Introduction

By Michael_WilbonIt was Mother’s Day of 2002. Charles Barkley and I were just put­ting the finishing touches on his book I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It, which was Chuck’s take on the world and the world of sports. He said—and I remember the words exactly—­“I’ve got an idea for another book. . . . Tell me what you think of this . . .”

It was so clearly thought out, it was as if he had done an outline for this new book in his head. “Racism,” he said, “is the biggest cancer of my lifetime. And I know I ­can’t cure the cancer, but ­doesn’t somebody have to attack it?” That simple idea was the inspiration for this book.

“I want to interview people who are influential in their various fields,” he continued. “I want to talk to them about how race affects their lives and the industries they work in. It just seems to me people are afraid to talk about race. ­We’re richer than ever, more educated than ever. The country is more diverse than ever. But I think ­we’re more scared than ­we’ve ever been when it comes to talking about race. We spend more time and effort trying to cure racism than we spend trying to prevent it. Nobody wants to talk about what they think about people who are different until something really terrible happens, and once you reach that point nobody is rational. At that point, people are just stuck in their positions hating each other.

“I’m not expecting to find concrete answers,” he said. “Maybe there ­aren’t any to find anyway. I know people will disagree whenever race is a topic, but that’s part of the point. We ­shouldn’t be so scared to disagree or to argue that we just avoid something that everybody knows is so destructive. I want to try and start a dialogue. I want to sit down with people and have open, positive discussions about race and how they feel about where ­we’re going, what’s good, what’s bad, what smart people ought to be thinking.”

Charles stopped. “So what do you think about that as a concept for a book? And ­don’t lie to me. If you think it sucks, tell me it sucks.”

I loved his idea then and ­I’ve loved it even more since, as his editor, accompanying Charles along the journey he set out on. I loved it when we sat with U.S. senator Barack Obama one month before his election in Illinois and heard him talk about his vision for his state and the country. I loved it when we were having lunch with Samuel L. Jackson in Beverly Hills, hearing him talk about the times his paycheck was so small the bank teller smirked when he made the deposit. I loved sitting with Rabbi Steven Leder (who, as it turns out, I went to college with in the Midwest) in his office in Los Angeles, talking about what in the world has happened to a once strong rapport between Jews and blacks. I loved listening to überproducer Peter Guber in his home on a Saturday morning talk about the forces necessary to break “tribalism” and how that affects Hollywood. I loved hearing Charles and Morgan Freeman, over dinner at Jezebel in New York City, argue like only two southerners could over the merits of NASCAR. I loved hearing Tiger Woods talk about why he will not compromise or reduce the fullness of his racial heritage for the convenience of those who can only deal with racial simplicity. I loved it when Ice Cube and George Lopez, both working on location, welcomed us into their trailers to talk about race and the entertainment industry. I loved it when Justice Clarence Thomas, even though he ­couldn’t talk to us on the record because he has his own book coming out, welcomed us into his office in the Supreme Court and told Charles this book was an undertaking he had better complete. ­Justice Thomas told Charles not to let anyone trivialize his agenda, as he was on to something important, something worthy of serious discussion, and not to be afraid of disagreement, that you ­can’t sharpen a knife without friction and that different and contradicting positions are necessary. He said that Charles has this platform, and he wished him all the success in the world with this endeavor. I loved it when Charles called excitedly from New York and said, “I just had lunch with President Bill Clinton in his office . . . you ­won’t believe what he had to say.”

People of great influence and sometimes fame picked up the phone or answered the door (sometimes only after great coaxing) because Charles was the one calling or knocking. And when they did, almost always they expressed to Charles that he would have better luck pursuing this particular dialogue on race, conversations that almost always begin awkwardly, than would politicians or religious leaders. Bill Clinton told him, “Charles, you are widely admired, because people think you speak your mind. If they ­don’t agree with you, they at least think you told them what you think is the truth. And that’s one thing you can do with this book.”

