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thesis entitled

(DIS)CLA|MING WHITENESS:
HOMER PLESSY, TIGER WOODS, AND
RACIALLY-TRANSFORMED PARENTS

presented by

Joshua Carter Woodfork

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

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(DIS)CLAIMING WHITENESS: HOMER PLESSY, TIGER WOODS, AND
RACIALLY-TRANSFORMED PARENTS

BY

Joshua Carter Woodfork

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Program in American Studies

1999

ABSTRACT

(DIS)CLAIMING WHITENESS: HOMER PLESSY, TIGER WOODS AND
RACIALLY-TRANSFORMED PARENTS

BY

Joshua Carter Woodfork

This thesis is a study of multiracial identity. It
looks at claims and rejections of whiteness by exploring the
boundaries of race and racial discourse. In the 18908, Homer
A. Plessy, of the Plessy v. FErguson "separate but equal"
case (1896), claimed that his multiracial ancestry should
grant him access to whiteness. One hundred years later,
golfer Eldrick "Tiger" Woods also wanted his multiracial
ancestry acknowledged. Conversely, several recent books have
been published describing the experiences of White parents of
Black/biracial children. In these, the parents have rejected
their whiteness, arguing that their racial identity has been
transformed because of their children. Through examining
these three specific cases, this thesis concludes that the
recent attempts to utilize whiteness reinscribe similar
racial constrictions found in the 1890s, like the "one-drop

rule."

Copyright by
Joshua Carter Woodfork
1999

In loving memory of my grandfathers,

Saul Raphael Rotman and Nelson Carter Woodfork

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Somehow working on this thesis in Michigan has allowed
me to see how fortunate I am to have the love and support of
my family in Massachusetts. I appreciate the constant
encouragement of my parents, Ann and Nelson WOodfork, and my
siblings Rebecca and Peter. My grandmothers, Patricia Rotman
and Suewilla WOodfork, have been steady sources of wisdom and
affection.

Along the way, I have been sustained by many, including
my master's thesis committee: Dr. Dean Rehberger, Dr. Wilma
King, and Dr. Gloria Randle. They have been a wonderful
committee with each member challenging me in unique ways.

Dr. Randle is truly an inspirational person who has taught me
not only how to be a good teacher but, more importantly, how
to be a better soul.

Friends proved to be invaluable to my progress. They
allowed me to vent and told me when to let go of my thesis,
which proved imperative to my completion. Thanks to Anthony
Shiu, Chantalle Verna, Cecilia Samonte, Dr. Jan Arminio, and
especially to my best friend Emily Heiss. While at Michigan
State University, Dr. Richard W. Thomas and Dr. Darlene Clark
Hine have been excellent mentors, exhibiting the finest
qualities of character and professionalism.

I am indebted to Diana Irene Williams for giving me a

copy of her Harvard University undergraduate senior thesis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............... . .......................... ......1
CHAPTER 1

WHITENESS: "THE MASTER-KEY THAT UNLOCKS THE GOLDEN DOOR OF
OPPORTIJNITY"OOOO0.0......O.COO...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOCOOOOOOO0.0.08

CHAPTER 2
"I'M JUST WHO I AM": TIGER WOODS'S MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY....31

CHAPTER 3
WHITE NO MORE: WHITE PARENTS OF BLACK/BIRACIAL CHILDREN....53

CONCLUSIONOOOOOO000......OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0.0.000000080

BIBLIWRAPHY...ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo000000085

vi

INTRODUCTION

Anyone who continues to believe in race as a physical
attribute of individuals, despite the now commonplace
disclaimers of biologists and geneticists, might as well
also believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the
tooth fairy are real, and that the earth stands still
while the sun moves.

Barbara Jeanne Fields1

In the above epigraph, historian Barbara Jeanne Fields
explains that in the United States of America the fiction of
race as a "physical attribute" is recognized. Although the
concept of race may be fiction, race continues to have real
consequences in the form of racism and discrimination.

Often, people cannot define what "race" is or how it works;
rather, they operate on stereotypes of racial groups to
determine the race of others. Law professor Ian F. Haney
Lopez suggests, "Walking down the street, our minds
consistently rely on pervasive social mythologies to assign
races to other pedestrians." As a result of this lack of an
ability to define race, observers utilize the "social
mythologies" to categorize each other. In other words, which
race a person belongs to is generally determined by how he or
she looks. Despite President William Jefferson Clinton's

recent dialogue on race, lay persons continue to categorize

 

1Barbara Jeanne Fields, "Slavery, Race, and Ideology in
the United States of America," New.Left Review 181 (May/June
1990): 96.

A note on my use of race terms. I use "Black" and
"African-American" interchangeably. I capitalize "Black" and
"White" but do not capitalize "whiteness" because of the
negative way it has been used as a tool of oppression.

each other by physical attributes; thus, as Fields suggests,
"racial ideology" lives on.2
Although scholars continue to debate the biological

and social constructions of race, the general public has not
yet begun to question racial categories critically. Those
who do not fit easily within the established racial
categories threaten the historically simplistic understanding
of race. This thesis explores some individuals who
complicate current racial categories not only because of
their physical appearance and experiences but also because
they insist on speaking out about them and, most importantly,
on challenging norms/status quo.3

Golfer Eldrick "Tiger" WOods presents an example of one
who challenges the concept of race as it is currently
understood. WOods's mother, Kultida, labels herself as Asian
while his father, Earl, calls himself Black. Tiger Woods
wishes to be seen as multiracial. Yet his logical argument

has been met with resistance. Woods's call for recognition

2Fields, "Slavery, Race, and Ideology," 96; Fields
states, "If race lives on today, it does not live on because
we have inherited it from our forebears of the seventeenth
century or the eighteenth or nineteenth, but because we
continue to create it today," 117; Ian F. Haney Lépez, "The
Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion,
Fabrication, and Choice," Harvard Civil Rights-Civil
Liberties Law Review 29, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 61.

3The scholarly debate on race as a social versus
biological construction is highlighted in two opposing
articles, Haney Lopez's "The Social Construction of Race,"
and Walter Benn Michaels', "Autobiography of an Ex-White Man:
Why Race is Not a Social Construction," (Transition: An
International Review 73, vol. 7, no. 1, 122-43). This is a
special issue, titled "The White Issue" reprinted by Duke
University Press, 1998.

of his multiracial identity harkens back to Homer A. Plessy's
undertaking in Plessy v; Ferguson (1896). Plessy wanted his
seven-eighths White "blood" counted. As seen through Plessy
and Woods, persons of multiracial ancestry have asserted the
recognition of their full ancestry, including their
whiteness, through various forms. For example, at one point,
mulattoes were seen as a separate racial group because they
possessed both Black and White ancestry.

In spite of claims like Plessy and WOods's to the prized
title of whiteness, according to the rule of hypodescent,
multiracial people with Black ancestry have been
institutionally recognized solely as Black and often listed
as Black on birth certificates, the census, and school
registration forms. Indeed, many Americans continue to
believe in the same racial constrictions that were alive in
the nineteenth century, such as the "one-drop rule."4

In contrast to the desire of many people with mixed
ancestry to have their multiracial identity recognized, a
group of White writers who disclaim their whiteness exists.
They believe that because of their biracial children they are
no longer White. The notion that a parent's race can be
based upon the ethnicity of his or her children is one of the

areas examined with these parents. It seems odd that White

 

4For the "one-drop rule" see F. James Davis, Who is
Black?: One Nation's Definition (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991); For a creative
interpretation of the importance of the "one—drop rule" see
Walter Benn Michaels, "The No Drop Rule," in Identities, eds.
Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 401-12,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).

parents can lose their whiteness because of having children
with a Black person. Recently, a group of whiteness scholars
who call themselves "race traitors" has emerged. Race
traitors advocate the abolition of the White race in order to
eradicate racism. The White parents reviewed also dismiss
their whiteness and.I will explore whether they fall under
this radical group.5

Although Fields would not be considered a race traitor,
she suggests the need for a revision in the understanding of
race. She continues her argument against race as a
biological fact by presenting an example of the bizarre way
race works, especially when it involves parents and children.
The example Fields's uses is the "well-known anomaly of
American racial convention that considers a white woman
capable of giving birth to a black child but denies that a
black woman can give birth to a white child." Fields'
example demonstrates the problematic definition of biological
race, and presents the mother-child relationship as a valid
vantage point from which to understand race. The insistence
of parents that they are no longer White (some of whom now
claim to be people of color) is compared and contrasted with
Plessy and Woods's declarations. Thus, rejections of

whiteness are exhibited in chapter three of this thesis.6

5Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey, eds., Race Traitor (New
York: Routledge, 1996).

6Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in American
History," in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in
Honor of C. vann Wbodward, eds. J. Morgan Kousser and James
M. McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 149.

In their important book, Racial Fermation in the united
States: From the 19603 to the 19908, authors Michael Omi and
Howard Winant present their theory of "racial formation": ”we
define racial fermation as the sociohistorical process by
which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed,
and destroyed." The principal characters in this thesis—
Plessy, woods, and the racially transformed parents-are
attempting to reformulate race. They have been chosen
because they each have a stake in whiteness. I will explore
whether the historical legacy of racial formation has
inhibited these agents of change from altering the way race
is generally understood by United States culture or if their
own inability to complicate whiteness in more sophisticated
ways has contained them.7

This study on racial formation opens chapter one with a
look at Homer Plessy's 1890s legal claim to whiteness. This
chapter is followed by one examining Eldrick "Tiger" WOods's
social assertion of his multiracial identity. Chapter three
explores five White parents of Black/biracial children who,
because of their children, contend that they are no longer
merely White. The background of this latter thesis rests on
the recent critical race theory and whiteness studies. Haney
L6pez's definition of race ("I define 'race' as a vast group

of people loosely bound together by historically contingent,

7Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the
united States: From the 19605 to the 19903, rev. 2d ed. (New
York: Routledge, 1994), 55.

socially significant elements of their morphology and/or
ancestry") is employed in this thesis.8

In her work with multiracial individuals, psychologist
Maria P.P. Root discusses the experience for these people as
living in "the borderlands." Root is describing the fluidity
of racial identity in the lives of people with
biracial/multiracial racial identity. She argues

The average American's limited ability to think about

race results in a limited ability to converse about

race. Our racial vocabulary provides border markers
that are rigid reflections upon our history of race
relations and racial classification. Without the
experience of recognizing race in all its manifestations
and shades, we can not [sic] shift its meaning,
deconstruct it, or combine it.9
Shifting, deconstructing, and/or combining race are key
strategies to understanding race better. Even if these steps
lead only to the acknowledgment of the flaws of race, they
might help to improve poor race relations and racial
discrimination, which impair the United States.

Echoing Root, sociologist Paul Gilroy suggests the
dangers of the continued obsession with racial purity. He
states:

Against this choice stands another, more difficult

option: the theorisation of creolisation, métissage,

mestizaje, and hybridity. From this viewpoint of
ethnic absolutism, this would be a litany of pollution

and impurity. These terms are rather unsatisfactory
ways of naming the process of cultural mutation and

 

8Haney L6pez, "The Social Construction of Race," 7.

9Maria P.P. Root, ed., The.Multiracial EXperience:
Racial Borders as the New Frontier (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, Inc., 1996), xxii—xxiii.

restless (dis)continuity that exceed racial discourse

and avoid capture by its agent8.1°
Gilroy illustrates that once "cultural nationalism" is
discarded, there is a lack of language to discuss this
unnamed racial territory.

It is my task to raise questions in this study that will
prod readers toward a more comprehensive conception of race,
in all its fluidity, reality, and fiction. At first glance,
the people in this thesis offer a glimmer of hope that, in
the spirit of Root and Gilroy, they have found new ways to
engage with the idea of race and perhaps a reduction in
racism. Despite some interesting maneuvers with language and
racial terms, the persons studied here often reinscribe the
same constrictions found in race since the 18908.
Nonetheless, they do offer creative ways of looking at race
on a personal level, which affects the larger public
discussions. Ultimately, they reveal that the category of
whiteness is a bankrupt space for the advancement of racial
understanding; instead, for those studied herein, whiteness

has proven to be a place for identity politics and games.

10Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic:.Mbdernity and Double
Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 2.

|

 

Chapter 1

WHITBNESS: "THE MASTER-KEY THAT UNLOCKS THE GOLDEN DOOR OF
OPPORTUNITY"11

Whiteness as the embodiment of white privilege transcended
mere belief or preference; it became usable property, the
subject of the law's regard and protection. In this respect
whiteness, as an active property, has been used and enjoyed.
Cheryl 1. Harris, "Whiteness as Property."12

In her significant article, "Whiteness as Property,"
legal scholar Cheryl Harris discusses the value of being
"White" in the United States. She analyzes the rise of
whiteness as a marker of racial identity to the level of
property. The epigraph, which is taken from Harris's essay,
is critical to understanding whiteness. A8 Harris suggests,
whiteness involves more than racial designation. It raises
issues of exclusion and racial hierarchy, as well as the
ability to determine who may benefit from the privileges
accorded to Whites in the United States. Harris utilizes the

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case to illustrate the protection

 

11The title comes from "Brief for Homer A. Plessy by
Albion W. Tourgée" File Copies of Briefs 1895, VIII (October
term, 1895) wherein he questions the worth of whiteness,
stating: "Indeed, is it not the most valuable sort of
property, being the master-key that unlocks the golden door
of opportunity?", in Otto H. Olsen, ed., The Thin Disguise:
Turning Point in Negro History, Plessy v. Ferguson, A
Documentary Presentation 1864-1896 (New York: Humanities
Press, 1967): 83.

12Cheryl I. Harris, "Whiteness as Property," Harvard Law
Review 106 (June 1993): 1734. Whiteness historian David
Roediger judges that Harris's article is "perhaps the most
important historical treatment of whiteness since W.E.B. Du
Bois's Black Reconstruction." (David R. Roediger, ed., Black
on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White, [New
York: Schocken Books, 1998], 12).

of whiteness in law. Although Harris only briefly examines
Plessy, an in-depth analysis of Homer Plessy's claim to the
recognition of his White ancestry allows insights into
contemporary debates about racial categories and whiteness.

