CAN A PERSON OF AFRICAN ANCESTRY not be black in America? Golf star Tiger Woods is part of a new
multi-ethnic generation that say yes. By Ben Arogundade.
 |
||
 |
|
|
WATCH: Golf Star Tiger Woods Declares His Cablinasian Ethnicity On Oprah - 1997 |
||
|
|
|
THE BEST BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON BLACK AND ASIAN BEAUTY CULTURE
copyright arogundade limited: fine ebooks - black history - contemporary shakespeare - photography - literary fiction: contact us at enquiries@arogundade.com
Black History 1997: He's Not Black, He's Cablinasian —
Tiger Woods Declares His Racial Independence
Is golf star Tiger Woods black? Questions about the sports celebrity's race, ethnicity and nationality are played out on the Internet, where thousands of online fans per month ask questions about his racial background and heritage. Actually, Woods calls himself 'Cablinasian' - a self-invented term which reflects his African American, Native American, Thai, Chinese and Dutch ancestry.
Black And Asian Beauty Archive
The World's Top 10 East Asian Models According To Google Search. Guess Who's No.1
Naomie Harris Arrives As The First Ever Black British Bond Girl, In 'Skyfall'.
This Woman Has The Most Googled Eyes In The World. Who Is She?
Which Black Stars Have The World's Most Googled Hair? The Top 10 Will Surprise You.
Sex, Drugs And Civil Rights: New Bio Of Donyale Luna, First Black Supermodel And 'Vogue' Cover Star.
The Top 5 Models With The Most Googled Eyes In The World.
She's Brown AND Blonde: Beyonce's Startling Transracial Beauty
Michelle Obama Can Trace Her Ancestry Back 5 Generations - With Surprising Results.
What Does Rihanna Have In Common With English Conqueror Oliver Cromwell?
Black Beauty: The 10 New Rules For The 21st Century. Get Correct!
How Do People Of African Heritage Get Naturally Blue Or Green Eyes? Get The Genetic Truth Now.
The Top 10 Most Popular Hairstyles In The World: Guess Where Beyoncé Ranks?
Beyoncé And Skin Lightening Claims. Is She The New Michael Jackson?
Is Michael Jackson Really Dead? 50,000 Fans Are Not Sure.
Was It Skin Lightening, Or Merely Bright Lighting? Beyoncé Under Fire In 2008 Cosmetics Ad.
The Chinese First Came To Jamaica In 1854. Tyson Beckford Is The Startling Result.
'I Didn't Feel As Beautiful As Them.' Tyra's Childhood Hair Torment.
Straight, Curly, Long, Short - Rihanna's Love Affair With Red Hair.
Michael Jackson Did Have Vitiligo After All. Do We Owe Him An Apology?
'I Can Be Iranian, Egyptian, Puerto Rican Or Black.' Is Rosario Dawson The Future Of Race?
Oprah's DNA: A Journey Across West Africa, Europe And China.
Malcolm X: His Hatred Of The Scottish Roots That Gave Him Red Hair.
'I Believe In The One-Drop Theory.' Halle Berry Invokes America's Old Racist Law.
Alicia Keys: Black, Italian, Scottish, Irish. 'Mixed Race Made Me A Broad Person.'
Noémie Lenoir: The World's Most Ethnically Complex Supermodel.
'This Rag Doll, No Tits, Was On Her Way To Europe'. Pat Cleveland, 60s Queen Of The Catwalk.
Fashion Frenzy In 2008 As 'Vogue' Italia's Black Issue Sells Out Worldwide.
How 'Time' Darkened OJ's Image For Its 1994 Cover Of The Murder Trial.
How Blues Singer Bessie Smith Paved The Way For Rihanna And Beyoncé.
Fredi Washington: The Struggles Of A Light-Skinned Black Actress In 1920s Hollywood.
Elizabeth Of Toro: The Ugandan Princess Who Ditched Law For The Runway.
Vanessa Williams Became The First Black Miss America In 1983. But Then Her Past Caught Up With Her.
The DNA Of Martin Luther King's Son Traces Their Ancestry To Africa And Northern Europe.
Why Josephine Baker Used Lemon Juice To Lighten Her Skin.
What Do Today's Black Supermodels Owe Martin Luther King Jr?
'The Whole Idea Of Race Has To Change.' Jennifer Beals Speaks Out.
'My Skin Colour Wasn't Right.' Thandie Newton's Childhood Battle For Acceptance.