It was clear that everybody who said “yes” to be interviewed had a sense of Charles’s curiosity and his compassion. That was never more evident than in a discussion with Reverend Cecil “Chip” Murray, the senior pastor of First AME Church in Los Angeles for ­twenty-­seven years. He had only one more month on the job when he welcomed us into his office one afternoon. His years of serving one of the most important churches in California included battling the L.A. riots, AIDS, police brutality, gang warfare, and hunger and facilitating the influx of a new wave of immigrants to Los Angeles, many of whom turned to his church for assistance. I had met Reverend Murray in May 1992, two weeks after the riots to be exact, when I was working on a series of pieces for the Washington Post. So I was happy Charles was meeting him before he stepped down. Murray has been a pivotal figure in Los Angeles, so respected that former governor Gray Davis came to First AME to share in that final Sunday. Reverend Murray told reporters, after his final sermon, “The black church must be a servant church or we are all in default. The church must reach beyond its walls. It must have more than prayer, more than worship. The word must become flesh.”

So at ­seventy-­five years old and having fought some of the culture’s most destructive forces for all of his adult life, Reverend Murray was clearly delighted to see somebody with Charles’s profile and influence wanting to engage people on the subject of race and the evils of racism. He looked Charles in the eye and said, “If this discussion comes from a Charles Barkley, it’s got a chance. It’s got a real chance to reach an audience that will take it in the right spirit. ­You’re the right age, a young adult approaching early middle age. ­You’ve got the right background. ­You’ve had the right experiences. ­You’ve got a gifted mind, and you certainly have veracity. People believe you because they believe in you when they see your show on basketball every week deal with so many things beyond basketball. There are four guys sitting there exchanging ideas intelligently. But when they come to you, Charles, they know ­they’re going to hear it straight. It’s going to be truth, and it could be harsh. It’s certainly going to be candid. You may not agree with it, but you will hear it. It’s nice and clear and away we go. No shucking and jiving. If there is a person who can reach the multicultural community—men, women, young, old—it would be Charles Barkley. You can reach people in the political community because ­they’re watching and listening to you. ­You’re reaching people in the athletic community. ­You’re reaching people of all races because sports is one of the few things in our society now that brings in everybody, regardless of race or religion.”

While Charles is hardly unaware of his influence in certain areas of pop culture, he was undoubtedly taken aback somewhat that we were sitting in a church with a congregation somewhere north of fifteen thousand with one of the most prominent ministers in the nation’s second largest city, seeming to suggest Charles should be leading these discussions. As a son of the South and a son and grandson of churchgoers, Charles is like a lot of ­forty-­somethings in BlackWorld, who grew up identifying with national leaders, forces of nature who often were products of the civil rights movement, who at the very least got the attention of African Americans and often mainstream America on subjects as serious as race.

But Murray was quick to dispel that model as an answer. “Up to the sixties, we were locked in, looking for one door, concentrated on one leader helping us get it open, and there was a concentrated effort in that model,” he said. “So here comes Martin Luther King, we somehow get the door open. And that door opens dozens of other doors. So now, instead of a single leader we have leaders on every front. We must have political leaders. We must have educational leaders, leaders in the world of medicine, leaders in the world of politics, leaders in community development, leaders in youth development. We no longer can work from the model of a single lone ranger to come riding in anymore. ­We’ve got to come at it from many different directions. What we probably need, rather than a single leader or leadership, is a single agenda. If we can agree on that agenda for the family, for the economy, for education, for the religious sector and so forth, then I think we could go into the ­twenty-­first century. But we ­aren’t going to get that one agenda, that one voice, because the NAACP right now has to reinvent itself. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has to reinvent itself. And the church has to reinvent itself.

“One thing ­I’ve seen is the church, the religious assembly, has had to become a surrogate parent,” Reverend Murray continued. “You have to become the father in most cases, or father and mother, for that child. Because many times the children ­don’t follow the parent to church, or the children ­don’t think church is cool. So the church has to reach out to the kids because the kids often ­don’t have any parental connection to the church. We have some ­thirty-­five youth components here and it really takes everything to keep those kids on board. Many of the parents themselves are not that involved. The grandparents are there and they ­don’t make the kids come. So you have to make church extremely enticing or they ­won’t be there. We have some five thousand kids, but you still have to really work at it because religion ­isn’t a given. Showtime, Hollywood, media imaging is exciting to them. Some of it’s positive, but so much of what excites them is negative, and you hear them calling women bitches and hoes and all these things they want to imitate. We have to find a way to offset all that negative imaging with positive imaging. What ­we’ve found is, if the church ­doesn’t do it, it ­won’t get done.