Rather than summarizing the historical facts of the
case, the focus herein is on understanding the questions
raised by Plessy's demand for all aspects of his racial
identity to be taken into account by the Supreme Court. In
looking at Plessy's case one may ask what and who decides the
racial make-up of an individual? The Supreme Court's ruling
in Plessy illustrates that one's ancestry determines race.
However, Haney L6pez argues:

Race is not hereditary; our parents do not impart to us

our race. Instead, society attaches specific

significance to our ancestry and appearance, and in that

system of meanings lie the origins of our race.13
Thus, race is determined by one's subject position in society
in conjunction with her or his physical appearance and
lineage.14

On June 7, 1892, as part of a test case challenging
Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, thirty-year-old Homer
Adolph Plessy boarded a train in New Orleans bound for

Covington, Louisiana. Plessy, an "octoroon," sat in the car

 

13Haney Lopez, "The Social Construction of Race," 38.

14My account of the Plessy case derives primarily from
these four sources: Keith weldon Medley, "The Sad Story of
How 'Separate But Equal' was Born," Smithsonian (February
1994): 104-17; Olsen, The Thin Disguise; Charles Edwards
O'Neill, "Separate But Equal," America, 1 April 1995, 13-4;
Charles A. Lofgren, The Plessy Case: A Legal-Historical
Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

designated for "Whites Only." The conductor asked Plessy if
he was "colored." When Plessy answered "yes," he was
informed that he would have to move to the "colored" car.
Plessy refused, was arrested by a private detective, and
jailed. Thus, after extensive planning by a local New
Orleans Citizens' Committee to challenge the law that
segregated train cars, the famous case, later known as Plessy
v. Ferguson, officially commenced.15

The Separate Car Act (1890) that Plessy was protesting
required "equal, but separate, accommodations for the white
and colored races" in coaches of passenger trains. The
Citizens' Committee that constructed the test case consisted
of many prominent "free persons of color," including some
"Creoles." The Committee raised funds to challenge the Jim
Crow legislation and enlisted the aide of author, former
judge, and attorney Albion W. Tourgée. One of the nation's
greatest champions for the rights of Blacks at the time,
Tourgée an enthusiastic choice of the Committee, took the

case for free. ‘6

 

15The Separate Car Act is also referred to as Act 111.
Plessy was charged with violating Section 2; "Octoroon,"
meaning one-eighth "Black," while an offensive term in
today's language, was used in Plessy's time, Plessy v.
Ferguson, 163. S. 537, 538 (1896); Historian Brook Thomas
argues that the Committee's "challenge received some silent
support from railroad companies, which did not like the added
expense of providing separate cars. By prearrangement, the
railroad conductor and a private detective detained Plessy
when he sat in the forbidden coach," Brook Thomas, ed.,
Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents, (Boston:
Bedford Books, 1997), 5.

16Thomas, Plessy v. Ferguson, 4; 5.

10

Before the Homer Plessy case, the group had tested
another using the son of one of its leaders, Daniel F.
Desdunes, also an octoroon. The prosecution dropped the
Desdunes case because it involved interstate travel, thereby
violating the "commerce clause of the federal constitution."
Consequently, the Committee turned to Plessy to help them
with their next legal challenge of the segregation statute.T7

Since the Plessy case recently marked its centennial,
there is a resurgence of interest in the legal ruling that
formally established the "separate but equal" doctrine;
however, little has been written about Plessy the person.
Born in 1862, Plessy was a local shoemaker at the time of the
case. Journalist Keith weldon Medley offers the most
revealing account of Homer Plessy in his 1994 Smithsonian
article. Medley writes," Apparently Plessy left no papers.
City records, however, tell a good deal about him and . . .
where he lived. He began making shoes in 1879, married
Louise Bordenave in 1888 and attended mass." It is unclear
how Plessy became involved with the Citizens' Committee; but
he did participate in other civic organizations, which may

have led to his involvement.18

 

l7Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 13.

18For the silence on the Plessy decision at the time it
was rendered see A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Shades of
Freedbm: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American -
Legal Process (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 244
note 50; see also Samira Kawash, Dislocating the Color Line:
Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in AfricaneAmerican
Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 94;
and Lofgren, The Plessy Case, 196-99. For the recent
resurgence of interest see the many conferences and
commemorations held in observance of the centennial and.whole

11

Medley suggests, "One of the reasons that Homer Plessy
was picked for the job was that he had fair skin." In
developing a strategy with one of the Committee members for
the test case, attorney and journalist Louis A. Martinet,
Tourgée suggested that a light-skinned Black person be used
so that the arbitrariness of determining one's race could be
highlighted. Clearly, Plessy was the type of person Tourgée
had envisioned, as Plessy insisted "that the mixture of
colored blood was not discernible in him." Therefore, Plessy
phenotypically could have "passed" as White, explaining why
he had to inform the train conductor of his race.19

Since Plessy's objections to the validity of the 1890
Act relied heavily on his phenotype, the deliberate choice to
use a light-skinned or White—looking Black person needs to be
further examined. Many scholars have cited this issue as a
contentious one, especially in their notes sections. In a
strategy letter from.Martinet to Tourgée, Martinet writes,
"Now as to your suggestions.[] 1. It would be quite
difficult to have a lady too nearly white refused admission
to a 'white‘ car." He then adds how difficult it would be
for Tourgée to discern Whites from Blacks in a city as

racially divergent as New Orleans. Thus, it seems as though

 

journals dedicated to the topic including: "Racism and the

Law: The Legacy and Lessons of Plessy," Law and Philosophy

16(3), (1997); And Georgia State university Law.Review 12,°
no. 4, (June 1996); Medley, "The Sad Story of 'Separate But
Equal' Was Born," 106.

19Medley, "The Sad Story," 112; Letter from "Louis A.
Martinet to Albion W. Tourgée," October 5, 1891, Olsen, The
Thin Disguise, 56; See Plessy, 163 U.S. at 538.

12

Martinet is in agreement with Tourgée over the use of a
light-skinned Black. However, historian Otto H. Olsen
writes, "He also reported his concern over accusations from
darker Negroes that those involved in the test project were
all 'nearly white or wanted to pass for white.'" In his
endnotes, Olsen advises seeing another letter written three
weeks after this one, "stating that Martinet was mistaken
about the objections from darker Negroes." From this note,
it is not clear whether Martinet was correcting himself or if
Tourgée was disagreeing with him.20

Harris advances the argument by suggesting in her
footnotes that "Black leadership objected that such a
strategy, even if successful, would mitigate conditions only
for those Blacks who appeared to be white." She also
maintains that if Tourgée's strategy had prevailed, the
hierarchy of light-skinned Blacks ahead of their dark-skinned
counterparts would have continued the privileging of
whiteness. However, Harris records legal scholar Jack
Greenberg's opinion that if Tourgée's strategy had worked,
the difficulty in administering the law because of people
whose race was unclear might have caused its abandonment.21

In her creative essay on Plessy and "passing," English
professor Amy Robinson asserts in her notes that "much of the

black community of Louisiana . . . took issue with Tourgée'

 

20Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 56; 12; 29 note 14.

21Harris, "Whiteness as Property," 1747 note 179. See
Jack Greenberg, Litigation for Social Change: Methods, Limits
and Role in Democracy, (New York: The Association of the Bar
of the City of New York, 1974): 13-4.

13

and Martinet's proposed case of strategic passing."
Robinson‘s comment ends in agreement with Harris‘s remark
about Black leadership's fear that using a light-skinned
Black would only help light-skinned Blacks and would
therefore create a three-tier caste system. My contention is
not with her characterization of the sentiment of some
members of the Black community but with how she measures the
sentiment of what she calls "much of the black community of
Louisiana." My understanding of the case is that the
Committee was deeply involved but that the Black community in
general was not stirred to action.22
English professor Saidiya V. Hartman maintains that
Tourgée's strategy was more ambitious than one that would
grant merely light-skinned Blacks the full sociocultural
benefits of whiteness. She writes,
In arguing that the reputation of being white was
property, that whiteness possessed pecuniary value, and
that the current rules for its distribution were simply
in service of maintaining black inferiority, Tourg[é]e
overreached the simple demand for a more flexible and
encompassing category of whiteness along the lines of
that in the Caribbean and Latin America and instead
demonstrated the degree to which race, class, and caste
continued to be shaped by slavery.23

Hartman, agreeing with Greenberg, makes her point

convincingly. Tourgée's strategy deserves scrutiny to the

 

22Amy Robinson, "Forms of Appearance of Value: Homer
Plessy and the Politics of Privacy," in Perfbrmance and
Cultural Politics, ed. Elin Diamond, (New York: Routledge,
1996), 257 note 17.

23Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror,
Slavery, and SelfeMaking in.Nineteenth-Century America, (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 195.

14

degree that it represented a leap from the Court's ideologies
on race and therefore was unrealistic for the time. Yet,
while his desire to assist only a particular group of Blacks
was obviously restrictive, to condemn it out of hand is an
overly simplistic reading of the case.

Tourgée's case relied on the Thirteenth Amendment's
abolishing of slavery in 1865 and the Fourteenth Amendment
adopted in 1868, which granted citizenship to all people born
or naturalized in the United States. Through its clauses,
the Fourteenth Amendment outlines federal rights of these
citizens. In a brief for Plessy, Tourgée argued that
Louisiana's Separate Car Act was unconstitutional because it
conflicted with the Thirteenth Amendment. Tourgée believed
that the Thirteenth Amendment not only abolished slavery but
that "[i]t meant to restore to him the rights of person and
property—the natural rights of man—of which he had been
deprived by slavery." English professor Brook Thomas adds,
"The assortment of people according to race, Tourgée argued,
violated the Thirteenth Amendment by perpetuating the
essential features of slavery." Overall, Tourgée maintained
that the "Jim Crow" train law was slavery disguised and
therefore illegal. In this particular instance, train
conductors were the new masters, deciding who sat where; in

essence, determining who was slave and who was free.'~"4

 

24Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 101; Thomas, Plessy v.
Ferguson, 31.

15

In the majority ruling, the Court curtly dismissed
Plessy's counsel's Thirteenth Amendment charge, stating "That
it does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment, which
abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as
punishment for crime, is too clear for argument." The Court
narrowly defined slavery, refusing to add racial distinctions
in segregation to their definition. Instead, since Plessy
was separated because of race, the Court could have
interpreted the discrimination against Plessy as a
continuance of slavery. 25

In his Fourteenth Amendment plea, which was much longer
and more detailed than his Thirteenth Amendment plea, Tourgée
argued that Plessy's rights laid out in the clauses had also
been violated by the Separate Car Act. Thomas asserts

In addition to pointing out how the law violated

Fourteenth Amendment guarantees to equal protection and

due process, Tourgée tried to establish . . . that the

Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments created affirmative

rights.26
Affirmative rights might have persuaded the Court that Plessy
had been wronged but the justices did not see this concept
within the Amendments. Tourgée constructed a massive brief
detailing the instances where Plessy‘s rights had been
infringed upon. It is here that Plessy's legal claim to
whiteness is exhibited.

The brief begins with a series of questions wherein

Tourgée asks about the construction of race and the ability

 

25P1e88y v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 542 (1896).
26Thomas, Plessy v. Ferguson, 31.

16

of the State to determine who fits into particular racial
categories. In the section "Points of Plaintiff’s
Contention," Plessy's claim to whiteness emerges. Hi8
attorneys write, "we shall . . . contend that, in any mixed
community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race,
in this instance the white race, is property, in the same
sense that a right of action or inheritance is property.”
The attorneys argued that since the 1890 Act empowered the
train conductor to assign randomly a person's race, that the
”due process" clause was violated because the person was
being deprived of his or her property ("this reputation . . .
has an actual pecuniary value").27
Tourgée furthered his argument about the significance of
the reputation of being White by posing questions to the
Court. He queried
How much would it be worth to a young man entering upon
the practice of law, to be regarded as a white man
rather than a colored one? Six—sevenths of the
population are white. Nineteenth-twentieths of the
property of the country is owned by white people.
Ninety-nine hundredths of the business opportunities are
in the control of white people. These propositions are
rendered even more startling by the intensity of feeling
which excludes the colored man from the friendship and
companionship of the white man. Probably most white
persons if given a choice, would prefer death to life in
the United States as colored persons. Under these
conditions, is it possible to conclude that the
reputation of being white is not property? Indeed, it

is the most valuable sort of property, being the
master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity?28

 

27See "Brief for Homer A. Plessy by Albion W. Tourgée"
in Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 83.

23Ibid.

17

Tourgée keenly probes the value of whiteness. He
demonstrates the importance of possessing a White racial
identity to enable success in the United States. Tourgée
wants the Court to understand the loss that Plessy sustained
through the mere "eyeball test" of the conductor. Indeed,
Plessy lost, at the same time, his reputation as a White man
and his due process.

Tourgée presented additional key claims. He brought up
a "slippery slope" argument that questions the point where
racial segregation ends. He asked the Court that, if the
State had the right to determine the race of its citizens,
”Why may it not require all red-headed people to ride in a
separate car? Why not require all colored people to walk on
one side of the street and the whites on the other?" Tourgée
was asking where discrimination begins and ends. He wanted
to ascertain the extent of the State's power to make racial
distinctions between its citizens. Tourgée admitted that
”the gist of our case is the unconstitutionality of the
assortment; not the question of equal accommodation." Thus,
it was not the literal separation from Whites to which the
Committee objected; rather, it was the State's ability,
acting through the railroads, to separate Blacks from Whites
based on their race.29

The Court's response to Tourgée's question regarding the
parameters of discrimination is a solid example of the

maintenance of white supremacy. It warrants a close reading.

 

29Ibid., 97-98; 97.

