‘Colored’ Comment: Golf CEO Compounds Insults to Tiger Woods
But the situation got uglier Tuesday when Garcia and his Ryder Cup teammates were at a dinner. The emcee, Golf Channel’s Steve Sands, jokingly asked Garcia if he would have Woods over for dinner during the U.S. Open.
“We’ll have him round every night,” Garcia replied. “We will serve fried chicken.”
The remark was reminiscent of Fuzzy Zoeller’s similar comment about Woods during his record-setting victory in the 1997 Masters, when Woods became the first player of black heritage to win a major.
Certain foods, fried chicken and watermelon in particular, have been used in dehumanizing caricatures of blacks as far back as the beginning America’s segregation era in the 19th century. The imagery has become less common in the decades since integration, though Woods — the only player of African-American heritage on the PGA Tour and the top player in the world — has occasionally endured racially tinged insults.
The head of the European golf tour apologized for using the term “colored” during a live television interview Thursday in which he was reacting to the conflict between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia.
European Tour CEO George O’Grady commented that “most of Sergio’s friends are colored athletes in the United States.”
The word “colored” was once widely used in the United States to refer to African-Americans but it is now considered antiquated and offensive. In some African countries, it is used to denote individuals of mixed racial ancestry.
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