“Do you realize,” Reverend Murray said, “that only ­thirty-­nine percent of black children grow up with a mother and a father in the home? Just ­thirty-­nine percent. That’s compared to ­sixty-­six percent of whites and Latinos and ­seventy-­seven percent of Asians who grow up with both a mother and father in the home. So two out of three black children have a missing daddy, an overstressed mamma, and the kid is either raised by grandmamma or raised by the gang members. I think it will probably take from a ­half-­century to a century to get the black family back to where it ought to be, and that’s if we get some momentum and reverse some of these trends. Right now, ­we’re at the point where the women, to a large extent, say, ‘There are no men. ­I’ll do without.’ And the men who are there—these are our rare sons—­they’ll tell you the women come at them just because ­they’re there, and that married or not married the women just pull at them. Just having so many black men in jail . . . so many more than are in college. We have a program for ­ex-­felons, and we have 180 ­ex-­felons in it. They come out of jail, we grab them right there before they go back into that web or that network on the street of drugs and all that stuff. And we work them through job relocation, home relocation, mentors. We hold them for about six months to a year, till they can see a whole positive light. But in the next two years, 465,000 brothers are going to be released from prison. That’s almost a half million black men who are going to be released back to the streets with no skills. They ­can’t vote. They’ve got one or two strikes. And if they pick up anything in the store, the ­three-­strike law is going to eat them up. It’s going to take a lot of time to restore that. It’s not going to be a snap of the finger. . . . I know it sounds like I’m rambling all over the place, but these are some of the things you have to keep in mind when discussing race in America and why things are as they are to a great, great extent.”

It’s also important to keep in mind where the author is coming from. Charles Barkley was born in February of 1963, the height of the civil rights movement, seven months before hateful bigots bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on a Sunday morning, killing Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins in one of the most infamous episodes in modern American history, one that a black Alabaman like Barkley can never let go of. He grew up in the projects. His grandmother worked at a ­meat-­packing factory. His mother was a maid. Schools progressive enough to have both black and white students nonetheless elected one homecoming queen for the black students, another homecoming queen for the white students. Yet Charles’s life was diverse because his mother and grandmother simply ­wouldn’t allow him to exclude the way he had been excluded, and because he was a star athlete who was welcomed into places at Auburn University where another black student probably would not have been. He married a white northerner and together they produced a now lovely teenage daughter who asked her father, when someone inquired about her race, “Dad, am I black or white?” Her father’s response was “Honey, that was determined for you a long, long time ago.”

During one of our interviews—I think it was with Barack Obama—the subject of interracial ­in-­laws came up. Senator Obama is also the product of an interracial marriage. And Charles recounted a recent conversation with his own ­father-­in-­law. “He told me, ‘I was a little worried when you married my daughter.’ He said, ‘I just ­didn’t know at the time. But ­I’ve got three daughters, two of them married to white guys and one married to a black guy. And fifteen years later, the other two are divorced and you two are still married. ­I’ve already apologized for what I thought in the beginning.’ It’s funny, because obviously he went crazy when it first happened. But here it is, fifteen years later, and he says his daughter with the black husband and child is the one who’s happiest in that context. It’s interesting, perception and reality.”

It’s probably appropriate that someone with Charles’s personal history with race be the one who sits and talks about it with anyone who will be open. Because he is who he is, he can ask anybody anything. And because he is who he is, people feel at ease talking about just about anything with him. Rabbi Steve Leder started our conversation by saying, “I think I can talk about the stuff with you I really ­don’t talk with people about.”

Charles could have written an entire book by spending a month exclusively with Reverend Murray and with Rabbi Leder. While one is Christian and the other Jewish, the men themselves seem to be coming from pretty much the same place. They confront and are affected by many of the same themes in Southern California, which because of its diversity can fairly thoroughly represent what is going on across urban America.