18

The Court ruled that "police power must be reasonable, and
extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the
promotion of public good, and not for the annoyance or
oppression of a particular class." Further, the majority
stated that 'reasonableness' can be determined "with
reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions
of the people." As Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. astutely
queries, "by what rationale does one determine what is
reasonable? There is no litmus test for reasonableness, as
when one is distinguishing an acid from a base." Indeed,
'reasonable' varies according to the context and is even then
difficult to determine.30

The subtext of the Court's statement was that the law
was reasonable as determined by the standards of the White
men on the Supreme Court. The statement regarding the
"promotion for the public good" may be read as for the good
of White people. As proven in the legal manipulations of the
Dred Scott and Slaughter-Hausa cases, the Court was clearly
not taking the "goodF—best interests-of Blacks into account.
Its turning to "established usages, customs, and traditions,"
informs the reader that the laws during slavery and Jim Crow
were used to determine what was 'reasonable.‘ Ultimately,
the 'reasonable' response to Tourgée serves to highlight the

institutional racism of the Court.31

 

3oSee Plessy, 163 U.S. at 550; Higginbotham, Shades of
Freedom, 114.

31Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) (1857);
Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873).

19

Tourgée believed that in addition to the violation of
the "Due Process" clause, the "Equal Protection" clause was
also infringed upon by the Separate Car Act. Specifically,
Tourgée referred to the inclusion in the Act of an exemption
for nurses who took care of children that read, "[Nlothing in
this act shall be construed as applying to nurses attending
children of the other race." Tourgée saw this exception as
an indicator of the real motivation behind the Act: to
maintain White supremacy. Accordingly, he argued,

They do not object to the colored person in an inferior

or menial capacity—a8 a servant or dependent,

ministering to the comfort of the white race—but only
when as a man and a citizen he seeks to claim equal
right and privilege}2
Tourgée made certain to state for the record his doubt that
there were any White nurses for Black children, emphasizing
the disguised racial intent of the Act.33

Plessy's legal team's creative stance on Fourteenth
Amendment issues has been simultaneously heralded and
denounced. In an engaging reading of Plessy v. Ferguson and
Mark Twain's Pudd’nhead Wilson, Eric J. Sundquist calls
Tourgée's argument regarding Plessy's whiteness
"foolishness." Justice Henry Billings Brown, who delivered
the majority opinion for the Court, also felt that Plessy's

contentions were without merit. The Court ruled 7-1 that it

was legal for the railroads to segregate without violating

 

32"Brief for Homer A. Plessy by Albion W. Tourgée" in
Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 99.

33See Plessy, 163 U.S. at 541.

20

any of the three clauses ("privileges or immunities,” "due
process of law," and "equal protection of the laws") of the
Fourteenth Amendment. The Court responded to Tourgée's
probing of the limits of discrimination by stating that the
justices determined where and when it was 'unreasonable.'3‘
As to Plessy's whiteness reputation, the Court agreed
that whiteness was indeed property but that Plessy was not
White and therefore not entitled to this reputation. Simply
stated, Tourgée was correct about the "master-key," yet
Plessy was not allowed to use it. In fact, the Court
suggested that Plessy had been fraudulently using the key.
Likewise, Robinson states, "As a passing subject, Plessy's
presence in a whites-only car could only be recognized as an
act of appropriation and not as a 'legitimate' pursuit of
entitlement." Despite his phenotype and White ancestry,
Plessy was denied access to whiteness and its privileges.35
Tourgée's claim of Plessy's reputation as White not only
derived from Plessy's visual appearance but also from his
seven-eighths White heritage. Tourgée explained
The crime, then, for which he became liable to
imprisonment so far as the court can ascertain, was
that a person of seven—eighths Caucasian blood insisted
in sitting peacefully and quietly in a car the state of
Louisiana had commanded the company to set aside
exclusively for the white race. Where on earth should

he have gone? Will the court hold that a single drop
of African blood is sufficient to color a whole ocean.

 

34Eric J. Sundquist, "Mark Twain and Homer Plessy," in
The New American Studies: Essays from Representations, ed.
Philip Fisher (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991), 124; Plessy, 163 U.S. at 550.

35Plessy, 163 U.S. at 549; Robinson, "Forms of
Appearance of Value," 243.

21

of Caucasian whiteness?36

Tourgée raises the issue of the amount of white "blood"
necessary to determine one's race. Tourgée's questioning of
the power of a single drop of Black blood invokes the idea of
"hypodescent," also known as the "one-drop rule."37

Sociologist F. James Davis defines the "one-drop rule"
as "[t]he nation's answer to the question 'Who is black?’ has
long been that a black is any person with any known African
black ancestry." The tradition of classifying individuals
according to the "one-drop" rule emerged from slavery so that
slaveholders could increase their number of slaves. Thus,
Tourgée was challenging whether the Supreme Court was going
to allow states to continue defining Blacks by a remnant of a
tradition of the now-outlawed institution of slavery.38

The Supreme Court, in fact, ceded to the state of
Louisiana in determining Plessy's racial identity. Louisiana
decided that Plessy's one-eighth Black blood usurped his
seven-eighths White blood, making him completely Black.
However, the amount of Plessy's White blood may have declared
him White in other states. Such a discrepancy clearly

displays the arbitrary nature of racial classification.

 

35"Brief for Homer A. Plessy by Albion W. Tourgée," in
Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 98; My use of the "blood" discourse
in determining race is based on the racist notions in
Plessy's time that "Black blood" was a possible contaminate
of White blood and therefore a threat to White racial purity.

37Davis, Who is Black?, 5; See for an anthropological
discussion of "hypodescent" Marvin Harris, Patterns of Race
in the.Americas (New York: Walker and Company, 1964), 37, 56.

38Davis, Who is Black?, 5;

22

Tourgée blasted the Court on the point of Plessy's
troublesome classification, questioning, "Why not count every
one as white in whom is visible any trace of white blood?
There is but one reason to Wit, the domination of the white
race." Tourgée correctly saw that classifying Plessy as
Black was a continuation of the “legalized caste-distinction
among citizens." Consequently, the enforcement of the one
drop rule limited access towhiteness.39

In her Harvard University senior thesis, Diana Irene
Williams argues against reading Plessy as an assertion of
whiteness. She claims, "Plessy v. Ferguson was not an
octoroon's plea for whiteness; rather, it embodied a direct
challenge to the logic of racial distinction." I agree with
the second-half of her remark that Plessy represents a
challenge to racial distinction. Williams' comment resonates
with Greenberg and Hartman's contention that Tourgée's legal
strategy of employing a light-skinned Black was an effort to
undermine racial classification, with which I concur.
Williams' first statement that Plessy "was not an octoroon's
plea for whiteness" raises questions.40

Why does Williams suggest that the two issues are
mutually exclusive? Rather than a dichotomy of an octoroon
"selling-out" and trying to identity as solely White as

opposed to a heroic objection to race, Plessy may be read as

 

39"Brief for Homer A. Plessy by Albion W. Tourgée," in
Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 85.

40Diana Irene Williams, "New Orleans in the Age of
Plessy v. Ferguson: Interracial Unions and the Politics of
Caste," Senior thesis, Harvard University, 1995, 50.

23

incorporating both. If successful with the Court, part of
Tourgée's argument required the justices to view Plessy as
having a legitimate stake in whiteness because of his seven-
eighths blood. Therefore, Plessy was asserting an
entitlement to his white ancestry as a means of gaining
access to the reputation of whiteness.

My reading is based on the use of the two octoroons,
Desdunes and Plessy, as test cases. Obviously, the legal
strategy centered around getting a "Black" person with a
substantial amount of White ancestry; or, the Committee might
have used either a light-skinned Black with two Black
parents, a mulatto, or a quadroon. The many references in
the Plessy's legal briefs regarding his racial make-up
indicate his desire to be seen as possessing some whiteness.
Let me be clear in stating that, like Williams, I do not read
Plessy's case as a mere plea to be White; rather, I see the
two assertions outlined by Williams as inextricably linked.

Notably, there is some evidence that, in fact, Plessy
did want to be seen as White. Historian Charles Edwards
O'Neill suggests, "Some years after the U.S. Supreme Court
decision of 1896, Plessy listed himself as white, for example
in his 1923 voter registration, and as a member of the
Democratic Party." Plessy might have been passing as White;
or perhaps his racial identity was assigned to him. If, in.

fact, Plessy was passing, then my reading of Plessy

24

simultaneously claiming a value in his whiteness while
desiring to dismantle the racial system is strengthened.“‘1

Although the Court rejected Plessy's whiteness plea, it
did comment on his multiracial identity. The majority stated

It is true that the question of the proportion of

colored blood necessary to constitute a colored

person, as distinguished from a white person, is

one upon which there is a difference of opinion in

the different States. . . . But these are questions

to be determined under the laws of each State and

are not properly put in issue in this case.‘2
Thus, the Court agreed with Plessy's counsel that a
determination needs to be made about who fits into which
particular racial group(s); however, it gave this power to
the states to decide. Accordingly, State's Rights prevailed,
signaling defeat for African-Americans, yet the Court's
acknowledgment of the need for clarity regarding racial
distinctions was significant.

The legal legacy of the Plessy case is still widely
debated. Fifty-eight years after the "separate but equal"
doctrine was formalized in the Plessy decision, the Supreme
Court overturned it with Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Commenting on the foundation of the case, Higginbotham
submits, "There can be no more deceptive approach than when a
Court improperly cites and relies upon cases as having

precedential significance in determining the case in issue."

The Plessy decision is filled with the types of errors

 

41O'Neill, "Separate But Never Equal," 14. Since I do
not know the origin of O'Neill's source, I can only speculate
on this action.

42Plessy, 163 U.S. at 552.

25

Higginbotham discusses. Thus, the case law of the decision
is weak. According to the Supreme Court, Plessy was not
entitled to whiteness, yet, as Harris suggests, the Court's
ruling strengthened whiteness as a legitimate form of
property-‘3

Following the Supreme Court decision on May 18, 1896,
four years after the case began, Plessy faded from the public
arena. Medley recalled, "On January 11, 1897, Homer Plessy
returned to court for sentencing. . . . Plessy changed his
plea to guilty, paid a $25 fine and walked out into the brave
new world of a segregated Louisiana." After the case, Plessy
worked as an insurance salesman. O'Neill concluded, "Before
and after the famous case he [Plessy] lived a quiet life. . .
. He died in New Orleans on March 1, 1925." It is not known
how Plessy felt about the decision or how it might have
affected the quality of his life afterward.“4

In assessing his legacy, historian Mary Frances Berry
argues that "Homer Adolph Plessy is as much a part of the
Black protest tradition as Rosa Parks." Historian Otto Olsen

agreed when he wrote:

 

43See Lofgren, The Plessy Case, 196-99; Barton J.
Bernstein, "Case Law in Plessy v. Ferguson," Jburnal of Negro
History 47, no. 3 (July 1962): 192-8; Also Justice Harlan's'
"Color—blind" dissent continues to praised and criticized,
see for example, T. Alexander Aleininkoff, "Re-Reading
Justice Harlan's Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson: Freedom,
Antiracism, and Citizenship," university of Illinois Law
Review, no. 4 (1992): 961-77; Brown v. Board of Education,
347 U.S. 483 (1954); Higginbotham, Shades of Freedom, 113.

44Medley, "The Sad Story of How 'Separate But Equal' Was
Born," 116; O'Neill, "Separate But Never Equal," 14.

26

The memory of Plessy will be properly recalled only to
the extent that there are still those possessed of the
conscience and the courage to fight for the causes that
may not achieve respectability for generations and to
resist injustices even when sanctioned by their own
national leaders and law. Only so long as there are
those to follow in the footsteps of a Plessy or Tourgée,
a Martinet or Harlan, is there hope that other
struggles, too, can eventually be won.45

It is a tribute to Homer Plessy and the other crusaders for
justice that these two scholars grant such a positive legacy
to a figure virtually abandoned in history. The case remains
under review; yet beyond perfunctory comments about the key
figure, Plessy is curiously absent. The Plessy case is often
remembered for the "separate but equal" doctrine with
Plessy's claim to whiteness unnoticed.

Tourgée cleverly offers a tactic in his brief for Plessy
that required the Supreme Court Justices to consider
seriously racial discrimination. Tourgée asked the justices
to imagine themselves waking up transformed "with a black
skin and curly hair" and facing Jim Crow. Tourgée suggests
that the justices would be outraged after encountering the
second-class citizenship which they would receive as Blacks
in the 18908. A hundred years after Tourgée questions the
justices, political scientist Andrew Hacker writes about a

similar experiment he conducted with his students whereby

they were also transformed into Black people.46

 

45Mary Frances Berry, "Plessy V. Ferguson," Emerge, May
1996, 54; Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 27-8.

46"Brief for Homer A. Plessy by Albion W. Tourgée" in
Olsen, The Thin Disguise, 102; Andrew Hacker, Two Nations:
Black and White, Separate, Hestile, unequal, new and rev. ed.
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1995).

27

The students were offered compensation for having to
face life as a Black person in the United States. Hacker
relays the results:

When this parable has been put to white students, most

seemed to feel that it would not be out of place to ask

for $50 million, or $1 million for each coming black
year. And this calculation conveys, as well as
anything, the value white people place on their own
skins. . . . The money would be used, as best it could
to buy protection from the discriminations and dangers
white people know they would face once they were
perceived to be black.‘7
The significant amount of money that the students considered
to be compensation for living as a Black person in the United
States of America effectively illustrates the benefits of
white privilege. Thus, one hundred years after Tourgée made
his argument to the Supreme Court about the justices losing
their whiteness, students feel that this same whiteness is
yet worth millions.

The value of whiteness has remained the same or even
increased. Legal scholar Derrick Bell, one of the first to
examine whiteness as property, concludes

The law has mostly encouraged and upheld what Mr. Plessy

argued in Plessy v. Ferguson was a property right in

whiteness, and those at the top of the society have
been benefitted [sic] because the masses of whites are
too occupied in keeping blacks down to note the large

gap 2ftween their shaky status and that of whites on
top 0

 

47Hacker, TWo Nations, 36.

48Derrick Bell, "White Superiority in America: Its Legal
Legacy, Its Economic Costs," Villanova Law Review 33,
(1988): 776.

