Black Athlete Activism, Once Lost, Is Found

The lineage of the black activist athlete was lost in the time of O.J., Jordan and Tiger. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, The Heritage, Howard Bryant explains how that lineage was found again.

- Howard Bryant

For a time, Tiger Woods would embrace the destiny his father had forecast for him, paying homage to the history of the sport, to the lonely pioneers such as Lee Elder and Charlie Sifford, black pros who endured the insults and indignities of playing a game in a white world that could not have been more metaphoric of the impediments to the American dream for black people. As with Michael Jordan, the seasoned Nike ad machine was there, choreographing the legend that was being built on the course, the ads voiced over by the father (even after Earl Woods died in 2006), reinforcing his specialness, packaging his destiny. And when it came time for the prophet to spiritually lift the poor and the weak and the despised black people and give them dignity through his talent, as he was destined to, he sat down with Oprah Winfrey, the wealthiest black American in the world, and told her and the world that he was not black. He was a composite. He was Caucasian, black and Asian. He told Winfrey that, growing up, he had coined a term for his multiethnicity. He told Winfrey he was “Cablinasian.” Woods did not say, “I’m not black. I’m O.J.,” but he gave the equivalent for a multicultural world. The end result was the same: a reinforcement of the O.J. Simpson model but on an even more public stage—there was no advantage to identifying with being black. That came with responsibility. Take, for example, the time when Woods was hitting supernova status, the most talked-about athlete in America. He had just won the Masters, and now, as his father predicted, he would “move mountains.” It was an unsubtle comparison to Ali, a wish to join the Heritage. It was all coming together.