Rabbi Leder told Charles, “I’m so glad ­you’re doing this, but I think your challenge is going to be to really figure out how hot the coals are. Maybe that’s all that matters: that the leadership gets along, and the grass roots ­doesn’t matter ’cause it’s hopeless or whatever. Look, I just try to chip away at it every day. I try to do the right thing. I try to be open. When you run a big synagogue—it’s a ­twenty-­six hundred family institution, ten thousand people—everybody with a worthy cause wants to come here to get the rich people in this congregation to get behind it, or to help them with this or that. I say no to almost everything because I’m very protective of the community. On the other hand, I say yes every time it’s something like this—starting a dialogue. But there ­aren’t that many people asking to talk. There ­aren’t that many people who seem to care. I think that all communities have to push beyond the prior generation’s definitions. There’s a saying that ‘It’s not incumbent upon you to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.’_”

And that seems as good a place to start as any.

Chapter 1

Looking back at the balcony

Tiger Woods

Since Muhammad Ali, probably no professional athlete has inspired more worldwide talk than Tiger Woods. That’s because nobody in professional golf has ever looked like Tiger Woods. Sure, there have been people with dark skin who have had an impact on professional golf, from Charlie Sifford to Lee Elder to Jim Thorpe, all of whom are Americans of African descent, to Vijay Singh, who is Fijian. But Wood’s ­ethnicity—­his dad is African American and his mom is ­Thai—­his dominance of the game at the turn of the ­twenty-­first century, and his appeal to children touched off a golf revolution. Never had the game, invented in Europe and dominated by white men for four hundred years, grabbed the attention of so many blacks, Asians, women, children, and young adults as when Tiger Woods started a roll that would see him win all four major championships by his ­twenty-­fifth year.

If Tiger Woods was a WASP and ­fourth-­generation country club kid from New England, he would be a golf phenomenon. But as a black and Asian kid from Southern California who has been called “nigger” on numerous occasions as a child and as a teenager by people who ­didn’t think he belonged on a golf course, he is a global phenomenon. People who operate under the impression that Tiger just sailed through life with no ugly confrontations will be shocked to learn that he suffered an ugly racial assault his very first day of school. But despite the odds, the “next Michael Jordan” from a marketing standpoint ­isn’t another basketball player; it’s Tiger Woods, who is probably the most recognizable athlete in the world, probably the richest, and in some ways the least known.

Anytime you look different from the others in your chosen field, people are going to be curious about you. And Tiger, quite obviously, looks different. He also is different. As a man who was born in the ­mid-­1970s, he’s not a child of the civil rights movement, as I am. He ­wasn’t shaped by an America bent on segregation, as his father Earl most definitely was. But it’s impossible to grow up in America with skin the color of Tiger’s and not be affected by race. Because so many people, both black and Asian, see Tiger as representing their race, there has been something of a ­tug-­of-­war over him since he hit the PGA Tour in 1996, as much for the dignified way he behaves, dresses, and speaks as for his ability, which the golf community knew about by the time he was eight years old.

That ­tug-­of-­war has led to criticism of Tiger, that he should talk more about what race he feels he is, that he should identify with his African roots here in the United States, that he is wrong to shy away from issues of race, and the easy one that most people in public life face: that he ­hasn’t done enough to help his race.

Having known Tiger since he came out of Stanford, I know that stuff is just a bunch of junk. ­I’ve told him dozens of times that he should talk about how he feels on the subject and damn the consequences. ­I’ve also teased him, when we talk about his multiracial background, that we know people see him as black because Thai people ­don’t get as much hate mail as he does. Black people get that kind of volume of hate mail in America, not Thai people.

But the important thing for me was to hear Tiger talk about his own racial experiences, most of which he has not shared publicly until now. And with Tiger, you have to start at the beginning, with his parents.

“I was raised in two different cultures,” he said one Sunday afternoon, sitting with me and Wilbon in Arizona. “I have my father, who is African American, and my mom, who is Asian, specifically Thai. I had to understand and appreciate more than just one way of looking at things because my dad’s view a lot of times was the polar opposite of my mom’s view because they were raised under two totally different cultural heritages. I was probably raised more in the Asian tradition because my father was working and my mom, who was at home more, was the disciplinarian. And a Far Eastern culture, as anyone who has experienced it knows, is very strict. So you have responsibilities. You had to do what you had to do if you were delegated a certain responsibility, and you never did anything to bring dishonor to your family. You ­can’t disrespect anybody who’s older than you, because if you do ­you’ve disgraced your entire family. That’s kind of how I was raised, and from what ­I’ve seen it’s a different philosophy from other cultures that ­I’ve been exposed to in America that are not Asian. If I ­didn’t say ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ ­I’d be smacked in a heartbeat, right on my butt. That’s just how it was.