28

Although I concur with Bell's suggestion that there is a
hierarchy amongst Whites, the boundaries of race solidified
in the Plessy case suggests that all Whites are intended
beneficiaries of white privilege. Furthermore, Hacker's
exercise proves that all Whites fear losing their status, not
just those "on top." The maintenance of white privilege
necessitates understanding exactly who benefits from it.
Accordingly, in order for Whites to maintain power and
privilege, they must limit access to their group. One of the
ways that the exclusivity of whiteness is maintained is
through the one-drop rule. In articulating its history,
Davis maintains,
The separate-but equal doctrine established in the
Plessy case is no longer the law, as result of the
judicial and legislative successes of the civil rights
movement, but the nation’s legal definition of who is
black remains unchanged.49
The "judicial note" of who is Black that Davis argues the
Supreme Court took in 1896 still remains. Despite Plessy's
plea, only Whites who are deemed "pure"-free of non-White
ancestry-are allowed to benefit from whiteness. As discussed
in the next chapter, even a multimillionaire like golfer

Eldrick "Tiger" Woods cannot purchase whiteness: like other

individuals of mixed racial heritage who possess some "Black

 

49Davis, Who is Black?, 9.

29

blood," he remains bound by the same racial logic found in

P1essy.5°

 

50As recently as 1986, the Supreme Court refused to
strike down the one-drop rule. The state of Louisiana's
Susie Guillory Phipps case, where Mrs. Phipps who thought she
was White was declared Black by the Court because of her 3/32
Black ancestry, is mentioned in Davis, Who is Black?, 8-11..
See much of the legal critical race theory for the
maintenance of whiteness. Also see whiteness studies: Noel
Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge,
1995); Roediger, Black on White; David R. Roediger, Towards
the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and
working Class History (New York: Verso, 1994); George
Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White
People Profit From Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1998).

30

Chapter 2
"I'M JUST WHO I AM": TIGER WOODS'S MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY51

Tiger, wake up. You're black. You're not green, you're
not yellow, you're not purple, you're not Asian, you're
not Cablasian [sic], you're black. Tiger WOods is
fooling himself to think that just because he's Tiger
WOods that he has transcended everything else here in
society. This is the real world. In the—in the real
world, the one drop rule still applies.
Terence Moore, The Oprah Winfrey Show62
Much has been written about the young golf phenomenon
Eldrick "Tiger" woods. Rather than focusing on his
professional skills as a golfer, this chapter examines
Woods's multiracial identity and his racial self-definition.
Unlike Homer Plessy's legal claim to whiteness, WOods's
racial identity assertion has been a social one. In other
words, Woods has not gone to court for recognition of his
White ancestry; rather, as a celebrity athlete, WOods has
argued publicly for acknowledgment of his multiracial
background. As evidenced in the above epigraph, despite
Woods's popularity and wealth, many individuals refuse to
respect his desire for recognition as multiracial and

maintain that he is Black, a perspective similar to that

which resulted in Plessy's dismissal. Thus, I am defining

 

511n response to Oprah Winfrey's query of WOods's racial
identity, Woods stated: "For me, I'm—I'm just who I am,"
"Tiger Woods," The Oprah Winfrey Show, 24 April 1997, 16.
The quotations taken directly from the Winfrey transcripts
include grammatical errors and misspoken words.

52Terence Moore, "Tiger WOods Race Controversy," The
Oprah Winfrey Show, 29 April 1997: 8. Moore is a journalist
with the Atlanta JOurnal-Constitution.

31

Tiger's claim to whiteness through his desire for his entire
ancestry to be recognized, including his whiteness.53
Although not always recognized, WOods's parents, Earl
and Kultida (called "Tida"), are multiracial themselves. In
his book Playing Through, Earl WOods writes, "Like me, Tida
comes from a very mixed multiethnic heritage." Earl is half-
Black, a quarter Native American, and a quarter Chinese.
Tida is half Thai, a quarter Chinese and a quarter White.
Although they have multiracial backgrounds, Earl refers to
himself as Black, while Tida identifies herself as Asian.
Yet because of their mixed ancestry, Earl writes, "No wonder
we consider our Tiger a universal kid. We've got Africa,
Asia, Europe, and America covered."54
Tiger Woods learned early that the multiracial identity
of his parents, and in turn his own racial identity, marked
him as different from Whites. In his biography of Tiger, Tim
Rosaforte recounts Tiger's early years, noting:
They [The WOodses] were the only interracial family in
an all-white neighborhood. Their home was pelted by
limes and BB-gun fire while Tida was carrying Tiger.

He was the only black child in his kindergarten class.
The older white children once tied him to a tree.55

 

53See the many biographies written on Tiger Woods,
including the ones I consulted: Tim Rosaforte, Tiger Woods:
The Makings of a Champion (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1997); John Strege, Tiger: A Biography of Tiger Wbods, (New
York: Broadway Books, 1997). Since Eldrick "Tiger" WOods has
been marketed as "Tiger" I alternate between referring to him
by this and his last name, especially when I am
distinguishing him from his parents.

54Earl Woods, Playing Through: Straight Talk on Hard
Work, Big Dreams and.Adventures with Tiger (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1998): 56; Winfrey, "Tiger woods,"
24 April 1997, 9; Woods, Playing Through, 56.

55Rosaforte, Tiger Whods, 20.

32

While being interviewed on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Tiger
recalled the event Rosaforte notes affirming that on the
first day of kindergarten he was tied to a tree, called
monkey and nigger, and stoned. From a very early age Tiger
understood he was seen as racially different from his White
peers.“5

Contrary to Plessy, Tiger's phenotype marks him as non-
White and thus as a target for his White elementary school
peers. Although he may look non-White to some, WOods's
racial status has been a controversial national topic.
During his first interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey,
the television host noted the racial make-up of his parents

and asked Tiger how he identified racially:

Mr. T. WOOQ§: . . .a little funny thing is, growing
up, I came up with this name. I'm a Cablinasian.
EIEFREY: A Cablinasian.

Mr. T. troops: Ca, Caucasian; b1, black; in, Indian;
Asian-Cablinasian.

WINFREY: That's what you call yourself?

HR. '1'. WOODS: Yeah.

urns-gar: Yeah.57
Later, in the same show, Winfrey returns to Tiger's racial
identity and tells Earl Woods, ” Although [Tiger] may [have]

called himse—self [sic] a cabla-cablasia . . . Cablinasian,

 

56Winfrey, "Tiger WOods," 24 April 1997, 7.

57Ibid., 10. Since it has been criticized, I am
including part of the dialogue after Winfrey's initial "Can
we get this straight? What do you call yourself? Do you
call yourself African-American?" questions. The dialogue is
quoted directly from the Winfrey transcript and thus the
"Mr." versus "Winfrey" construct is not my own.

33

when people see him, they see a black face." Winfrey
uncomfortably grapples with the awkward term and changes the
question from one of terminology to that of skin color.58

Winfrey offers some insight on racial politics when she
suggests that despite Tiger's self-definition, his skin
color, to most people, determines his race. Although
Winfrey's logic is problematic since all African-Americans do
not have dark skin, her racial assumptions are widely shared
by others in the culture and raise the important question of
who determines one's race. Can Tiger WOods call himself
whatever race he wants, even a race that is not listed on the
U.S. census? Or is race determined externally? And if it is
determined by other's viewing, then does it change in various
contexts?

In response to Winfrey's further inquiries regarding his
race, Woods declares his racial identity. He argues, ”I'm
just who I am. . . . I'mpwhatever you see in front of me—in
front of you, that's what you got. It doesn't matter what's
on the inside as far as my genetic code is." Tiger is just
”who he is," however, his concession to others that "I'm
whatever you see" displays an inconsistency regarding racial
categories. Different people will see various races when
they look at Tiger. Consequently, by allowing others to
determine his racial identity with their visual perception,
Tiger is relinquishing his own agency for self-

identification, rendering his race an unstable element. Such

 

53Ibid., 15.

34

capitulation enables people to see if Tiger fits neatly into
their racial stereotypes of particular groups.59

In addition to explaining the racial designation Tiger
uses to define himself, he also told Winfrey that he objects
to being called African-American. He states, "They say pick
one. I can't. I usually pick African-American-Asian,
because those are the two households I was raised under."
Despite his physical appearance, Woods wants to ensure that
both his mother's Asian heritage and his father's Black
heritage are recognized within him. Five days after Tiger's
initial appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Winfrey did
another show, entitled "Tiger Woods Race Controversy." The
show focused on two controversies: first, on golfer Frank
"Fuzzy" Zoeller's racist remarks directed at Tiger after
WOods won the Masters golf tournament; second, on the uproar
after Tiger called himself a "Cablinasian" and subsequent
declaration of his objection to being labeled African-
American .50

In an April 13, 1998, interview following WOods' Masters
win, fellow-golfer Zoeller referred to Woods as a "little
boy" and encouraged the media to tell WOods not to "serve
fried chicken next year. . . . or collard greens, or whatever
the hell they serve." (The winner of the Masters chooses the
menu for the tournament dinner the following year.)

Zoeller's "little boy" reference and his stereotypical

 

59Ibid., 16.

60Ibid., 16; "Tiger Woods Race Controversy, The Oprah
Winfrey Show, 29 April 1997.

35

comments regarding food choices of African-Americans clearly
attack WOods. Moreover, Zoeller's callous remarks once again
reveal the attack on WOods to be motivated by his non-
whiteness.61

The second "Race Controversy" of the show needs to be
explored in depth. In her follow-up show, Winfrey defends
Tiger's racial self-definition and plays the excerpt earlier
discussed where Woods talks about his Cablinasian term.

After showing the clip, Winfrey tries to defend WOods:

OK. He does not say he calls himself that now; he said

that he called himself that as a child. He was little.

Here's what he did say, because I—I realized he was

getting himself in a lot of trouble, so I went back and

asked the question again. I realized he was in more
trouble than he knew when he said it...62
Although the transcript does not support it, Winfrey contends
that Woods only called himself a Cablinasian when he was
younger and that he now sees himself as African-American and
Asian-American. Yet Woods only said that he made the name up
as a child, not that he has discarded it.

Winfrey rationalizes Woods's use of the term Cablinasian
by suggesting that he was only a child and therefore was
excused. Although for different motives, Winfrey follows
Fuzzy Zoeller's lead and also reduces Tiger woods to a boy.
Winfrey makes Woods's racial transgression acceptable by

passing it off as the foolishness of a child's play. The

boundaries of acceptable race behavior and language are

 

61Winfrey, "Tiger WOods Race Controversy," 29 April
1997, 3.

52Ibid., 7.

36

exhibited in Winfrey's insistence to her audience that Tiger
had erred as a youth. At this juncture, WOods had not
suggested that he only used the Cablinasian as a child. In
fact, Woods had made it clear that he was uncomfortable with
being labeled "African-American." The public reaction to
Woods' refusal to be labeled a single race may have caused
him to redefine himself, or at least to discontinue the use
of his term.

Also enlightening in Winfrey's defense of Tiger, is her
statement-which she makes twice—that she knew Tiger was,
"getting himself in a lot of trouble." It is not clear what
kind of trouble and who exactly Woods is in trouble with--
Winfrey's audience or the Black and Asian-American
communities who Winfrey asserts want to "claim" him?
Although it is unclear who WOods might have offended, it is
evident that Winfrey believes that there is some type of
"racial police" who are offended by WOods' comments.63

Winfrey clearly felt that journalist Terence Moore was a
person with whom WOods was “getting into trouble," as the
talk show host features his comments after defending WOods.
Moore's reaction to Tiger's racial self-definition stands as
the epigraph of this chapter. Moore attacks WOods, arguing
that he is in racial denial. As ammunition, Moore utilizes'
the previously discussed one-drop rule to demand that WOods

"wake up" and realize that he is Black:

 

53Ibid., 7.

37

In the—in the real world, the one-drop rule still
applies. In the old days, there used to be laws in the
book that if you had one drop of black blood in you, you
were black. Well that's still unofficially the case in
the minds of many in America. One drop of black blood,
you're black. Tiger, you are black.64
Notably, Moore himself is Black, and may be a representative
of the community which Oprah says wants to claim Tiger.
Ironically, Moore is clinging to the same racial logic which
White slaveholders invented to oppress and increase the
number of Black slaves. Writer Itabari Njeri blasts the
theory Moore adheres to as she refers to it as "the little-
dab'll-do-ya rule."65
In spite of his adherence to oppressive racial logic,
Moore hardly stands alone in his criticism of woods. An
audience member agrees with Moore, stating, "Can I just say,
Tiger, it is—it seems to be in self-denial." Winfrey defends
Woods and disagrees with both Moore and the audience member.
She challenges them by referring to Woods's pattern of
checking the two boxes African-American and Asian, on forms
that require racial background. However, the audience member
stands by his convictions and retorts: "Once he started
saying—he put the black in the middle. That's a kind of
denial." Thus, this unidentified audience member thought

Tiger Woods was not recognizing his racial identity because

in his use of the term Cablinasian, "Bl" for Black comes in

 

54Ibid., 8.

65Itabari Njeri, The Last Plantation: Color, Conflict,
and Identity: Reflections of a New Wbrld Black (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 170.

38

the middle. WOods's refusal to adhere to hypodescent, where
Black stands as the subordinate racial group and therefore
takes precedence, causes this audience member to see WOods as
a person denying his race.66

Journalist Isabel Wilkerson profiled Tiger in the 1997
Essence Men's Issue and offers commentary on WOods's racial
self-definition. For the article, the journalist interviewed
a Black female social worker attending her first golf match
to see Woods. Wilkerson states, "This Cablinasian thing does
not sit well with her." Similar to the Oprah show audience
member, Wilkerson's interviewee also criticizes Cablinasian
because "'It puts Caucasian first,‘ she says. 'I just hope
he matures to see the world as it really is.'" One might ask
if Woods had placed Black first in his term, would this have
appeased these members of the "racial police?"67

It is apparent that the racial police have rules in the
game and that WOods has broken them. The dismissal of
Woods's use of "Cablinasian" by his critics illustrates the
rejection of Woods to lay stake to his multiracial identity
and therefore to the whiteness within this declaration.
Furthermore, the two critics who objected to the construction
of Cablinasian as placing whiteness first offer evidence to
the rejection of WOods's claim to White identity. Wilkerson

sheds light on the Black community's feelings over the issue.

 

66Winfrey, "Tiger Woods Race Controversy," 29 April
1997, 11.

67Isabel Wilkerson, "The All-American," Essence,
November 1997, 100.

