all
first cousins. Now according to the American scheme of things, they’re all black—even the guy
with blond hair who skis in Oslo”. (Wright 1994)
I marvel at what racial experts the U.S. census takers once were. When they took the national
census, which is done every ten years, they looked at people and assigned them a race. At
various points, the census contained these categories: mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Negro,
black, Mexican, white, Indian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, and Hindu. Quadroon (one-fourth
black and three-fourths white) and octoroon (one-eighth black and seven-eighths white) proved
too difficult to “measure,” and these categories were used only in 1890. Mulatto appeared in the
1850 census and lasted until 1920. The Mexican government complained about Mexicans being
treated as a race, and this category was used only in 1930. I don’t know whose idea it was to
make Hindu a race, but it lasted for three censuses, from 1920 to 1940 (Bean et al. 2004;
Tafoya et al. 2005).
In the 2010 census, we were first asked to declare whether we were or were not “Spanish/
Hispanic/Latino.” After this, we were asked to check “one or more races” that we “consider
ourselves to be.” We could choose from White; Black, African American, or Negro; American
Indian or Alaska Native; and Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese,
Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, or Samoan. There were boxes for Other Asian and
Other Pacific Islanders, with examples that listed Hmong, Pakistani, and Fijian as races. If these
didn’t do it, we could check a box called “Some Other Race” and then write whatever we
wanted. Perhaps the census should list Cablinasian, after all. We could also have ANGEL for
African - Norwegian - German - English - Latino Americans, DEVIL for those of Danish - English
- Vietnamese - Italian - Lebanese descent, and STUDENT for Swedish - Turkish - Uruguayan -
Danish - English - Norwegian - Tibetan Americans.