“Being raised under two different cultures gives my life a dichotomy that I think made me more well rounded earlier. And then there was the fact that I was playing a sport in which I ­didn’t ever really play with peers. Golf traditionally is an older gentleman’s sport. So as a kid I was always around people who had been in the workforce for twenty, thirty, forty years. There was a point in ­time—­I was probably about thirteen, fourteen years ­old—­when I told Dad, ‘I’m more comfortable hanging out with you guys than I am with my peers.’ But that’s the environment I was raised in, so I was forced to grow up faster. You ­couldn’t act petulant at a young age being around men who were very influential in what they did.”

Everyone has tried to define what they think Tiger ought to consider himself. Because we all are asked at such an early age to disclose our “race” on applications ranging from driver’s licenses to a form you fill out to give blood, people have to come to grips with choosing. ­I’ve told the story about my daughter asking me, “Dad, am I black or white?” and telling her that the answer was determined a long time ago in this country. Though her mom is white, her dad is black, so she’s seen as black in America, and would have been three hundred years ago, when the child of a slave and slave owner was legally black. Hell, if that person married a white person and had a child, their child would have been legally black as well.

But this ­isn’t three hundred years ago. There are so many kids of so many races who cannot be easily described in a single box on an application. And Tiger Woods is one of those people who just will not be pushed into an overly simplistic description of who he is.

“I never tried to do it, or saw the need to because everyone else was trying to do it for me,” Tiger said. “And it ­didn’t really bother me. My whole objective was to try to win golf tournaments, and along the way I had my own challenges I had to deal with, being not the standard golfer. So I had to endure my own little bumps along the road to get to where I was. My dad went through it playing baseball. He was the first black to ever play in the Big Seven. It ­wasn’t even the Big Eight yet. Now it’s the Big Twelve. My dad played at Kansas State. He was the catcher. So my dad endured his hardships. He ­couldn’t go to Norman and stay when the team played the University of Oklahoma. He had to go stay in Oklahoma City and then drive to Norman to meet the team to play, then find a black hotel. So his mom and dad always told him, if ­you’re going to take advantage of opportunities you have to be twice as good to have half a chance. And that’s kind of the philosophy that my dad raised me with.

“I was talking about this not too long ago with some kids. They asked me, ‘What was it like growing up?’ I said, ‘It was great. But there were times when I ­wasn’t allowed to play golf.’ At the Navy golf course where I grew up playing, there’s an age ­limit—­at military golf courses it was ten and over. But for some reason all the white kids were allowed to play who were ten and under, though I ­wasn’t. I had people who were ­older—­and I ­don’t know if they were servicemen or retired or active or guests . . . I ­don’t know who they ­were—­use the N word with me numerous times. I was there pitching, just pitching at a little chipping green. And they wanted to pitch, so they would yell at me and ­I’d have to go to the putting green. So ­I’d go to the putting green and ­I’d get yelled at over on the putting green. ­I’d go back to the chipping green, then get yelled at on the chipping green. These are things that obviously hardened me a little bit and made me realize that golf was not like basketball or football at the time. It was different, under different rules. Even traveling the country as a kid, I ­wasn’t allowed to go to certain pro shops or certain clubhouses to change shoes where all the other kids were allowed to.

“Being black is just looked at differently. And in this country I’m looked at as being black. When I go to Thailand, I’m considered Thai. It’s very interesting. And when I go to Japan, I’m considered Asian. I ­don’t know why it is, but it just is. It ­shouldn’t be about that but it is, unfortunately, because even as the world is becoming more global and more interconnected through all the different information streams, ­we’re still very separate and distinct. People are trying to maintain their cultural heritage, even though we, in America, are probably the biggest melting pot of anyplace in the world. Now, being married to a Swede, it’s interesting to see how excited she is when she’s able to talk to a Swede. Or when my caddie Stevie, being from New Zealand, is able to talk to someone from New Zealand. I guess because I have more than one heritage I really ­don’t feel that. The closest thing I have as a sense of that kind of connection is when I’m overseas and I run into someone who is speaking English.”