39

Tiger "Told Oprah he didn't feel comfortable being
called Black. It felt like a slight we had heard before, a
sweet distancing from the rest of us." Wilkerson posits
Woods as trying to escape from his Blackness. She criticizes
WOods's use of the term Cablinasian, stating that its usage
"made it worse by trying to fight one ill-fitting racial
designation (Black or Asian) with an even more contrived one.
It seemed both a naive plea for a color-blind, colorless
America." Wilkerson offers more insight when she concedes
that Woods may be ahead of his time in refusing to be limited
by racial classification, but offers that WOods has also
missed the point of Blackness as a "political statement, a
cultural declaration. "58

Wilkerson argues that Blackness is political and
expands on her assertion by suggesting that, historically, by
defining oneself as Black

. . . was turning the one-drop rule on its head and

saying not only do we 'have some Black in us,’ we are

Black. Which is why 30 million people of 30 million

different hues, including the Halle Berrys born of a

White parent, call themselves Black or African-American

when they know there is more than just that blood

running through their veins.69
Although she concedes the political nature of Blackness,
Wilkerson does not fully appreciate this point. In a
commentary on the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings,

sociologist Jacquelyn Johnson Jackson further explains

Blackness as political. Jackson states

 

58Ibid.
59Ibid.

40

Thus, it is fitting and proper that we recognize the

fact that Native American Blacks are highly diversified

by various physiological, psychological, sociocultural,

and political factors. Our recognition of this

diversity is long overdue, and, until we accept it we

will falter by the road in just believing that because

you are black you are committed to blackness.7o
Blackness is more than membership in a race, as Jackson
explains. The decision to commit to Blackness is a choice.
Wilkerson wants WOods to follow in the path of other Blacks
with multiracial ancestry who have chosen Blackness. She
sees this route as his only choice.

Wilkerson, however, leaves out the valid possibility of
a "multiracial movement," which is trying to create a
separate "multiracial" category for people who have two
racially different parents. Thus, some of the "Halle Berrys"
like Tiger Woods have broken ranks and formed a new political
stance. In refusing to accept the one-drop rule, they have
chosen to identify simultaneously with both, or in some cases
all, of their races instead.71

In her statement, Wilkerson alludes to the multiracial

ancestry of Blacks when she mentions "more than just that

blood." Wilkerson is referring to what Davis explains: "From

 

7oJacquelyne Johnson Jackson, "'Them Against Us': Anita
Hill v. Clarence Thomas," in Court of Appeal: The Black
Community Speaks Out on the Racial and Sexual Politics of
Clarence Thomas vs. Anita Hill, eds. Robert Chrisman and
Robert L. Allen (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 103.

71For the multiracial movement see Root, ed., The
.Multiracial EXperience; and Naomi Zack, ed., American.Mixed
Race: The Culture of.Microdiversity (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 1995. Actress Halle Berry identifies
as Black yet she has a White mother and a Black father.

41

75 to well over 90 percent of all American blacks apparently
have some white ancestry, and up to 25 percent have Indian
background." The large number of Blacks with White ancestry
reaffirms the political nature of identifying as Black.
Moreover, it strengthens Wilkerson's argument that although
Blacks have White ancestry, they have historically defined
themselves as Black.72

Wilkerson illustrates the schism in thought that exists
between the two groups. She and Terence Moore stand on the
one hand with tradition. On the other hand, Tiger WOods and
the supporters of the multiracial movement desire new
configurations of race. Both of these groups believe
unabashedly that their interpretation of race is the key to
the future. Njeri outlines the division, suggesting that
"a bitter battle has been brewing for decades between the
traditionally defined Black population and a new generation
of multiracial Americans of partial African descent who do
not want to be defined solely by their African ancestry."73

In his pioneering book, New People: Mdscegenation and
.Mu1attoes in the united States, historian Joel Williamson
explains that historically, "mulattoes“ were listed on the
U.S. census as separate from Blacks or Whites from 1850-1920.
Thus, multiracial people have a period to point to when they
were defined as a distinct group. Additionally, the African-

Americans who want Tiger to be part of the Black community

 

72Wilkerson, "The All-American," 100; Davis, Who is
Black?, 29.

73Njeri, The Last Plantation, 4.

42

because of the one-drop rule are also adhering to an
historical legacy. Unfortunately, neither those who cling to
the one-drop rule nor those who want to examine all the drops
have advanced far beyond the days of Plessy in terms of
racial thinking. The debate over WOods's race allows an
examination of Winfrey's belief that "[e]verybody wants him
to belong to their ethnic group now."7‘4

Oprah refers to Tiger as "America's son” because of his
multiracial heritage. Likewise, Wilkerson titled her article
on Woods, "The All—American." The shift from a White body as
the prototype of what it means to be an American to Tiger~
Woods standing as this representative should not be
overlooked. After listing his parent's racial backgrounds,
Winfrey argues that WOods is "America's son." Winfrey seems
to be celebrating WOods's racial make-up in a ethnic melting-
pot type sentiment. Winfrey's gesture may be seen as a
signal of racial progress as the Black body has moved from
the periphery to the center. However, Winfrey's claim of
Woods as America's son is only possible when he becomes
racially-neutral. Woods is America's son because he is seen
as a non-threatening person of color, who like Winfrey in
many ways, achieves success through alternating between

highlighting and hiding blackness.75

 

74Joel Williamson, New People: Mdscegenation and
MMlattoes in the united States (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1995; Free Press, 1980); Winfrey, ”Tiger
Woods," 24 April 1997, 15.

75Ann duCille provides an excellent account of how
former football star O.J. Simpson also had his race erased to
become an "all-American." DuCille argues, "who gets to be

43

Earl WOods agrees with Oprah Winfrey that many ethnic
groups compete for ownership of Tiger. When asked by Oprah
about Tiger's race, Earl contends that Tiger belongs to the
"human race." Earl's marketing-savvy response is idealistic
at best and a cop-out at worst. Tida WOods is more honest
about her feelings over Tiger's identity. As John F. Stacks
reports, Tida "complains about press descriptions of Tiger as
black when he's half Asian, but Earl's marketawise
formulation is that when his son is playing in the U.S. he's
black, and when he's playing in Asia he's Asian." Therefore,
Earl's "human race" response may be coded as disingenuous
because of his desire to utilize Tiger as a "chameleon" of
sorts for financial profits.76

When Tiger appeared again on The Oprah Winfrey Show on
August 19, 1998, the earlier controversy was discussed. This
time Woods declared that he made up the term "Cablinasian"
because

it's just one of those things when you're bored and
you're having fun and you got nothing to do, you don't

 

American is still very much a matter not only of race but of
color. Why couldn't O.J. Simpson be all-American and black?"
Ann duCille, "The Blacker the Juice: O.J. Simpson and the
Squeeze Play of Race," Skin Trade (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1996), 162-163.

76John F. Stacks, "The Sound of Money: Tiger Woods Drops
Out of College to Become a Multimillionaire—And the Tour's
Best Golfer," Time, 9 September 1996, 61. For an essay on
another superstar athlete's marketing and race see Leola
Johnson and David Roediger, "'Hertz, Don't It?'" Becoming
Colorless and Staying Black in the Crossover of O.J.
Simpson," in Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script, and
Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case, eds. Toni Morrison and
Claudia Brodsky Lacour (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997),
197-239.

44

want to do homework. And so you write down stuff and

kind of put things together and there's a name.77
Obviously, the criticism regarding Cablinasian had affected
his use of the term. Instead of reasserting his use of
Cablinasian, Woods allows his racial identity terminology to
rest on Oprah's repeating of his earlier African-American and
Asian-American identity, displaying a weakening of his
whiteness claim.

Clearly, Woods's huge success at such a young age has
contributed to his popularity. Yet not all golfers have to
contend with statements written in the thhington InfOrmer
saying, "Wake up, Tiger! Whatever you do, you'll always
belong to us, even if you don't think you're one of us." The
comment dehumanizes Woods and reduces him to a piece of
property that can be bought or possessed. As one of a few
minority golfers, Woods understandably appeals to a sense of
racial pride, especially within people of color, supporters
and critics alike.78

On the August 19, 1998 Oprah interview, Winfrey spoke
with entertainer Will Smith about Tiger Woods. After
complimenting WOods on his golf skills and comparing him with
former basketball star Michael Jordan, Smith says, "you know,
and just being black, you just feel good." This is precisely

what Tiger's marketing advisers-labeled "Team Tiger" by Earl—

 

77"Tiger Woods and Tara Lipinski," The Oprah Winfrey
Show, 19 August 1998, 9.

78Askia Muhammad, "Call Me Black! Not 'Multi-Racial',"
Washington Informer 33, no. 33, 21 May 1997, 9.

45

want Black people to feel. The fact that Tiger plays golf, a
traditionally elite White sport, may exacerbate his non-
whiteness. Since there are and have been few Black golfers,
some Blacks want to "claim" him as their representative in a
sport that has historically excluded them; yet they are
uneasy about recognizing that Woods's ancestry is more than
Black.79

African-Americans who criticize WOods for not calling
himself Black are receiving mixed messages through Tiger's
marketing. As noted earlier, Tiger's image changes depending
on geography. In addition, he waxes between the multiracial
"everyman" and the African-American "trailblazer." In her
book Race Men, scholar Hazel Carby begins her analysis by
commenting: "In these days of what is referred to as 'global
culture,‘ the Nike corporation produces racialized images for
the world by elevating the bodies of Michael Jordan and Tiger
Woods to the status of international icons." Indeed, WOods
has become an international icon; and Nike, along with "Team
Tiger," have used race to sell Tiger Woods's image. In an
ironic turn, Tiger is simultaneously portrayed as the exotic
"other" and the historical insider.80

In a 1997 Newsweek interview, Earl WOods mentions
Tiger's rejection by some Blacks for not being "Black

enough." Yet, the author's note, "If you push Earl far

 

79Winfrey, "Tiger Woods and Tara Lipinski," 10; For
racism in golf see Woods, Playing Through.

80Hazel Carby, Race Men (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1998), 1.

46

enough, though, he'll grant another side of the racial
quandary. 'For marketing purposes,‘ [Earl] chuckled, Tiger's
mixed heritage 'goes off the charts.'" Weeds' multiracial
identity allows his sponsors the flexibility to use different
parts of his ethnicity to appeal to particular groups.
Further, the "I am Tiger Woods" ads allow children of all
races to "become" Tiger Woods since his race is so fluid.81

Nike has capitalized on Woods' appeal as a Black golfer,
complete with advertisements that point out the racist
restrictions at country clubs across the United States.
Accordingly, it is probable that Team Tiger told Woods to
drop the Cablinasian title from his vernacular because of its
lack of mass appeal. For instance, supermodel Veronica Webb
told Newsweek, "It's a lot easier marketing the next Jackie
Robinson than it is to market a Cablinasian. A Cablinasian
sounds like something Will Smith would be fighting in 'ID4'."
Hence, Woods plays into the African-American golfer image.
After winning the Masters, for example, he paid tribute to
the Black golfers who had come before him.82

In his inflammatory article on Woods in Gentleman's
Quarterly, journalist Charles P. Pierce succinctly outlines
Tiger's marketing. He writes,

The racial aspect of Tiger's gospel has always been the

most complex part of it. At first he emphasized his
multiracial background—after all, he is as much Thai as

 

81John Leland and Gregory Beals, "In Living Colors:
Tiger WOods is The Exception that Rules. For His Multiracial
Generation, Hip Isn't Just Black and White," Newsweek, 5 May
1997, 58.

82Ibid., 60. "ID4" stands for Independence Day 4.

47

he is American, and Earl is an authentic American ethnic
stew. At the same time, Tiger and his management team
were pushing him as a racial pioneer along the lines of
Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, none of
whom considered themselves 'multiethnic.’ The Nike
commercial pointed out the dissonance of the two
messages.83
Despite his inappropriate "ethnic stew" remark, Pierce's
analysis is helpful. The Nike commercial featured Tiger
saying, "There are still courses in the United States that I
am not allowed to play because the color of my skin." The
advertisement is clever because it allows the Tiger to
benefit from the status of both Black racial pioneer and
victim of racism. Accordingly, the public is outraged over
the fact that the multiracially-identified posterboy of
racial conciliation could be forbidden access to any golf
course in this nation.84
Woods' multiracial identity gives him stature because he
is not just Black; he is multiracial--and therefore better in
some people's eyes. Thus, his whiteness allows some to
divert their racism. After receiving the multiple messages
regarding Woods's identity from Nike and other corporate
sponsors, it is not surprising that many ethnic groups wonder
if he identifies with them. Yet others see him as another
Black man because of his physical appearance. As a result,

Woods has received death threats and hate mail, which he

reads because he wants to know what people think of him.85

 

83Charles P. Pierce, "The Man. Amen," Gentlemen's
Quarterly, April 1997, 248.

34Ibid.
85Woods, Playing Through, 155.

48

Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller saw only Tiger WOods the Black
golfer. His reference to Woods as a "little boy" is
particularly significant since during slavery and Jim Crow
African-American men were seen and treated like children and
often called "boy" by Whites. Zoeller defended his
stereotypical remarks about African-Americans as an attempt
at humor. Time magazine's Jack E. White cleverly analyzes
Zoeller's commentary and argues

[H]is real crime was not, as his defenders seem to

think, merely a distasteful breach of racial etiquette

or an inept attempt at humor. The real crime was
falling behind the times. The old black-white
stereotypes are out of date, and Zoeller is just the
latest casualty of America's failure to come to grips
with the perplexing and rapidly evolving significance of
racial identity in what is fast becoming the most
polygot society in history.86
Zoeller could only see WOOdS as either Black or White.
Journalist White suggests that Zoeller's biting sarcasm was
worse because the fellow golfer attacked WOods solely on his
Blackness rather than his full racial identity. White's
analysis is fascinating and its appearance in Time magazine
illustrates the changing racial demographics and the hallmark
that multiracial activists have achieved.

The fact that Zoeller defined Woods as Black and not

Asian-American in his comments suggests that WOods's

phenotype marks him as Black, as Oprah had suggested.

Woods's appeal in the golf world is based on this Blackness,

 

86Jack E. White, "'I'm Just Who I Am': Race is No Longer
as Simple as Black or White. So, What Does This Mean for
America?," Time, 5 May 1997, 33.

