Racism in Sports: Stevie Williams and Tiger Woods

Link to article: http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/7192402/stevie-williams-comments-tiger-woods-just-plain-stupid

          In class on November 10^th, 2011, we started to discuss the topic of race and ethnicity in sport.  This topic is also covered in Coakley’s text, starting on page 276.  We started off by going over some key definitions that would help us understand key factors regarding race and ethnicity in sports.  Coakley, states on page 276 that race refers to a group of people who are perceived to be naturally different from other groups.  Basically race is a way of categorizing groups of people based on genetic similarity.  People use these categories all of the time, and it is clearly evident in sport today, especially when we see that 85% of the NBA is made up of African Americans.  Some people then use these categories negatively.

                In this article, it is explained that Tiger Woods’ former caddie, Stevie Williams, has expressed his anger towards Tiger through comments he made to who he thought was a private group of people.  These comments then were released to the public, leading to the “racist” term being slapped on Stevie Williams.  Williams apparently was very angry with Mr. Woods for many reasons, so he then expressed that anger in a negative way, going as far as bringing race into it.  Coakley, on page 281, describes the problem with race is that it can be used to justify the oppression and exploitation of one group by another.  Coakley goes on to explain that racism is defined as attitudes, actions, and policies based on the belief that people in one racial group are superior to people from another racial group.  Based on that definition, I don’t really see how saying, “It was my aim to shove it up that black arse----,” is very racist at all.  I admit that he probably shouldn’t have thrown “black” in there, but I don’t really see how that is considered racism.  I see Stevie Williams being guilty of using race to categorize people, although, as we discussed in class, he was kind of off by calling Tiger “black.”  All in all, categorizing people by the way they look is not necessarily the morally correct thing to do, but it happens on a day to day basis and here is no evidence it is going to stop anytime soon.