But for Tiger, the sense that he was somehow different came very early.

“I became aware of my racial identity on my first day of school, on my first day of kindergarten. A group of sixth graders tied me to a tree, ­spray-­painted the word ‘nigger’ on me, and threw rocks at me. That was my first day of school. And the teacher really ­didn’t do much of anything. I used to live across the street from school and kind of down the way a little bit. The teacher said, ‘Okay, just go home.’ So I had to outrun all these kids going home, which I was able to do. It was certainly an ­eye-­opening experience, you know, being five years old. We were the only minority family in all of Cypress, California.

“When my parents moved in, before I was born, they used to have these oranges come through the window all the time. And it could have not been racially initiated or it could have been. We ­don’t know. But it was very interesting, though people ­don’t necessarily know it, that I grew up in the 1980s and still had incidents. I had a racial incident even in the 1990s at my home course where I grew up, the Navy golf course. And right before the 1994 U.S. Amateur, I was eighteen years old, I was out practicing, just hitting pitch shots and some guy just yelled over the fence and used the N word numerous times at me. That’s in 1994.”

It’s remarkable to me that Tiger has remained pretty much without bitterness. His life is nothing if not diverse. His wife is Swedish. His caddie is from New Zealand. His mom is Thai, and his dad is black and American. You ­don’t see that every day, do you? Then again, maybe if we look closer, increasingly this is what we will be seeing as walls and barriers come down. Folks accustomed to being only with people who look like them may not want to see it, but it’s there more and more if you just look around when you travel. Maybe part of it is that so many people ­don’t have the means or opportunity to leave their communities and ­don’t know what’s going on outside their segregated situations. Anyway, we know Tiger knows exactly who he is and has an appreciation for where he comes from because of some ugly lessons. Still, he seems not to carry that baggage around.

“My dad’s mom died when he was about thirteen years old, but he said her philosophy, which he’s always followed, was: Always give everyone a chance. Always. And it ­doesn’t matter what race the person is, what their economic background is. None of it matters. Just talk to them. ­Don’t presume you know what a person is thinking or feeling. Just talk to them and find out for yourself.

“Over time, my attitude has changed about this issue. When I was little, it was about trying to help people who were black. As ­I’ve grown older ­I’ve come to the decision that I ­don’t want to take that particular approach anymore. I want to help everybody. So my foundation will be done with that in mind. It’s the Start Something program, a mentoring program. I ­don’t care who you are, what race you are, or what your ethnicity is. ­Don’t ask me to care. It’s about helping the next generation have a better future. And I will be a leader for everybody. Not just one group. I ­don’t want to limit myself, and I ­won’t be pigeonholed. I just feel like I can do more than be a leader strictly to blacks or strictly to Asians. I want to be a leader to everybody and that means globally. That means taking my foundation and going around the world and doing something to help anybody. I’m not going to limit myself to just one race, one religion, or one sex. Any effort I’m involved with is going to be about everybody.

“People want to pigeonhole me or move me in a certain direction that speaks to their agenda. And ­I’ve obviously been distanced in my takes in certain political situations because I ­don’t want to be pushed in their direction or be forced to take a particular view. I have my own views. I’m trying to do my best right now with what I have, growing my foundation and using it to be a springboard to the future. We have three million kids right now in the Start Something program. We’re trying to work within the next year and a half to go global with it.

“Another of the things that ­I’ve realized from traveling around the world and playing all over the place is: The only way to make a difference is to be informed. You have to be informed. You have to have knowledge. ­You have to have an education. ­You have to realize how important it is to be able to read and write, develop your mind, to be able to articulate your ideas and communicate with anyone.