49

as there are other golfers his age who are as good but do not
receive the same level of recognition. In his definition of
race, Haney L6pez includes "morphology" and "ancestry." He
explains that within specific contexts "physical
characteristics" are linked to race. Tiger WOods's brown
skin, "dark skin" according to one writer, makes him valuable
in the golf world.37

The uproar over WOods's desire not to be labeled as
solely African-American came mainly from the African-American
community. Whites—policing the whiteness border—already
placed Tiger as Black, as Zoeller presents. Blacks flocked
to Tiger because they saw him as one of their own, as
Wilkerson suggests. Thus, Woods's declaration that he is
multiracial "felt like a slight" because the distancing is
the assertion of a hybrid identity when Woods's brown skin
marked him as Black. Woods's claim to hybridity disrupts the
normal Blackness/whiteness dichotomy because whiteness
depends on Blackness for its existence. Therefore, WOods's
altering of the terrain is unacceptable, even to Blacks who
are disadvantaged by the system.88

"Cablinasian" is the epitome of hybridity and therefore
cannot be accepted by either Blacks or Whites. Both groups
lose their stake in race if they let go. In a fascinating
exchange between scholars Jorge Klor de Alva and Cornel west,

the same tension emerges. Klor de Alva argues for Black

 

87Haney L6pez, "The Social Construction of Race," 7;
Stacks, "The Sound of Money," 61.

88Wilkerson, "The All-American," 100.

50

intellectuals "to stop participating in the insidious one-
drop-rule game of identifying themselves as black." west
responds,

If you're saying that we are, for the most part,

biological and cultural hybrids, I think you're

certainly right. But at the same time there's a

danger in calling for an end to certain history if

we're unable to provide other options.89
The danger that West is concerned about is represented in
Woods' call for the recognition of hybridity. As Gilroy
suggests, the danger is the lack of language currently in
place to discuss the reality of the racial intermixture that
exists in the United States. Admitting that racial purity
does not exist is too risky for many who are comfortable with
their position in the racial hierarchy. Honest discussion
might require shifting of power, something Whites will not do
easily and, as West illustrates, something Blacks are
apprehensive about doing.90

After criticizing Woods' use of Cablinasian as "both a
naive plea for a color-blind, colorless America," Wilkerson
concedes in parentheses, "that one day may be seen as being
ahead of its time." Scholars such as Root, Gilroy, and Zack
suggest that the time has already come for a renegotiation of
race and its boundaries. The response to Woods's assertion

of his multiracial identity suggests that people are

unwilling to deal with race in a more complicated way.

 

89Jorge Klor de Alva, Earl Shorris, and Cornel west,
"Our Next Race Question: The Uneasiness Between Blacks and
Latinos," Harper's, April 1996, 58.

90Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, xi, 2.

51

Racial mixing may be less taboo but it still carries a
stigma. Thus, the "options" that west needs before he stops
defining himself as Black are not sufficient enough at this
point; consequently, whiteness prevails. Nevertheless, some
White parents see their whiteness as a barrier in their
parent-child relationship. As a result, they reject it, as

explored in the next chapter.91

 

91Wilkerson, "The All-American," 100.

52

Chapter 3
WHITE NO MORE: WHITE PARENTS OF BLACK/BIRACIAL CHILDREN

Is there not something unseemly, in our society, about
the spectacle of a white woman mothering a black child?
A white woman giving totally to a black child; a black
child totally and demandingly dependent for everything,
sustenance itself, from a white woman. The image of a
white woman suckling a black child; the image of a black
child suckling for its life from the bosom of a white
woman. The utter interdependence of such an image; the
merging it implies; the giving up of boundary; the
encompassing of other within self; the unbounded
generosity and interconnectedness of such an image.
Such a picture says there is no difference; it places
the hope of continuous generation, of immortality of the
white self, in a little black face.

Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights92

In the above epigraph, legal scholar Patricia Williams
questions the dissonance between White mother and Black child
in the United States of America. Williams captures the
discomfort felt by many regarding the taboo subject of
children born of interracial relationships. As Williams
keenly analyzes, the connection between White mother and
Black child presents a shifting boundary. The bond Williams
mentions symbolizes the hybridity of American culture within
the body itself. Within the recent works on racial identity
specifically dealing with multiraciality and whiteness, a
group of White parents has emerged. In contrast with Homer
A. Plessy and Eldrick "Tiger" Woods's claims to whiteness,

these White parents reject their whiteness. Exploring the

92Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 226-7.

53

parents' negotiation of their racial identity offers insight
on the fluidity of race.93

As explored in the previous chapters, in 1896 and in the
19908 multiracial figures have not been markedly successful
in their quest for the recognition of their White ancestry.
The legacy of the one-drop rule (among both Black and White
Americans) has proven powerful enough to discredit the
attempts of both Plessy and woods. Although Plessy and WOOdS
were contained by their "Black blood," some White parents (or
their children writing about their parents' experiences) have
recently suggested that they are no longer White because of
their Black/biracial children. Many questions about race and
agency may be raised by examining the rejections of Whiteness
by these parents.

In a review of books by these White parents in the
journal Transition, France Winddance Twine states, "The past
decade has witnessed the birth of a new literary genre: the
memoir by a white mother of black children." Twine argues
that these women constitute an area of research in studies of
whiteness, particularly as they relate to class issues.
Although she is correct in her assessment, this chapter
specifically focuses on the women's ability, and other
parents', to redefine their racial identity because of their
children. As previously noted, Tiger Woods has been attacked

for denying his Blackness because he wishes to acknowledge

 

931 am using "group" to demarcate similar stories and
remarks by White parents of Black/Biracial children.

54

both his parents' races. In the same decade, are White
parents of Black/biracial children similarly condemned for
denying their Whiteness because they want to recognize their
children or do they have more freedom to declare their race?94

Historically, in the United States, children have
derived their race from their parents. In 1662, under
slavery, a Virginia statute, partus sequitur ventrem,
declared the child of a "negro" woman and "Englishman" should
take the status of the mother. In his book, A cempletely New
Look at Interracial Sexuality, scholar Lawrence R. Tenzer
argues, "This was a very important law because it established
the legal precedence of partus sequitur ventrem, that is, the
child follows the social status of the mother." A. Leon
Higginbotham, Jr. and Barbara Kopytoff maintain that partus
sequitur ventrem was contrary to English tradition, as
children normally inherited the status of their fathers.
Obviously, then, this statute was constructed in part to
allow slaveowners to impregnate their slavewomen and produce
more slaves.95

English professor werner Sollors describes the larger

impact of the law, stating that "Whiteness was thus

 

94France Winddance Twine, "The White Mother: Blackness,
Whiteness, and Interracial Families," Transition: An
International Review 73, vol. 7, no. 1 (1998): 144.

95Lawrence R. Tenzer, A COmpletely New Look at
Interracial Sexuality: Public Opinion and Select Commentaries
(Manahawkin, NJ: Scholars' Publishing House, 1990), 58; A.
Leon Higginbotham, Jr. and Barbara K. Kopytoff, "Racial
Purity and Interracial Sex in the Law of Colonial and
Antebellum Virginia," Georgetown Law JOurnal 77, no. 6
(August 1989): 1971, note 20. The statute also controlled
White women's sexuality.

55

symbolically identified as the color of all possible origins
(and freedom), blackness (into which interracial identity was
often folded) as the source of only black origins (and
slavery)." Therefore, in 1662, Blackness already had a
negative stigma, while whiteness was positive. Sollors also
reviews the strain that partus sequitur ventrem had on
familial relationships. For instance, under the law,
immediate relatives were often separated by race which could
devastate interracial families.96

Similar to partus sequitur ventrem, F. James Davis
traces the one-drop rule back to slavery but argues, "The
one-drop rule did not become uniformly accepted until during
the 19208." Thus, which parent was Black and which was White
and where a person was born determined the race and the
status (slave or free) of a mixed race child. After the
acceptance of the one-drop rule, one's birthplace and which
parent was Black became irrelevant as mixed race children
were declared Black. Recently, there has been a resurgence
of the idea of reexamining the racial identity of multiracial
children, so that both parents' races are recognized. It is
under these current debates over the "multiracial movement"

that these White parents are examined.97

 

96Werner Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both:
Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 43.

97Davis, What Color is Black?, 31; For the "multiracial
movement" see: Root, The Mu1tiracia1 Experience; Zack,
American.Mixed Race; and Jon Michael Spencer, The New Colored
People: The Mixed-Race Mbvement in America (New York: New
York University Press, 1997).

56

In their recent book Divided Sisters: Bridging the Gap
Between Black women and White women, authors Midge Wilson and
Kathy Russell provide the relevant statistics on biracial
children. In the section "Mothers and Biracial Daughters,"
the authors state:

Statistics derived from the 1990 census indicated that

approximately four out of every thousand couples, or

211,000 marriages in the United States that year, were

racially mixed, Black and White. Just twenty years

earlier, only 1.5 thousand marriages were mixed this
way. The number of biracial offspring has similarly
risen, from an estimated 8700 births in 1969 to nearly

45,000 in 1989.98
The authors contend that the figures are probably wrong
because "biracial babies born to unwed mothers are classified
as monoracial." It should be noted that interracial marriage
was prohibited in many states until anti-miscegenation
statutes were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Although the statistics many
be inaccurate, the point is that interracial relationships
and the number of biracial children in the United States are
increasing. Therefore, examining the views on race of White
parents of Black/biracial children can only prove beneficial
to the understanding of the phenomena and politics of
whiteness and race in general.99

At least two White parents of Black/biracial children,

Maureen T. Reddy and Jane Lazarre, have written books about

 

98Midge Wilson and Kathy Russell, Divided Sisters:
Bridging the Gap Between Black women and White women (New
York: Anchor Books, 1996), 232-3.

99Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

57

their experiences. Reddy's crossing the Cblor Line: Race,
Parenting, and Culture and Lazarre's Beyond the Whiteness of
Whiteness: Memoir of’a White Mother of Black Sons provide
detailed accounts of these women's parenting experiences of
Black/biracial children. Additionally, since these two
parents have written book-length accounts, they stand as the
strongest examples of parents who argue that their race has
changed because of their children.100

Reddy and Lazarre are both college professors who teach
African-American literature and both identify strongly with
White ethnic backgrounds--Irish and Jewish, respectively.
Additionally, both Reddy and Lazarre are married to African-
American men. Reddy published her book in 1994 while
Lazarre's followed in 1996. Although the authors share many
similarities, the books are different in form and, of course,
in some aspects. In her review of the two works, Boyd Zenner
states, "In contrast to the mixture of theory and personal
example found in Crossing the Color Line, Jane Lazarre's
Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness is written in an almost
purely autobiographical mode." The contrasting styles offer
insight into the author's personal feelings regarding race
from different standpoints. Reddy recounts anecdotes while
drawing on theory of race and gender to analyze situations.

On the contrary, Lazarre sets various scenes and recalls

 

100Maureen T. Reddy, crossing the Color Line: Race,
Parenting, and Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press 1994); Jane Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness:
Memoir of a White.Mother of Black Sons (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1996).

58

communications within her family to question her own position
in this racialized society.101

At the outset of the book, Reddy recalls a conversation
with a Black woman who tells her that she, the author, has
"assimilate[d] into the black community." In response, Reddy
states, "'I'm still white. I think I stand on the color line
itself, not on one side of it. Or maybe I'm like a bridge,
stretching across the line, touching both sides, but mostly
in the middle somewhere.'" Thus, at this point Reddy clings
to her whiteness while asserting that as a "white woman
married to a black man, a white mother of black children" she
is a "bridge." Reddy's positioning herself as a middle link—
a "bridge"—between Blacks and Whites is fascinating,
especially compared with the idea of the "tragic mulatto."102

The "tragic mulatto" in African-American and American
literature and film is the mixed Black and White figure who
because of his or her racial identity is trapped between two
worlds and therefore destined to misfortune. Reddy's
assessment of her position as the "bridge" subsumes the role
that society has marked for her children. The "what about
the children" question often raised to suppress interracial
relationships is turned on its head by Reddy's assuming this
role. Contrary to the tragic mulatto, many key figures in

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and still

 

101Boyd Zenner, "Whiteness and Fairness," women's Review
of Books 14, no. 4 (January 1997): 7. Thanks to Zenner for
recognizing the similarities in Reddy and Lazarre's
backgrounds.

102Reddy, Crossing the Color Line, 5.

59

today believe that biracial children are the key to civil
race relations. Reddy's commandeering of this role rather
than her children signals a shift in the dynamics of racial
politics .103

Later in the text, Reddy contends, "It was only when I
stopped being white, in some sense, that I began to
understand what whiteness means in America." Thus, Reddy
suggests that her racial identity has changed; therefore,
enabling her to better understand whiteness. Reddy compares
the U.S. with South African apartheid and declares, "I think:
the white partner, in learning what being black in America
entails, learns what whiteness means and loses or abandons at
least some of that whiteness." Reddy is referring to white
privilege and the recognition of white as a racial category.
Therefore, although Reddy does not claim to be non-White, she
does suggest that her whiteness has been altered by the birth
if her children. Moreover, Reddy believes that her new found
recognition of the Black experience has caused her to
reinterpret her own racial being.

Notably, it is not her interracial marriage to her
husband Douglas Best which causes Reddy to interrogate her

whiteness; rather, it is the birth of her children, Brendan

 

103Many works in early African-American literature
employ the "tragic mulatto." For a review of the concept see
Sollors, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both, 220-245. Author
Kathryn Talalay points out that African-American writer
George Schuyler and his White wife Josephine "believed that
the solution to America's race problems lay in
miscegenation," in Composition in Black and White: The Life
of Philippa Schuyler (New York: Oxford University Press,
1995), viii.

6O

and Siobhan (called Sean and Ailis in the book). In a Boston
Globe article about Reddy and the book, writer Irene Sege
argues

In a society where, for all the barriers broken by the

civil rights movement, race still divides, bearing

Brendan and Siobhan catapulted Reddy across that border

in a way that marrying Best did not. The innocents born

to her transformed her into a racial fellow traveler in

a way that exchanging wedding vows with the grown child

of another mother did not.104
Reddy's care as a parent causes her to reject the way
whiteness permeates society. Reddy wants what is best for
her children and realizes that as non-Whites they are
excluded from some of the benefits her own racial status
provides her.

