For better or worse, Tiger Woods and Tareq Salahi have captivated the news media as much as, if not more than, the troop surge in Afghanistan and the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Beyond tabloid headlines and blond wives, the philandering golf legend and half of the White House party-crashing team don’t have much in common. But as I watched both stories develop, I was waiting to see when journalists or commentators would make each man’s race or ethnicity an issue in the coverage.
Each is the child of an interracial marriage, and each is in an interracial marriage. As a scholar on race and ethnicity in news media, I waited to see when someone would bring up Woods’ black/”Cablinasian” identity in contrast to his apparent preference in women. Or if anyone would make an issue that Salahi, the son of a Palestinian immigrant, had breached White House security.
When is race or ethnicity relevant in a story?
In the case of Woods, the silence arguably was broken by Jesse Washington, Associated Press national writer on race and ethnicity, with his piece “Tiger’s troubles widen his distance from blacks.” The story takes what I like to call the “When White People Aren’t Listening” approach, i.e. reporting that illuminates the conversations people of color have when they aren’t in polite company.
I talked to Washington on Thursday, after his story had stirred up a national controversy. He said the story idea had emerged organically, from conversations, talk radio and answers to his queries on social networking sites.
Race “was the elephant in the room” in the Woods story, he said. “I definitely think it’s relevant. The challenge was trying to address it responsibly.”
Woods, he noted, has used race as a marketing tool from the beginning of his career, when an early and controversial Nike ad featured Woods saying, “There are still courses in the United States that I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin.”
Washington said his editors had given him the go-ahead to report the story, but made clear — “and rightfully so” — that he had to provide concrete evidence that Woods’ racial identity and preferences were a real topic of discussion and concern in the black community.
Some applauded Washington’s take, but many disagreed with the story and objected to its treatment of race, including columnist Jenice Armstrong of the Philadelphia Daily News, who argued that race was irrelevant to the story.
Nevertheless, other takes on the identity question followed. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson described Tiger Woods’ “validation complex” in choosing women who reflect a decidedly un-diverse standard of attractiveness.
Newsweek’s Allison Samuels honed in on “Elin Nordegren Woods and the myth of the angry black woman.” Jenée Desmond-Harris, writing for The Root, noted, ironically, that the initial race-neutral reporting of the scandal was exactly what Woods would have wanted.
And what about Salahi? Several blogs and niche outlets took note of Salahi’s role in the American Task Force on Palestine — but without mention to Salahi’s Palestinian roots.
Robin Givhan, in her Washington Post fashion column, “Why they got in: They look like they belonged” noted Michaele Salahi’s “tall, thin, white, blond privilege,” and that Tareq “cleans up well and has the bearing of a confident and self-important fellow.”
I asked Givhan whether she had considered noting Tareq Salahi’s ethnicity.
“My column spoke more to appearance rather than lineage. And to the eye, this couple looked like a well-dressed, white duo that was supposed to be there,” Givhan said. “They fit into the stereotype of what folks on that guest list would look like.”
Givhan also said that the Salahis reportedly had crashed the Congressional Black Caucus dinner about a month earlier, but were escorted out when a guest pointed out that they didn’t belong at his table. “Seems to me that they didn’t fit the stereotype” at that event, Givhan said. “In that case, appearance worked against them.”
In a New America Media piece, Sandip Roy took his own tongue-in-cheek spin on party-crashing as an ethnic pastime — but from the perspective of his own Indian culture: “Tareq Salahi might not be South Asian. But he was following in the footsteps of a fine desi tradition — crashing big parties, especially ones involving food.”
I think Washington’s and Givhan’s pieces — as well as the other examples discussed in this blog post — demonstrate that it’s how, not whether, race or ethnicity is considered in the formulation of a story that matters.