“I’m not going to play golf forever. When I think I’m not good enough to play anymore and win, I’m gone. ­I’ve always told my friends that, and they all think I’m crazy. My dad laughs at me sometimes when I say that when I do quit, when I’m done, I ­don’t need to be remembered as a golfer. I want to be remembered for whatever social impact ­I’ve had around the world. Some people remember Arthur Ashe because he was a tennis player. But there are people all around the world who ­don’t know that he won Wimbledon but remember what kind of social impact he made, what kind of leader he was. That’s the kind of role I want to play and be remembered for playing. ‘Yeah,’ people might say, ‘he was a good golfer at one point. You know, he won some tournaments here and there. But what he did socially had a real impact.’_”

When ­you’re a professional athlete, you ­don’t always see what’s going on around you because you have to have tunnel vision to compete with the best in the world at what you do. So ­I’ve wondered if Tiger knows how many black people play golf because of him, how the galleries have changed since he joined the tour, how much more inclusive the industry of golf has had to become. He forced all of that. The people who ran and enjoyed golf and had it as their own and kept it to themselves ­weren’t trying to run out and share it with everybody. In Europe and around the world, golf is a ­working-­class game. But in America, it’s been pretty much the same country club sport for a hundred years. It’s radically different now. And as much as men like Charlie Sifford and Lee Elder and Lee Trevino and others broke down the first barriers of racism, the whole thing ­didn’t change radically until Tiger. I know I had never been to a college golf tournament until somebody told me, “Tiger Woods is in town.” And I said, ­“I’d like to see that.” And I went. But really, I had never watched golf in my life before. Now, I build my weekend around what time Tiger’s coming on TV. So I asked him if he’s aware of the impact he’s already had.

“When ­you’re in the hole it’s really hard to see out of it,” Tiger said. “You can be so close to something that ­you’re not aware of all that’s around. Your view is very ­one-­dimensional. I ­don’t get the chance to see all of that. But what I have seen is that when I go to tournaments now, the galleries are much more diverse. ­We’re talking about more women. ­We’re talking about more minorities. Plus just a boatload of kids, which is very exciting to see. To see these kids just smiling away and thinking it’s just so cool to be out there watching golf. When I was growing up, it ­wasn’t a cool thing. Even when I was in high school, you were considered a wuss for playing golf. It ­wasn’t a cool thing to do. Everybody played basketball, football, baseball, or ran ­track—­the core sports in America. If ­you’re back East, maybe you play hockey or lacrosse, but I was in L.A. There ­wasn’t even a thought to play golf for most people. That ­wasn’t a cool sport to play at all. But now, to see other kids playing golf, to hear them say ‘I’m not going to play football or basketball or run track or baseball; I’m going to play golf’ is just very different.”

Same thing with tennis. Look at what the Williams sisters are doing. I mean, that brought a whole new burst to that sport.

“I think people should have the opportunity to play whatever sport they choose, whatever sport they want to play,” Tiger said. “They ­shouldn’t be denied an opportunity to participate or be discouraged by anyone to participate, whether the sport is popular with a certain group of people or not. That ­shouldn’t ever happen. Not ever. I try to preach that at all of my speaking engagements around the country, and overseas for that matter. ­We’re not providing enough, given our opportunity. ­We’re not doing our job. I’m trying to do more with the vehicle that I have, which is through golf and through my foundation, and mentoring and role modeling. That’s one area where I feel like I have an ­understanding—­not a complete understanding, but at least enough of an understanding to be able to help. I think the Tour embraces it from a marketing standpoint. The Tour is about business. What I’m trying to do is run a humanitarian foundation. There are two different ways to look at it: I’m trying to give money away; the Tour is trying to make money. So you ­can’t really compare the two efforts.”

Funny thing is that even with Tiger’s success and impact and the increased number of kids joining minority golf programs and programs like First Tee, we ­haven’t seen any real change in the number of African Americans playing on any of the tours, or African Asians for that matter . . . not on the men’s tour anyway.

“I would make the case,” Tiger said, “that it’s still a numbers issue. Even when we had Calvin Peete, Jim Thorpe, Charlie Sifford, and Lee Elder out there on tour, we had a very small base to work from. If we can grow the base, ­you’re going to pyramid up and ­you’ll have a few more make it to the Tour. As I travel the country and do clinics I see these kids with technically sound golf swings at ten, twelve years old who are black. I never saw that when I first started playing the Tour. Technology has certainly helped, because now they can videotape and analyze their swings and become better. Now it’s a cool sport to play, and professional athletes are playing, which even adds to that coolness. To have you playing, Charles, Michael Jordan playing, that brings a whole new excitement level to a sport that people thought was just a game for WASPs. But now you have some of the most powerful athletes in the world playing golf? ‘Hey,’ kids say, ‘we should take a look at this; we never thought that was an option.’