Reddy's book provides insight into the role of gender in
interracial parenting as well. Reddy details the differences
she feels when parenting her daughter as compared with her
son because of their shared femaleness. In addition, Reddy
reveals her son's struggle as a pre-teenager to come to terms
with his own race by fluctuating between a Black and biracial
identity. Reddy and her husband had assumed that their
children would see themselves as Black and were unprepared
when their son contends that he is both Black and White. In

assuming that Reddy's Black husband would share the same

racial identity with his children, the parents failed to

 

104Irene Sege, "Color Her World: A White Mother of Bi-
racial Children Sees Society in a Different Light, Boston
Globe, 18 January 1995, 23.

61

recognize that their son possessed a racial identity unique
from both of them.105

Reddy concludes that "White people cannot became black,
but we can reject the privileges of whiteness, calling them
what they are, and in that choice build a bridge across the
color line." Reddy believes, "All of our lives depend on
that bridge; without it we will surely drown." Since Reddy
already calls herself a bridge, she seems to suggest that
Whites are the key to race relations and to maintaining life.
In the end, Reddy does not believe that she is Black.
Instead, she sees herself as a bridge because of her
children. In turn, she refuses to use her white privilege
because her children are targets of the flip side of white
privilege--racial discrimination.106

In contrast with Reddy, Jane Lazarre concludes that she
is in fact a person of color because of her two sons, Adam
and Khary. Lazarre writes:

For most of their growing up, Douglas and I defined our

family as 'biracial.' But that is a term we now see as
problematic-as if there were two neatly defined races;

 

105Scholar Lawrence A. Hirschfeld provides insight on
when and what children learn about race, explaining:
Children . . . do not believe race to be a superficial
quality of the world. Multicultural curricula aside,
few people believe that race is only skin deep.
Certainly few 3-year-olds do. They believe that race is
an intrinsic, immutable, and essential aspect of a
person's identity. Moreover, they seem to come to this
conclusion on their own. They do not need to be taught
that race is a deep property, they know it themselves
already.
Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, Race in the Making: Cognition,
Culture, and the Child's Construction of Haman Kinds
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), xi.

106Reddy, Crossing the Color Line, 173.

62

as if there were an indisputable entity called race; as

if young men with brown skins can ever be considered

'part white' in America.107
Lazarre now sees herself as a member of a Black family and as
a person raising Black sons. As soon as she became pregnant,
Lazarre reflects, "I realized that I-my body and self-was no
longer exactly white." Lazarre's memoir details her struggle
to figure out who she has become and what that means in
relation to her sons.

Much as Reddy had done, Lazarre posits whiteness as
white privilege and offers candid accounts of her shame in
benefiting from her racial status. Lazarre and Reddy differ
in their comfort level with external views of their
interracial unions. Reddy talks of "coming out" to people as
the White mother of Black children and contends that she
worries that her views on race will be discounted by Whites
after they realize that she is involved with Blacks.
Moreover, she has anxiety over, and hesitates with, "blacks,
especially women, because I worry that coming out will
diminish the possibility of connection." On the contrary,
Lazarre states, "I feel neither guilt nor regret nor any
sense of personal defensiveness for my choice of husband."
Reddy and Lazarre's differing stances may account for the way

they define themselves . ‘03

 

107Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness, xvii.

108Reddy, crossing the Color Line, 147; Lazarre, Beyond
the Whiteness of Whiteness, 7.

63

Although Reddy does not regret her choice of husbands,
her language of "coming out" and fear of being seen as biased
by other Whites indicates some level of discomfort with her
position; however, attention needs to be paid to Reddy's
ability to speak honestly about her concerns. In contrast,
Lazarre's carefree attitude about other's views of her
interracial marriage seems out of character when compared
with her obsession with being accepted by her children and
extended Black family. Both authors paint their
relationships with their husbands and in-laws as idyllic,
despite their racial differences. Reviewer Zenner queries
whether their relationships are indeed that perfect and
concluded that "if so, they must be superhuman."109

Lazarre, who clearly does not think of herself as
superhuman, owns the shame of whiteness and recounts her
guilt throughout her book. She worries that her sons will
see her as "White" before "mother" and wonders if they regret
her. Unlike Reddy's son, Brendan, who flirts with the idea
of being biracial rather than Black, Lazarre's son Khary, who
while a first year student in college, proudly declares, "I
am Black. . . . I have a Jewish mother, but I am not
'biracial.' That term is meaningless to me. I reject the
identity of the tragic mulatto." Lazarre tries to comfort

her son by claiming that she understands, only to be rebuffed

 

109Zenner, "Whiteness and Fairness," 7:

64

by his doubt that she as a White woman can truly
understand.110

Lazarre agrees with Khary's decision to define himself
as Black. Her own racial logic is dependent upon the visual
and informs her understanding of her sons. She states, "As
with any other identity, how one experiences oneself in the
everyday world must become internal as well, or the mind
splits, even sanity may slip, imbalance threatens." Thus,
for Lazarre race is greatly tied to appearance. If Lazarre's
sons had been lighter in skin color would she still hold the
same beliefs? For example, if her sons looked like Homer
Plessy would she still feel that they should identify solely
as Black?111

As her memoir progresses, Lazarre relays how her
understanding of the meaning of Blackness has "deepened and
changed." She argues that her identity is hidden and, with
it, is also hidden the perspective she now holds. Thus,
Lazarre further complicates the understanding of a White
parent with Black/biracial children by adding a
deconstruction of the meaning of Blackness. An understanding
of Blackness, coupled with her previously discovered
knowledge of whiteness, signals a growth in Lazarre's
development of racial understanding. She suggests that this

makes her "no longer an ordinary white woman."112

 

110Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness, 24, 9;
Reddy, Crossing the Color Line, 99-100.

111Lazarre, Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness, xvii.
1121bid., 49.

65

Lazarre writes of politically aligning herself with
Black people, thus revealing the political aspects of her new
found identity. Ultimately, Jane Lazarre declares, "I am no
longer white. However, I may appear to others, I am a person
of color now. . . . Some color with no precise name."

Lazarre does not offer the critical interpretation needed to
understand her declaration. Instead, she seems to be arguing
that through her life as a White mother of Black sons she has
become enlightened enough to have a change in her race. Yet
has Lazarre's transformation occurred only within her
personal inventory or is it for the external gaze as well?
Since she prefaces her declaration by stating that she is
"comforted by this thought" when she is in "racialized
situations," it may be interpreted that Lazarre is arguing
that her understanding of Blackness has removed her from the
status of White within her mind. However, since Lazarre has
previously defined race on the visual plane, it would have
helped if she explained further her disregard of other
people's views of her race in relation to her identity as a
"person of color."113

Lazarre insightfully offers a key to understanding the
position of White parents of Black children when she comments
on the child-parent relationship.

There is a great false myth that while we create our

children, they merely react to us, as if we were static

creatures, finished and formed. The truth is more
reciprocal. Like any passionate intimacy, they

 

113Ibid., 135.

66

(re)create us at the same moment as we are creating and

recreating them.114
Indeed, children and parents do affect each other in various
ways. Historically, as earlier discussed, a parent's race
has influenced the status of a child. Conversely, a child's
race has also impacted upon his or her parents. For example,
White women were punished for having "mulatto" children
during slavery; however, the race of these White women was
not altered. Children have never retroactively determined
racial heritage of their parents before.115

A more recent example comes from biracial journalist
Lisa Page, who is married to fellow journalist Clarence Page.
Page writes of the experiences she and her parents had as an
interracial family in an essay entitled "High Yellow White
Trash." In her essay, Page recalls her parents' beliefs on
race. She comments that her mother did not speak as freely
as her father about race. Yet, she contends that her mother
"knew that she had given up something by marrying my father."
Page's recollection of her mother's experience the day Lisa
was born reveals the impact upon a White person who conceives

a Black child in Chicago in the 19508.116

 

114Ibia., 129-30.

115See Kenneth James Lay, "Sexual Racism: A Legacy of
Slavery," National Black Law JOurnal 13, no. 1&2 (Spring
1993): 165-83.

115Lisa Page, "High Yellow White Trash," in Skin Deep:
Black women and White women write About Race, eds. Marita
Golden and Susan Richards Shreve (New York: Doubleday,
1995), 14.

67

Lazarre's discussion of the reciprocal relationship that
parents and children share should be noted when reading
Page's passage:

The day I was born, in 1956, she was wheeled into the

colored maternity section of what is now the University

of Chicago Hospital. Because she was white, the
hospital staff hadn't put her there initially, when she
went into labor. After my arrival, they relegated her
accordingly. My mother lost a piece of her identity
that day: her status as a white woman, something she'd
taken for granted throughout her life. Now she had
given birth to a biracial baby. She was guilty by
association; she was stained, privileged no more."7
Through her vivid description, she chronicles her mother's
loss of status in a concrete fashion. The shift from
whiteness to second-class citizenship occurs after the race
of the baby is discovered. Page argues that the "stain" of
giving birth to a child with Black ancestry changes the
racial status of her mother.

Unlike the two feminist academics, Reddy and Lazarre,
who have grappled with issues of race, class, gender, and
sexuality, Page's mother does not deal with her white
privilege until it is lost. Since an understanding of white
privilege as something undeserved has become more common
knowledge in society recently, the psychological aspects of
the physical loss of standing that Page's mother underwent is
difficult to contextualize. Of her mother Page says, "[t]o
her credit . . . never let on how much this disturbed her

while I was a child. It was only later, during my

adolescence, that she revealed how much this had hurt her."

 

117Ibid.

68

Page's parents divorced in 1963 and Page continued to live
with her mother.118

Page's mother's angst over her identity plays itself out
through her criticism of Lisa's burgeoning Black identity
during the Black pride era. When Lisa and her sister start
referring to themselves as Black, Page's mother objects. She
questions the girls' self-definition and informs them that
"Calling yourself black makes me feel like I'm invisible.
Like I don't exist. Like I don't count." Page's mother also
objects to her daughter's subscription to Essence magazine as
well as her admiration of the beauty of Black women.
Clearly, Page's mother feels erased by her daughter's
Blackness. She is not prepared for her daughter to embrace
any form of Blackness and would instead have her daughter
emulate her whiteness.119

Lisa Page discusses the reaction to her mother's
disapproval of her daughter's coming to terms with racial
identity, explaining:

She saw this a rebellion, as ungratefulness. As her

daughter, I was supposed to emulate and embrace her, not

deny her. I didn't want to deny my mother. But I was

different from her and I was trying to make sense of

what those differences meant.12°

Simultaneously, Lisa Page and her mother both attempted to

deal with their respective racial stances and their

 

118Ibid.; For "white privilege" see Peggy McIntosh,
"White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," in Race:
An Anthology in the First Person, ed. Bart Schneider, 118-26
(New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997).

119Page, "High Yellow White Trash," 20-1.

12°Ibid., 21.

69

relationship to one another. As Wilson and Russell point
out, "White mothers may also suffer psychologically from
having to give up their daughters to another racial identity,
a phenomenon known as the White Mother Martyr Syndrome." The
syndrome follows that when the White mother of a biracial
daughter tells her daughter that the girl is Black, both she
and the child may suffer emotionally. In the Page's
situation, Lisa asserts her Blackness rather than her mother
defining it for her. The duress of Lisa's not sharing the
same race as her mother negatively affected Page's mother and
their mother-daughter relationship. ‘21

As an adult, Lisa Page can reflect on her experiences as
a biracial person and her relationship with her mother. She
writes, "I realize how much my mother struggled with her own
identity. She thought she gave it up, in her marriage, or
compromised somehow. She couldn't help her inability to
empathize with my situation." Page understands that her
mother was unable to offer support to Lisa because the mother
was not comfortable with her situation. Thus, the
relationship of Page and her mother illustrates the
importance of the parent embracing her position as a White
parent of biracial children if the child is to receive

support with his or her own identity issues."22

 

121Wilson and Russell, Divided Sisters, 237; The "White
Mother Martyr Syndrome" is discussed in Kathy Russell, Midge
Wilson, and Ronald Hall, The Color Complex: The Politics of
Skin Color Among African-Americans (New York: Anchor Books,
1992), 76.

122Page, "High Yellow White Trash," 22.

7O

 

One White parent who wants to assist his Black/biracial
children in their identity quest is exemplified by Washington
Post journalist Walt Harrington. In 1992, after being
married to a Black woman for ten years and fathering two
children, Harrington published crossings: A White Man's
JOurney into Black America. In his prologue, the author
explains that he was inspired to take time off from work and
away from his family to travel across the United States
interviewing Black people after being told a racist joke at a
dentist appointment. Although Harrington has previously
heard many racist jokes, while listening to this one he has
an epiphany: "This idiot's talking about my children!"123

This episode at the dentist's caused Harrington to
question his own position and wonder what it is like to be
Black. Prompted by the racist joke and afterthought,
Harrington admits, "Only today, for the first time, have I
crossed the line." The dental appointment prompts Harrington
to think critically about race for the first time:

Thank the idiot in the dentist's office. His

callousness had pierced my lifetime of distant

intellectualizing about race and struck at the place
where my hopes for my children reside, struck at my
heart and not my head. In that instant, I was

touched and humbled, converted. In that instant,

I knew in my heart that I didn't know anything about
race, that I never had. That I had to start again.124

 

123Walt Harrington, crossings: A White Man's JOurney
into Black America (New York: HarperCollins Publishers,
1992), 1.

124Harrington, Crossings, 2; 3.

71

As a White male, Harrington has not been forced to negotiate
the tenuous position of the minority in the United States.
Only through the realization that his children will have to
deal with race in ways that he has not has Harrington
discovered the relevance of race in his life. Despite his
ten-year interracial marriage and birth of two children, it
takes another White male's racist joke to trigger
Harrington's conversion. Harrington's needs for a fellow
White male's prompting to begin the author's own
introspection on race suggests the element in whiteness of
being a "member of the club."

