Celebrating Tiger Woods Represents Our Deep Oppression

Yesterday, Tiger Woods won a major golf tournament.  In response, Africans everywhere celebrated Tiger's victory as if it was a collective victory for the African masses.  In truth, it was a collective victory because the masses of our people understand, even if Tiger doesn't, that despite how good he is, he would've never been able to step foot on a golf course were it not for the collective struggle for justice against white supremacy that the masses of our people have waged against this backward capitalist system.  Our people realize this so its understandable that we would claim any victory African individuals achieve.  We saw Barack Obama's win as president in the same vain and if one understands the depths to which we are oppressed as a people, its not hard to understand why we would see these things as collective victories.

Tiger Woods historical rejection of anything African, including his heritage, is well documented.  He claims a heritage that seems to honor his connection of the dog species before he would open his mouth to acknowledge any connection to Africa, despite it being quite clear the moment you see him that Africa is clearly a major source of his DNA.  Then, to add insult to injury, he tells African people (during the time when that idiot president of the U.S. was calling out African athletes) that "you have to respect the office."  Clearly, we have no obligation to respect anyone, anywhere, who doesn't respect us.  That's just a healthy way of living life, but somehow, these clowns who perform for European capitalism feel so comfortable suggesting to us that we delegate our dignity to the sensitivities of those sick souls who are determined to defend daily oppression against our people.  That's who Tiger Woods, but this piece isn't really about him.  Its about us.  Why it is that relate to the triumphs of those among us who try so hard to disrespect us?

There are a few reasons for us.  Primacy among them is the collective nature of African culture.  That means African culture everywhere because we understand, as Sekou Ture so accurately pointed out, that there are many elements of African culture, pre-colonialism, that are universal among us no matter where we were born and/or live.  One of those things is that we know instinctively that we accomplish nothing alone.  That concept is entirely foreign to our culture and the last 500+ years of collective oppression against have solidified our understanding of this.  So, that portion where we recognize, unconsciously even, that Tiger's victory belongs to us, whether he sees it that way or not, is firmly entrenched in history.  Too many people died to gain us the rights most of us today did/do nothing to protect so it makes sense that so many of us understand this, despite Tiger's disgraceful disrespect against us.  Its there that the reasons are dialectical in their dominantly unhealthy practice.  For many of us, we feel so utterly disrespected on a daily basis, which is completely justified, that we expect to be disrespected.  This logic isn't hard to understand.  The so-called "founding fathers" of this country all savagely owned Africans as property.  The national anthem of this country sings glowingly about slavery.  The reality is so oppressive against Africans that even our outcry about being consistently gunned down through state sponsored terrorism is met by the majority of Europeans with disgust at the methods in which we express our anguish instead of acknowledging the legitimacy of our concerns.  So, no one can effectively argue that we have no reason to expect disrespect.  Its woven intricately into every piece of this backward society, but we still never bow down to it.  Instead, the way Africans deal with this is to find ways to mitigate that disrespect.  The country is so racist that many of us find joy in just seeing an African win a game dominated by rich Europeans.  We are able to remove Tiger from the equation because we know there are many Europeans who remove any of us as human beings from any equation.  As a result, we find joy in just seeing those people seethe.  Also, since Tiger has spent the last 10 years or so battling adversity related to his unfaithfulness and his personal injuries.  Maybe his victory helped some people feel like there is hope for them in their personal struggles as well.  There isn't anything wrong on the surface level with any of these approaches and certainly, no one can blame Africans for utilizing whatever techniques we can generate to feel better about our wretched conditions.

The argument here is all of this signals to us that its imperative that we find ways for us to process our needs in ways that are reflective of our dignity.  Ways that don't require us to mitigate, remove, adjust, anything to express our desire for victory.  The answers to us are contained within our culture.  Despite the cruel oppression against us.  Despite unending efforts by our enemies to paint us as the reasons for our suffering, our people continue to practice methods of dignity that are so attractive that other cultures cannot help, but to attempt to emulate us at every turn.  All one has to do is turn on the television and you will see commercials from major capitalist corporations using our slang, style of communication, dress, etc., to sell their worthless products.  The reason for this?  It doesn't matter that this system provides us no respect as a people.  We have found ways to generate that respect for ourselves.  We do it with how we talk.  How we walk.  How we dance.  How we function within this system.  We are cool to everyone, regardless of whether they admit it or not, because unlike them, we are not caricatures of this system.  Generic duplicates of Europeans.  Most of us find ways to be as far away from that as we can achieve and this is attractive to people.  Observe children of immigrants from Asia, etc., for example.  Their parents often did everything they could to be as European as possible, including being completely anti-African.  Their children, seeing the bankrupt morality within this, reject those backward values.  It is people like this, along with European youth and others, who connect deeply with our African identity because to them it represents a true humanity that cannot exist within this caricature culture that capitalism demands.  This is what is meant when Kwame Ture says "African people civilize America!"  Since the country is built and maintained on our oppression (along with our cousins from Indigenous communities), our determination to maintain our identity automatically represents the most dignified thing happening in this terrible country and many people recognize that.

This is the type of wonderful phenomenon that we must figure out how to further define and highlight for ourselves and all of humanity.  Once we can get our people to understand this reality, we will no longer need to work so hard trying to find ways to maintain our dignity by living through disgusting people who disrespect us.  People like Tiger Woods owe an unquestionable debt to African people.  Without our struggle he would never be where he is.  He wouldn't have received the opportunity.  It is even true to say that without our struggle, Tiger's mother would never have been able to even come to this country from Thailand.  Before the civil rights inspired 1965 Immigration Reform Act, immigration into this country was based on a quota system structured around previous immigration from any country e.g. countries in Europe.  The 1965 act changed that in a way that has made this issue a major point for racist Europeans (and their African parrots, etc) today.  

We don't need Tiger Woods if he doesn't want to relate to us.  We can find ways to gain that feeling of victory without his dumb golf wins.  He apparently doesn't even have the sense to recognize that we were the only people who stood by him when capitalist America turned against him 10 years ago.  This type of disrespect represents time for us to hold these types of people accountable.  Once we learn to do that, we may find that everyone who previously rejected us is begging us to be let in.