“Obviously, I had some success, and that has something to do with it. I came along and got lucky with the timing. Just as Arnold Palmer had the right timing because he came along at the same time television was exploding in America. Now, ­we’ve got global Internet access. Our sport ­wasn’t global when I began playing the Tour. Now it is. You can log on anywhere in the world and see what any player did in any tournament or for the year. You can follow the PGA or the European Tour. With that international boom, that international stream of information, golf is getting exposed to parts of the world that it never even thought of getting into. That’s all about timing.”

Okay, that’s nice. But even if the time is right, the person has to come along, and he or she has to be willing to use the leverage they have at that time to make change.

“You know, ­we’ve had to use that,” Tiger said. “I ­don’t like using it, but ­we’ve had to use it in order to get the funds to be able to do what we do. That’s why Target has been so influential with us. That’s why it’s the Target Start Something program. We started working with Target in 1999, at St. Jude’s Hospital, with what they do with cancer patients. We built a library for them. Although I ­don’t like using that kind of personal leverage, sometimes you really have to in order to get the funds to be able to do what you want to do.

“But it’s also a matter of getting in there face to face and explaining to people what ­we’re trying to do. For that, it’s a matter of education and articulation. It’s essential to be able to articulate your points. You ­can’t just say, ‘Hey, gimme your money, I’m going to try to help kids.’ You ­can’t do that. It’s a lot more detailed than that. You have to be able to articulate your opinion, you really do.

“That’s why I try to emphasize with kids how important education is. I dropped out of school and turned pro in 1996 when I still had two more years of Stanford. But does that mean my education stopped there? No, it’s just starting. Now I’m in a whole new world, but I still read a boatload. I still watch TLC, the Discovery Channel, all these learning shows, because I like learning. I enjoy learning. Just because I dropped out of school ­doesn’t mean I ever quit learning. Maybe I’m not going to school now, but I can gain knowledge anywhere and everywhere.”

You cannot talk about Tiger Woods and race without dealing with his win at Augusta National in 1997, a historic win not just because Tiger was the first person of color to win ­there—a place that even now, because of its stance on women not being members, symbolizes exclusion and golf’s lingering ­intolerance—­but because he won by a record margin. Many black people in America ­didn’t even know what the Masters Tournament was before that weekend. They certainly had never watched. I ­don’t know if any studies have been done, but my bet is that there were millions of Asians and Hispanics around the world who had never watched golf before, but watched the Masters on that Sunday afternoon when Tiger won.

There’s a memory from that day that has nothing to do with golf that Tiger shared during our conversation that afternoon. His tone turned very serious as he recalled it. After the traditional ceremony at Butler Cabin to present him with the customary green jacket, Tiger had something else waiting for him, something that was very rewarding in a different sense.

“So, there’s this closing ceremony,” Tiger explained. “You go on the putting green, where it takes place, and I look up and ­they’re all there in their white outfits. The cooks, the staff, attendants, everybody. ­They’re all black. Each one of them came out onto the balcony and watched it. I look back and I start getting choked up just thinking about it. They touched me in a really powerful way. I started thinking about everything these people had faced in life, all the ugliness and all the prejudice and all the obstacles they had to deal with. ­I’ve seen what they struggle with and I feel so bad. I was thinking that they could have a lot of bitterness and feel ‘Why him? Why not me?’ But they ­didn’t. They ­don’t. It was very impactful, man. It was so huge to me, for them to feel that way about me and for them to honor me in that way.

­“I’ve gotten to know most of those people now, learning about all the years they worked there. And it’s really that I want to say thank you to them because they influenced my life. They touched me more than they will ever know. Ever. As I walked out that day, I said, ‘Dad, look up there in the clubhouse. Just look over there.’ And my dad started getting choked up. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘take this in.’ And I said, ‘Dad, that’s what ­I’ve been doing. ­I’ve been looking over there the entire time.’_”

Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?, by Charles Barkley. Copyright (c) April 2005, The Penguin Press, a member of The Penguin Group, Inc., used by permission.