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Laying the Sociological Foundation 255

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 combination of
Caucasian, Black, Indian, and Asian (Leland and Beals 1997;
Hall 2001). Woods wanted to embrace all sides of his family.
Like many of us, Tiger Woods’ heritage is difficult to spec-
ify. 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. to “measure,” and these categories were used only in 1890.
From this chapter, you know how ridiculous such computa- Mulatto appeared in the 1850 census, and lasted until 1920.
tions are, but the sociological question is why many people The Mexican government complained about Mexicans being
consider Tiger Woods an African American. The U.S. racial treated as a race, and this category was used only in 1930.
scene is indeed complex, but a good part of the reason is I don’t know whose idea it was to make Hindu a race, but it
that Woods has dark skin and this is the label the media lasted for three censuses, from 1920 to 1940 (Bean et al.
placed on him. The attitude seems to be “Everyone 2004; Tafoya et al. 2005).
has to fit somewhere.” And for Tiger Woods, the In the 2010 census, we were first asked to
media chose African American. declare whether we were or were not
The United States once had a firm “Spanish/Hispanic/Latino.” After this, we
“color line”—barriers between racial– were asked to check “one or more races”
ethnic groups that you didn’t dare cross, that we “consider ourselves to be.” We
especially in dating or marriage. This in- could choose from White; Black, African
visible barrier has broken down, and American, or Negro; American Indian or
today such marriages are common Alaska Native; and Asian Indian, Chinese,
(Statistical Abstract 2013:Table 60). Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese,
Children born in these marriages have Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Cham-
a difficult time figuring out how to clas- orro, or Samoan. There were boxes for
sify themselves (Saulney 2011). To help Other Asian and Other Pacific Islander,
them make an adjustment in college, with examples that listed Hmong, Paki-
some colleges have interracial student stani, and Fijian as races. If these didn’t
organizations. do it, we could check a box called “Some
As we enter unfamiliar ethnic terrain, our Tiger Woods as he answers questions Other Race” and then write whatever we
classifications are bursting at the seams. at a news conference. wanted.
Here is how Kwame Anthony Appiah, of Perhaps the census should list
Harvard’s Philosophy and Afro-American Studies Depart- Cablinasian, after all. We could also have ANGEL for African-
ments, described his situation: Norwegian-German-English-Latino Americans, DEVIL for
those of Danish-English-Vietnamese-Italian-Lebanese
“My mother is English; my father is Ghanaian. My sisters descent, and STUDENT for Swedish-Turkish-Uruguayan-
are married to a Nigerian and a Norwegian. I have neph- Danish-English-Norwegian-Tibetan Americans. As you read
ews who range from blond-haired kids to very black kids. farther in this chapter, you will see why these terms make
They are all first cousins. Now according to the American as much sense as the categories we currently use.
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 For Your Consideration
were. When they took the national census, which is done ↑ Just why do we count people by “race” anyway? Why not
every ten years, they looked at people and assigned them a eliminate race from the U.S. census? (Race became a factor
race. At various points, the census contained these categories: in 1790 during the first census. To determine the number of
mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Negro, black, Mexican, white, representatives from each state, a slave was counted as three-
Indian, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, and Hindu. Quadroon fifths of a person!) Why is race so important to some people?
(one-fourth black and three-fourths white) and octoroon (one- Perhaps you can use the materials in this chapter to answer
eighth black and seven-eighths white) proved too difficult these questions.