Dorothy Dandridge Described Herself, Not As 'Black', But 'Mixed American'. Was She Ahead Of Her Time?
From Somalia To New York: Iman - The First African Supermodel.
Not Black, Cablinasian: Tiger Woods Makes The Case For Racial Autonomy.
Bald, Black, Beautiful - And Militant: 60s Supermodel Pat Evans.
Why Hollywood Invented Its Own Make-up For 1940s Actress Lena Horne.
Discover Why Oprah Burst Into Tears When Photographed For 'Vogue' in 1998.
1950s Model Helen Williams Was Too Black For America - But The French Loved Her.
NEW BIOGRAPHY: Eulace Peacock - The Sprinter Who Beat Jesse Owens.
Shakespeare And Race: Is Othello Really Black?
Is Barack Obama Black Or Mixed Race? The Answer May Surprise You.
Black = Ugly
White = Pretty
Zoe Saldana: Hollywood's Most Aesthetically Mysterious Movie Star.
Is Mariah Carey Black? 35,000 Fans Are Not Sure.
Light-Skinned, Blue-Eyed, And Black - The Complex Ethnicity Of Vanessa Williams
Naomi Campbell: She's Black, But Her Beauty Look Is 'Transracial'. Find Out More.
Naomi Campbell And Hair Loss - Could This Be Her New Look?
*TIGER WOODS ETHNICITY ACCORDING TO GOOGLE SEARCH
160
The number of people worldwide who Google the question, “Is Tiger Woods black?” each month.
480
The number of people worldwide who Google the word “Cablinasian” each month.
870
The number of people worldwide who Google the phrase, “Tiger Woods ethnicity” each month.
*All figures for “Tiger Woods Ethnicity According to Google Search”, supplied by Google. Stats include global totals for laptop and desktop computers and mobile devices.
ON WEDNESDAY APRIL 23RD, 1997, following his record victory in the US masters, sports celebrity Tiger Woods incurred the wrath of African American traditionalists when he appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show. During the broadcast, Winfrey asked the then 21-year-old golfer whether it bothered him to be called “African American”. Woods replied, “It does...I'm just who I am, whoever you see in front of you.”
TIGER WOODS INVENTS CABLINASIAN
The golfing champion went on to state that as a child he’d invented the term, “Cablinasian” to describe his parents multi-ethnicity and nationality — a mix of half Asian (Chinese and Thai), one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch. He’d adopted the term as a way of honouring his mother Kultida (of Thai, Chinese and Dutch ancestry) as well as respecting all aspects of his cultural and racial heritage. This was a bold break out move by Woods — one that is being echoed today in other parts of modern America by a young generation seeking their own ethnic civil rights movement — the right to define themselves on their own terms, without succumbing to the race conventions of the past which assigned all people of African ancestry as “black”, regardless of the nuances of their heritage. “Cablinasian” hinted at a new world, in which people with parents of mixed ethnicity and nationality could create their own socio-cultural category.
THE FUTURE OF RACE, NATIONALITY, ETHNICITY
How will this increasingly diverse range of people define themselves in the future? The latest US census polls, which now allow people to classify themselves in more than one racial category, suggest that ethnic identification is fragmenting. Within this context, Woods' “Cablinasian” may be seen as a metaphor for this new state of racial independence. During the slave era it was whites that decided who was black, in terms of people of mixed heritage. The notorious “one-drop” rule, passed as law from 1910 onwards, classified as legally “black”, any individual with as little as one drop of “black blood”. It was a legal method of discriminating against all peoples with African ancestry.
Today, increasingly, people are claiming back the right to define their ethnicity for themselves. Like Woods, many of the new generation of people of multi-ethnic heritage, far from suffering an identity crisis, feel at ease as “combination-ethnics”, as opposed to claiming one heritage or another. In the early 1960s, multi-racial actress Dorothy Dandridge pointed the way to the future when she described herself in her autobiography Everything And Nothing, not as African American, but as “mixed American”.
Black Beauty by Ben Arogundade is out now.
More About CELEBRITY ETHNICITY and RACE:
'Mixed-Race Made Me A Broad Person'. Alicia Keys
34,000 Are Not Sure If Mariah Carey Is Black
'The Idea Of Race Has To Change.' Jennifer Beals
Sports celebrity Tiger Woods parents are of mixed ethnicity and nationality. His mother Kultida is of Thai, Chinese and Dutch ancestry, while his father Patrick is of African American, Native American and Chinese heritage.