Tiger Woods and the New Racial Order

Abstract

There is no more serviceable celebrity than Tiger Woods. He is a colour-free emblem of a new America in which racism is dead and there are no barriers to progress for any member of its citizenry — a new racial order. His success obscures the grimmer reality of contemporary America. This article examines Woods, less as a person, more as a commodity of immense utility: something that effectively advertises a society that has long struggled with the issue of racism, but has finally won. Woods functions as ambulant publicity: he studiously avoids engaging with any political or remotely sensitive issue and refuses to align himself with any particular ethnic group. In a sense, he is what one writer has called `a new kind of white person'. On the evidence presented here, Woods effectively invites consumers not to challenge racism directly, but to buy commodities that externalize success and in this way avoid confronting the racism that continues to bedevil most of America's black population.