As I recently wrote in Racism In Sports, With A Twist, WASP postergirl Kelly Tilghman recommended that golfers competing with Tiger Woods should "lynch him in a back alley."
Golf Channel did not react to her tacky on-air remark until Reverend Al "Face Time" Sharpton publicly denounced the reference to the southern states' brutal history. Tilghman was goosed with a two-week suspension, and the larger questions of privilege, race & the golf industry were about to sink under the water hazards yet again.
Until Golfweek Magazine decided to run this cover:
In case their editorial stance on the issue remained vague, Golfweek columnist Jeff Rude opined:
"Before this little non-story that has led to the unnecessary two-week suspension of Kelly Tilghman grows more legs than a caterpillar, allow me to weigh in with two words learned at an age when people put caterpillars in jars: Stop it ... Tilghman and Tiger Woods are friends. They call each other. They text each other. She likes and respects him. There was no ill intent when her loose lips used a bad verb."
His argument: as long as Tilghman and Wood "text each other," there's no controversy. In other words, nobody who speaks German could be an evil man.
However, the issue isn't whether or not Woods was offended, it's whether or not flippantly using the word "lynch" in connection with one of the most prominent black men in the world might be offensive to everybody else.
The reaction of Woods was as muted (and spokesman-moderated) as when Fuzzy Zoeller spat his bitterness in 1997, “That little boy is driving well and he's putting well. He's doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it? Or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”
Zoeller, by the way, has weighed in with advice for Tilghman: “Just keep smiling and kill people with kindness. And remember, the sun will come up tomorrow .... Time heals all wounds."
I'm not sure, Fuzzy. I'm using you as the epitome of a privileged rich white asshole, so perhaps you're not out of the woods yet. Haha, get it?
Dave Seanor, editor of Golfweek was quickly fired for the noose cover. He was replaced by Jeff Babineau, who looks like the epitome of a privileged rich white asshole. Maybe he isn't, but that smirk on his well-fed puss doesn't look promising.Stand by for the inevitable reactionary backlash decrying "political correctness." When people like Jeff Rude (see above) insist that the context of Tilghman's remarks mitigates their offensiveness, they are narrowing the argument. The context is properly the history of racism in golf, not whether Woods (the product of privilege) was personally offended.
Golf country clubs still exclude Jews, blacks, Catholics, women, homosexuals, et al. The effort to exclude minorities from their green dreams is one of the final battlegrounds in privately-sponsored racism. In 1996, Shoal Creek Golf & Country Club founder Hall Thompson explained "We don't discriminate in every other area except the black ... The country club is our home and we pick and choose who we want."
Has anything changed? Seven months ago, the Orange County National Golf Club in Winter Garden, Florida, had a "noose with the sign '1-800-whiners' hanging from the right corner of the outside-services office, which was located underneath the pro shop," as reported in the Orlando Sentinel.
Golf's legacy is a direct link to the KKK, only with more expensive membership fees and more pastels in the uniform. That's the context in which Tilghman's remarks must be considered.
13 comments:
Oh come on! Sure mistakes were made. But they were honest errors in judgment. As much as you'd like to condemn all of us for the sins the father, I think its a little far fetched to suggest that there is a wide ranging 'white' conspiracy against black folks. What is there to gain? Your allusion to the KKK is nothing short of hyperbole, and I, for one, don't think that it advances understanding of these nuanced and complicated issues. This sounds like just another case of liberal propaganda and hysterical ravings over another social problem that is best left to sort itself out by ordinary people. I'm sorry, not every white golfer is the bogeyman, and sometimes a slip of the tongue is just that.
Thank you Steven Colbert.
For those who aren't aware, the commentator "Jerious Norwood" is whiter than albino eggshells.
"What is there to gain?" he asks. It isn't a question of gain, it's about maintaining the status quo.
The allusion to the KKK is not hyperbolic when a privileged southern white woman uses the word "lynch."
Her "slip of the tongue" illuminates the tip of the iceberg.
You dumb cracker.
By the way, blacks were still being lynched by whites during Tilghman's lifetime.
One of the most common reasons for lynching resulted from interactions between white women and black men.
I'd like to point out that I am, in fact, blacker than a trillion midnights; hence my nickname 'darkness'.
Besides, Tilghman was obviously using the term 'lynching' as a turn of phrase, not as an intentional allusion towards an unfortunate event in American History.
And just because a pretty white women happens to be the focal point of this particular tempest in a teapot, doesn't mean that the fact that she bears those characteristics is particularly germane to this conversation.
I'm sure Tilghman is mortified that African-Americans were still being lynched by whites during her lifetime. Let us not exploit this opportunity for the sake of political correctness in order to exacerbate her embarrassment and anguish for misspeaking in the most innocent of ways. It surely does no one any good.
So, when the Denver Bronco's safety tackles an african-american , is it OK to say that player has been "Lynched"? What if he tackles Jeff Garcia?
Also, would an appropiate name of a group of musicians lead by former Dokken guitarist George Lynch be "The Lynch Mob"?
Andrew, do you really not know when Jerious is fuckin' with you?
Where is Bagger Vance when you need him? He'd know how to magically fix everything.
I was hoping I could argue with JN about just for the sake of it, to save this post from references to Dokken (for example).
Besides, if you haven't ever listened to conservative and/or sportsjack radio, Norwood's ironic comments have greater internal logic and more syllables than the average knee-jerk reaction to this story.
You think you can pigeon hole me, BBM? What, I can't have a Christopher Hitchens-esque change of mind about one the most hotly contested issues of the day. Reasonable people might disagree, might't they?
J Norwood has something in common with Christopher Hitchens.
In Hitchens's atheistic treatise god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, his characterization of organized religion is a fair assessment of our own dear J Norwood: "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children."
Sometimes you say the sweetest things. Like most knee-jerk liberals, I was more than a bit peeved at Hitchen's about the whole support for an unnecessary war of aggression thing. I must say that this book pretty much makes up for it.
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