What ethnicity is tiger woods

Laying the Sociological Foundation 265

Cultural Diversity in the United States 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 combi- nation of Caucasian, Black, Indian, and Asian (Leland and Beals 1997; Hall 2001).Woods wants 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 Ameri- can. From this chapter, you know how ridiculous such computations are, but the sociological question is why many people consider Tiger Woods an African Ameri- can.The U.S. racial scene is indeed com- plex, but a good part of the reason is simply that this is the label the media placed on him.“Everyone has to fit some- where” seems to be our attitude. If they don’t, we grow uncomfortable. And for Tiger Woods, the media chose African American.

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 mar- riages are common (Statistical Abstract 2011:Table 60). Several campuses have interracial student organizations. Harvard has two, one just for students who have one African American parent (Leland and Beals 1997).

As we enter unfamiliar ethnic terrain, our classifica- tions are bursting at the seams. Consider 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 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, but disappeared in 1930.The Mexican govern-

ment 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).

Continuing to reflect changing ideas about race–ethnicity, censuses have be- come flexible, and we now have many choices. In the 2000 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; Ameri- can Indian or Alaska Native;Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean,Viet- namese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or

Chamorro, Samoan, and other Pacific Islander. 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. As you read far- ther in this chapter, you will see why these terms make as much sense as the categories we currently use.

For Your Consideration Just why do we count people by “race” anyway? Why not eliminate race from the U.S. census? (Race became a factor in 1790 during the first census. To determine the number of representatives from each state, slaves were counted as three-fifths of whites!) Why is race so important to some people? Perhaps you can use the materials in this chapter to answer these questions.

Tiger Woods as he answers questions at a news conference.

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