Tiger Woods spotlights multiracial identity;
golf star sparks pride in heritage
By Janita Poe
Chicago Tribune
(KRT)
CHICAGO-The first time Suchitra Surapiboonchai heard about
Tiger Woods, she was half-daydreaming, half-listening to her friend
ramble on about some talented new African-American golf prodigy.
She would have continued in drifting off had the woman, who
is black, not happened to mention that the golfer's mother was
from Surapiboonchai's native country of Thailand.
"I said, 'Wait a minute! Wait a minute!' " said Surapiboonchai,
57, a nurse anesthesiologist who lives in Palos Heights. "
'Tell me more of the history of his mother. Give me the biography
of this family.' I wanted to find out exactly what was going on."
Since then, Surapiboonchai, like many Thai-Americans, has followed
Tiger Woods with fierce pride matched only by, well, African-Americans.
When the 21-year-old Woods arrived in Bangna, Thailand, in
February to play in the Asian Honda Classic, he was welcomed with
a cheering crowd and media frenzy usually reserved only for heads
of state.
That Thai-Americans identify with a celebrity who is half Thai
may not be a surprise, but it is a testament to Woods' success
at communicating that he sees himself as equally African-American
and Asian-American.
Indeed, more than any other prominent celebrity, Woods has
forced Americans to come to terms with his multiracial identity.
Unlike biracial stars such as actors Brandon Lee, Halle Barry
and Jennifer Beals-who have been recognized only as Asian, black
and white, respectively, despite their racially mixed backgrounds-Woods
has clearly demanded that he wants to be recognized as a multiracial
individual.
In so doing, the young golfer, poised to be the next great
Michael Jordan-class sports hero, has helped pushed forward a
growing movement of multiracial people who want to be identified
as such.
Woods' stunning victory at the recent Masters could not be
more timely, say activists who are campaigning for a "multiracial"
category on the U.S. census for 2000.
"He is completely articulate on the issue," said
Ramona Douglass, a half African-American, half Italian-American
woman who is president of the Association of Multi Ethnic Americans
and a member of the U.S. census advisory committee on the proposed
category.
"He has made it clear he has no reason to deny his mother,"
Douglass said. "Whether he wants to or not, he is sort of
becoming the poster person for multiracial identity."
If the normal rules applied here, Tiger Woods likely would
be seen by most Americans, no matter what their background, as
black because of his physical appearance. Until recently, the
media regularly referred to him that way.
At Olive-Harvey College, where students held a national conference
last week on black studies, Woods was recognized in lectures and
panel discussions as the latest in a line of African-American
athletes to prove their talents in historically white-only sports
competitions.
When asked about his identity, many students said they considered
Woods black, even though he has an Asian mother.
"The way I was raised, 'If you have any black in you,
you are black,' " said Patrick Sheppard, 21, an African-American
student at Olive-Harvey. "When people see him, they see a
black man."
Curtis Spiers, a white Biloxi, Miss., businessman who was relaxing
recently with friends at a North Side sports bar, said he admired
Woods because he "broke in at a young age, No. 1, and No.
2, he is an African-American."
Spiers, who is white, said he respects the fact that Woods
considers himself multiracial but, "I look at him, and you
would think African-American."
Indeed, until he made an issue of it, Woods' multiracial identity-as
a man of Asian, African, European and Native-American descent-had
gone unrecognized by most sports enthusiasts from all racial backgrounds
in the U.S.
In the early and mid-1990s, most mainstream newspapers and
magazines described Woods as a talented young "black"
or "African-American" amateur golfer. Black magazines
such as Ebony and Jet profiled the young golfer.
But Woods soon began correcting reporters, telling them he
would be denying his mother by allowing the media to describe
him only as black.
In June 1995, shortly before playing in his first U.S. Open,
Woods went a step further and issued a news release about his
racial background.
"The various media have portrayed me as an African-American,
sometimes Asian," he said in the short statement. "In
fact, I am both... . Truthfully, I feel very fortunate and equally
proud to be both African-American and Asian."
Since then, most media have at least made an effort to get
Woods' racial heritage right.
The day after he won the Masters in Augusta, Ga., Woods was
hailed in major newspapers across the country as being the first
African-American and the first Thai-American to win the title,
or simply as the first golfer "of color" to do so.
With its legacy of slavery, American society has a long history
of assigning single-race classifications to individuals, regardless
of their ethnic backgrounds.
For centuries, white society enforced the "one-drop"
rule, meaning that if you had any black blood, you were, by law,
black. That translated into having an inferior status in virtually
every aspect of life.
In resistance to the dominant culture's negative attitudes
about black blood lines, most people of African descent, no matter
their hue, responded by embracing their African heritage and making
it their sole ethnic identity.
During the years before integration, this positioning gave
African-Americans a sense of social and political solidarity.
In the last two or three decades, however, a growing number
of people with multiracial backgrounds have begun pushing for
official recognition as a distinct group of American people.
Those who are biracial have said they are denying one parent,
and a part of themselves, when they claim only one racial identity.
Experts on Thailand say color is just as much a factor in Thai
culture as it is in the U.S.
Clark Neher, director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies
at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, said people with lighter
skin in Thailand, especially women, tend to have a better status.
In addition, Neher and other professors of Thai culture, said
that people who are mixed-race-commonly called luk khuryng, or
"child half"-are not as accepted as people who can claim
to have pure Thai blood lines.
It is particularly true of the offspring of the black American
GIs who were stationed in the country during the Vietnam War,
they said.
"There is pride in his success and the fact that he is
half Thai," said Neher, "but if he had been born in
Thailand and raised in that country, he would have had a hard
time."
Still, Woods' celebrity status has gained him tremendous popularity
in Thailand. In fact, just as many African-Americans say Woods
is black because he looks black, many Thai-Americans say Woods
is Thai because his facial features are very much like those of
people in Thailand.
Edward Lin, a restaurateur and golf ball manufacturing company
owner, said he immediately identified with Woods after reading
about him about two years ago in a Thai magazine.
"He has Thai blood. We recognize that part of him,"
said Lin, who lives in Northbrook. "Everyone is proud of
that. It is something to relate to."
(c) 1997, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on America Online (keyword: Tribune)
or the Internet Tribune at http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
|
