The symbol above his words resembles three Ku Klux Klan hoods.
It’s a coincidence, but you can’t unsee it.
In the midst of one of America’s most pivotal moments, Tiger Woods decided that he too would join in with the rest of the sports world by releasing a useless and contradictory statement in an attempt to speak to this historic racial, cultural, and political moment.
In the end, it was his way of finally telling us that he hates being Black.
My heart goes out to George Floyd, his loved ones and all of us who are hurting right now. I have always had the utmost respect for our law enforcement.
Woods doesn’t realize that this isn’t just about Floyd. It’s also about Ahmaud Aubrey, and all the Amy Coopers of the world that have ever called the police on a Christian Cooper. It’s about decades of police brutality, and law enforcement officers getting a slap on the wrist for killing Black people at will. It’s about Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, and every other Black person that’s ever been a hashtag.
Woods also forgot to mention that he was arrested and charged with a DUI three years ago. On his mugshot, he’s listed as “Black,” a title he’s always run from.
“Growing up, I came up with this name: I’m a ‘Cablinasian,” Woods once proclaimed. The term was something he’d created to describe his heritage, which was a blend of Caucasian, Black, Indian, and Asian.
They train so diligently to understand how, when and where to use force. This shocking tragedy clearly crossed that line.
Shocking?
According to a 2019 report from The Washington Post, at the time there had been 4,400 fatal police shootings since Ferguson took place in 2014. The report also discovered that Black people are disproportionately killed by police, more likely to be killed while unarmed, and that police kill an average of three people per day.
These are facts that the 44-year-old Woods willfully chooses to ignore, especially since his 29-year-old niece, pro golfer Cheyenne Woods, knows her history.
“Just thinking about (George Floyd) again gives me goosebumps and chills. This is a tough reality of what’s going on in our country,” she recently told Golfweek. “It’s a storyline and it’s a tragedy that has happened way too many times in all of the history of society, but now again it’s being filmed and being broadcast on social media, so it is spreading.”
I remember the LA riots and learned that education is the best path forward. We can make our points without burning the very neighborhoods that we live in. I hope that through constructive, honest conversations we can build a safer, unified society.
Woods doesn’t mention that the L.A. riots took place because the cops that brutally beat Rodney King on video, all got off scot-free.
Hours before Woods released his statement, the world watched as his buddy, Donald Trump, gave a press conference declaring himself our “president of law and order,” as he vowed to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that would allow him to deploy the military to enforce order to cities and states if riots and looting continue.
“I believe that we in America should not get used to or accept uniformed service members of any variety having to be put in a position where they are having to secure people inside the United States of America,” said Army Maj. Gen. Thomas Carden, the Adjutant General of the Georgia National Guard, to reporters on Sunday. “While we are glad to do it and honored to do it, this is a sign of the times that we need to do better as a country.”
As Trump spoke on the White House lawn, police released tear gas on peaceful protesters across the street in Lafayette Park, to clear a path so that he could walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church to do a photo op with a Bible in his hands.
“Let me be clear: The President just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus,” said Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
Tiger Woods’ statement shouldn’t have surprised anyone, because this is who he is, and this is what he thinks of us.
And when I say us, I mean Black people.
A race of people that he hates being a part of.