Since Harrington's book primarily relates his meetings
with Black Americans across the country, little is relayed
about his specific family. He notes that his children
describe themselves as "tan and bright tan." As he prepares
to leave, he also mentions the irony in his trip: "And I
think how strange it is that I'm about to leave this black
woman behind so that I might learn more about black America."
Harrington consoles himself by remembering that "I'm doing
this for myself, my children, and the dentist with his racist
jokes . "125

After completing his extensive year-long trip,
Harrington reflects on what he has learned and about his
motivations for taking the trip. Harrington recalls his

experiences with his father and then thinks about his own

 

1251bid., 1; 4.

72

parenting and the influences he possesses over his children.
Harrington sums up his newly acquired knowledge:

This kind of understanding changes everything.

Only when I became black by proxy—through my son,

through my daughter—could I see the racism I had been

willing to tolerate. Becoming black, even for a

fraction of an instant, created an urgency for justice

that I couldn't feel as only a white man, no matter how

good-hearted . ‘25
Harrington's belief that he can become "black by proxy"
resonates with Lazarre's claim of being a "person of color."
He contends that no matter how sympathetic, Whites cannot
truly understand the position of African-Americans nor the
need to change it.

Harrington's earlier talk of "crossing the color line"
is similar to Reddy, who felt that she crossed the color line
to be a bridge. Likewise, Harrington makes another
contention that is reminiscent of Professor Andrew Hacker's
previously discussed experiment with his students.
Harrington declares,

"It is absolute proof of our continued racism that no white
person in his or her right mind would yet volunteer to trade
places, become black, in America today." Hacker validates
Harrington's statement through his discovery that his
students wanted millions in compensation for becoming

Black . 127

At the end of his book, Harrington informs his readers:

"I wasn't a neanderthal on race when I took to the road; a

 

125Ibid., 447.
127Ibid., 447; Hacker, TWo Nations, 36.

73

 

mossback wouldn't have married a black woman in the first
place." Thus, Harrington argues that his marriage to a Black
woman grants him some type of informed perspective on race.
Ultimately, he provides some newly gained information,
positing: "I have learned this: we white people would be
better off if we opened our hearts and our heads, listened
more and talked less." Harrington's message seems idealistic
since it ignores the structural issues involved with racism
and discrimination, similar to Clinton's call for a dialogue
on race. However, the fact that Harrington offers advice to
fellow Whites that could alleviate race relations to some
degree suggests that he believes Whites have a responsibility
to understand people of other races.”8

One realist regarding race, openly discusses her views
as a White parent of Black children. In her memoir HOw I
Became Hettie Jenes, author Hettie Jones chronicles her
transformation from a single Jewish woman Hettie Cohen to
interracially married Hettie Jones, the wife of poet LeRoi
Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka). The book provides an
account of her parenting and experiences during the 19508,
including life as the former wife of LeRoi Jones. Further
discussion of her thoughts on raising Black/biracial children
come from Jones in a May 1994 Essence essay entitled "Mama's
White." The Essence essay was published in conjunction with
an essay by Hettie Jones's daughter, Lisa Jones, also using

the same title, "Mama's White." The complementary essays

 

128Harrington, Crossings, 447.

74

detail the experiences of the two women as (White) mother and
(Black) daughter .129

Lisa Jones begins her essay declaring, "My mother is
White. I am Black. This is how I choose to define myself,
and this is how America chooses to define me." She comments
on her mother's book and relays that her mother checks
"other" in the census and writes in "Semitic-American mother
of Black children." Lisa Jones credits her mother "for being
strong enough in her own self to let me be who I was gonna
be." Unlike Lisa Page's mother, Hettie Jones allowed her
children to determine their own identity. In fact, Jones
argues that "My pride in being a Black woman actually brings
me closer to my (White) mom." Rather than stifling her
daughters' Black identity like Page's mother, Hettie Jones
helped to fuel this pride with her appreciation of African-
American culture .130

In her article, Lisa Jones questions her mother about
raising Lisa and her sister as Black rather than biracial.
Accordingly, Hettie Jones responds: "I was not about to
delude you guys into thinking you could be anything different
in this country. And, frankly, I didn't think that being
anything other than Black would be any more desirable."

Hettie Jones's positive sentiments toward African-Americans

 

129Hettie Jones, HOw I Became Hettie Jenes (New York:
Grove Press, 1990); Lisa Jones and Hettie Jones, "Mama's
White," Essence, May 1994, 78, 79 (two separate articles).

13oLisa Jones, "Mama's White," 78; 80; 80; 80.

75

enabled her to feel comfortable in encouraging her daughters
to identify as Black in the 19608.1131

In her own essay, Hettie Jones elaborates on mothering:
"I encouraged my daughters to set their own terms and
establish themselves independent of me." Although she lets
her girls decide their racial identity, she infonms them how
the larger society would perceive them racially. Hettie
reveals, "My mixed-race children were Black," as she accounts
that they were Black in America and to America. Thus, Hettie
and Lisa Jones offer similar analysis of Hettie's ability to
support her children in their development of their own racial
identity. Yet, Hettie, reviewing her own position, explains:
"My daughters are grown, Black, strong. And I'm still White—
but not quite. Not quite White isn't Black: I've got this
straight. And no way to convert." Hettie Jones
distinguishes her own "not quite White" identity from her
daughters' Blackness. Thus, she does not claim to be Black
herself .132

Jones reviews the experiences she and her daughters
faced because they looked physically different from one
another. The moments when people recognized the physical
differences between the Jones women caused Hettie Jones to
resolve: "If White remains how I'm seen, what's changed, what
I mean by 'not quite White,' is how I see. It is more than

perspective and hard to explain." Hettie alludes to

132Hettie Jones, "Mama's White," 152; 152; 79; 151.

76

something deeper than perspective in understanding Blackness,
yet she is unable to name it. Jones lacks the language to
articulate exactly what the perspective is that she has
gained. However, her viewethrough the lens of a mother of
Black children-has altered her racial identity.133

Nevertheless, Jones does not have racial amnesia
regarding her white racial privilege. She honestly critiques
her experience and states:

I haven't forgotten, either, that walking down the

street alone I've got White all over my face. Even

with the thumping heart of my anger, without my

children I'm anonymousl White. In all-White rooms,

I'm part of the crowd.1
Jones provides an informative account of her subject
position. She recognizes her White appearance and alludes to
the white privilege she possesses. Although Jones does not
deny her White phenotype, she contends that she is "not quite
White" in her comprehension.

In her book, Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in
American Culture, Susan Gubar defines "racechange":

The term is meant to suggest the traversing of race

boundaries, racial imitation or impersonation, cross-

racial mimicry or mutability, white posing as black or
black passing as white, pan-racial mutuality.135

 

Racechange may be appropriate in discussing the racial

transformations of the earlier-discussed White parents. The

 

133Ib1d., 151.
134Ibid., 152.

135Susan Gubar, Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in
American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,
1997), 5.

77

White parents present a variety of descriptions of their
racechanges from "stained," "black by proxy," "not quite
White," "bridge" to "some color with no precise name." The
White parents each contend that their children have granted
them insight to issues of race with which they were
unfamiliar or from which they had previously been detached.

Race has been personalized in unique ways to these White
parents. Although none of the authors assert that he or she
is Black because of his or her children, they do maintain
that they are no longer White. The notion that a White
person's race can change through having children with a Black
person is a fascinating concept that demands expanded
exploration. Moreover, it may be construed that these "no
longer White" parents are arguing for a racial group outside
of the categories currently recognized. Although their
racial transformations challenge current understanding of
racial groups, these parents do not dispute the concept of
race in general. They condemn white privilege; however, they
do not advocate the abolition of the White race. Therefore,
they would not be considered in the anti-racist vein as "race
traitors . "136

These White parents can take self-inventories and reject
their whiteness; however, as Hettie Jones points out, they
remain White in the public arena. Thus, these parents inform
the reader that, concurrently, race is both a public and a

private event. The question of agency remains. Do these

 

136Ignatiev and Garvey, eds., Race Traitor.

78

White parents have any more power in declaring their race
than Plessy or Woods? It does not appear so; however, their
challenging of whiteness offers potential for an advancement
in racial thinking since Plessy. Although race remains
limited by the same boundaries as it did at the end of the
nineteenth, the parents' rejection of their whiteness

displays a progression closer to admitting the creolization

of American culture .137

 

137Hettie Jones, "Mama's White," 152.

79

CONCLUSION

In 1993, the principal of a small town in Alabama
canceled the prom. The principal made his decision after
finding out that many students planned to attend the prom
with dates who were "outside their race." During a meeting
of the student body, the principal remarked, "How would that
look at a prom, a bunch of mixed couples?" writer Tod Olson
reports that a single voice responded: "Junior-class
president Revonda Bowen, daughter of a white father and an
African-American mother, asked, 'Who am I supposed to take to
the prom?”138

Since the Loving decision (1967), there have no longer
been any legal restrictions on interracial relationships.
Nevertheless, the Alabama high school principal still thought
that such couplings were socially taboo and required that he
cancel the prom. The principal's attitude on interracial
dating is clear; yet, who he felt should escort Bowen to the
prom remains unknown. Bowen's question effectively pinpoints
the racial quandaries that society currently faces.
Artificial boundaries of race are becoming increasingly
difficult to enforce. Bowen's 1993 story is similar to the

question Albion W. Tourgée raised on behalf of Plessy.

138Tod Olson, "What is Race, Anyway?", in Critical White
Studies: Looking Behind the.Mirror, eds. Richard Delgado and
Jean Stefanic (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997),
499 (emphasis mine).

 

80

 

In referring to Plessy's train ride, Tourgée questioned
the Court, "Where on earth should he have gone?" In 1896,
the Court answered that Plessy belonged with Blacks.
Currently, the answer probably would be the same, as Tiger
Woods's experience displays. Multiracial people create a
real dilemma for current racial classification. Moreover,
they highlight the absurdity of trying to place individuals
into superficial categories. In this race-obsessed climate,
who Revonda Bowen attends the prom with is only discussed
with politically charged comments, attesting to the same
limitations of race that Plessy faced when he tried to sit so
long ago. People are explaining that they wish to tango with
and sit next to whomever they please, irrespective of race.
The issue of whiteness has been examined in this thesis
by those claiming it and by others rejecting it. Ethnic
studies professor George Lipsitz critiques whiteness,
arguing,
[T]hat white Americans are encouraged to invest in
whiteness, to remain true to an identity that provides
them with resources, power, and opportunity. This
whiteness is, of course, a delusion, a scientific and
cultural fiction that like all racial identities has no
valid foundation in biology or anthropology. Whiteness
is, however, a social fact, an identity created and

continued with all-too-real consequences for the
distribution of wealth, prestige and opportunity.139

 

Tm”. .3 a...» r...

Lipsitz's analysis of whiteness correctly assesses the value
of whiteness and its consequences. Yet I would suggest that

non-White Americans are also encOuraged to invest in

 

139Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, vii.

81

whiteness as well. In a society predicated on whiteness, its
influences permeate the existence of all members. Plessy and
Woods want their whiteness counted because of its prestige.
The White parents claim that their race has changed but do
not abandon their whiteness. 14°

In examining the attempts of Plessy and WOods to claim
whiteness and the racially-transformed parents to reject it,
the category of whiteness has proven to be a place for
identity games and politics. Theorist Scott Michaelsen
argues, "Whiteness, like masculinity (and, perforce,
blackness and femininity), cannot be produced in a non-
noxious variety, for the simple reason that identity itself
is that which produces, grounds, and guarantees dominance."
Michaelsen suggests that whiteness is a flawed theory.
Although the white parents recognize issues of white
privilege, they fail to address the greater problem of race
and identity politics. The white parents remain comfortable
with their racially altered whiteness without challenging the E
larger constructs of race.““

Even if Tiger Woods and Homer Plessy were more

successful in their attempts to have their multiracial

 

‘17

identities recognized, like the parents, they do not indict
the large problems of identity politics and race.

Nevertheless, examining Plessy, WOOdS, and the racially-

 

14OI am not suggesting that being a race traitor is the
solution to solving the racial quagmire in the United States.

141Scott Michaelsen, "What's 'White,‘ and Whither?" The
.Minnesota Review 47 (Fall 1996): 78. This is a special issue
entitled "The White Issue" published in May 1997.

82

transformed parents provides an understanding of the people
trapped in the space which sociologist Paul Gilroy maps out.
These individuals reinscribe race, albeit on different terms
and with creative titles, yet they do not seriously contend
with issues of power and oppression inherent in group
identity. Instead, they fall back on close to a biological
whiteness, almost similar to the racial thought operating in
the Plessy era.”2

The question of how much agency these people studied
have in determining their race remains. Professor Ian Haney
Lopez suggests that people do have some choice in their
racial identity. He qualifies his belief in the element of
choice involved with race by submitting that choice comes
within specific contexts. The racially-transformed parents
offer evidence that Haney L6pez is correct in his assessment.
Haney Lépez grants choice an even more important role in
society than personal identity politics when he argues:

The agency of individuals and communities implied by the

power of choice holds out the promise of racial

remediation. Recognizing that race is in some sense a

product of choices allows the hope that purposeful

action can transform racial meanings.”3
Haney L6pez posits that the ability to choose race may be a
path toward better race relations. This thesis has shown
that people are not easily allowed to choose their race. On

a personal level, people may call themselves whichever race

they like. However, once they enter the public sphere others

142Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 4.
143Haney L6pez, "The Social Construction of Race," 52.

 

83

determine whether their racial choice is acceptable. Until
people are more freely able to choose their race, Haney
L6pez's "hope that purposeful action can transform racial
meaning" will not become a reality.

It is long past the time for the abandonment of the use
of the one-drop rule for defining an individual's race.
Concurrently, Gilroy has called for the naming and
recognition of the hybridity and creolization of American
culture. The persons studied in this thesis indicate a
continued need to develop relevant and precise terminology to
discuss honestly issues of identity and race. Although they
may not complicate race in larger ways themselves, their
‘public attempts at racechanges are, in a sense, a more
:nuanced interpretation of race. Beyond the rhetoric, the
.ramifications of living in a racist, race-obsessed,
:racialized society need to be further understood and acted
Iapon so that defining, or not defining, oneself as White does

not determine success in the ways it has in the past.144

 

144Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 4.

84

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