ABSTRACT
In 1997, in the wake of his fi rst Masters win, the then twenty-one-year-old golfer
Tiger Woods appeared for the fi rst time on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Touted by the media as the fi rst black golfer to win the prestigious Masters PGA tournament,
Woods surprised his audience and many Americans when asked whether it both-
ered him to be called African American. He replied, “It does. Growing up, I came
up with this name: I’m a Cablinasian,” a term he said he created in childhood to
signify his white, black, Native American, and Asian ancestry (White 1997). His
public assertion of his multiracial identity stunned and puzzled many Americans
who, because of his dark skin, had already pigeonholed him as black. In light of
Woods’s claim that he embraced every aspect of his racial background and his
visibility as a professional athlete, media attention turned to multiracial Americans.
New questions emerged. Who were these multiracial people? And how do they
