Spare the Tiger

By Jack E. White

Perhaps because both names are connected with golf, the high-minded reformers who want to drag the Augusta National Golf Club into the 21st century seem to have mixed up Tiger Woods with Bagger Vance--the angelic black caddy in the eponymous film who uses supernatural powers to help a white golf pro get over the yips and straighten out his love life. Or perhaps they have confused the world's best golfer with the hulking black convict in The Green Mile, played so powerfully by Michael Clarke Duncan, who never gets a chance to use his supernatural powers to cure another black person, only white people. Both characters are examples of a recurring Hollywood fantasy that might be called the Magic Negro--strange black beings who come to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, then use them to solve white folks' mundane problems instead of helping black folks by, say, routing the Ku Klux Klan.

The real fight is between those who believe the Augusta's rules against women are an ugly anachronism and the white-male golf hierarchy that stands behind those rules. The National Council of Women's Organizations sounded the first trumpet of the crusade, and it was quickly taken up by the New York Times, which published nearly three dozen articles on topics ranging from the possibility of protesters disrupting the Masters Tournament to the failure of tournament broadcaster cbs to take a stand on the issue. I think the Times went a step too far, however, when it published an editorial calling on Woods to "simply choose to stay home" from the tournament because it would "send a powerful message," and then another one extending the boycott call to "top players...starting with Tiger Woods."

The Times editorial board undoubtedly would argue that it singled out Woods not because he is partly black but because he is the game's No. 1 player, and the second editorial did call upon Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus to protest as well. But asking Woods to lead the charge still struck me as implying that only a Magic Negro could be expected to wave his putter like a magic wand and singlehandedly settle the bitter quarrel between two entrenched camps. The people drafting Woods seem to feel that he has a special obligation to spearhead the assault on discrimination at Augusta simply because his multiracial background supposedly makes him especially sensitive to all forms of oppression. That's where the Magic Negro angle comes in: Woods is being asked to solve a problem that most blacks don't give a hoot about just because some powerful white people care deeply about it. They include the Times's executive editor, Howell Raines, who grew up in Alabama during the era of resistance to desegregation. Raines' well-known liberal sympathies prompted great suspicion that two articles by sports columnists were spiked because they took issue with the paper's stance. The paper's No. 2 editor, Gerald Boyd, tried to quell the uproar by explaining in a staff memo that one piece amounted to "unseemly and self-absorbed" quarreling with the editorial page and that the other's "logic did not meet our standards." But that failed to dampen the newsroom outrage, and the top editors decided to print the columns after all.

Not that the reformers are wrong about Augusta. It's clear that the place is a bastion of Southern-fried phony gentility that badly needs reform. Augusta did not accept its first black member until 1990, after an outcry about the whites-only membership of many country clubs compelled the major pro-golf association to promise that no tournament would be played at courses that practice racial discrimination.

But should cleaning up Augusta really be solely a black man's burden? Woods seems to understand that his superstar status requires him to speak up about discrimination whenever he can. He has tried to put himself on the right side of the Augusta issue by saying he favors admitting female members to the club "because it's the right thing to do," but he declines to boycott the Masters because "it's not the players' fault" that Augusta is sexist. He has not said anything as ludicrous as his buddy Michael Jordan reportedly did in explaining his refusal to support a black challenger to North Carolina's ultraconservative Senator Jesse Helms by quipping, "Republicans buy shoes too."

But here's the point the critics missed until people began to grumble that they were singling out Woods while letting so many others, who happen to be white, off the hook: If Tiger has an obligation to protest Augusta's sexist policy, so does every other golfer on the pro tour and every member of Augusta. So far, we haven't heard a peep out of most of them. Where's the pressure on corporate fat cats like Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who recently became a member, as sources told TIME? Where's the heat on such topflight pros as Phil Mickelson, Davis Love III, David Duval? None of them individually have the clout of Woods, but a protest by all of them would bring Augusta to its knees--and would let Tiger stop trying to be the Magic Negro and go back to playing golf.