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WAKE UP CALL: Kelly Tilghman’s comment about Tiger Woods |
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Written by RICHARD McCULLOCH
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 I first came across the story in passing: “Golf Channel anchorwoman says lynch Tiger.” With a raised eyebrow and heightened curiosity, I went on prepared to read the account of another broadcaster gone bad.
Despite the incendiary headline, the facts of the incident were somewhat anticlimactic. Clearly, the choice of words used by the announcer, Kelly Tilghman, showed a lapse in judgment and a crisis of common sense, but there was a little voice inside of me whispering, “Find out more.”
Not being an avid viewer of the Golf Channel, I needed to see the actual interchange that prompted the lynching comment. So, to YouTube I went, and saw the six-second clip of Nick Faldo alluding to the fact that for other players to beat Woods, “maybe they should just gang up for a while” on the golf prodigy. With scarcely a beat in between, and amid their chuckles, Tilghman added the line “yeah…lynch him in a back alley.”
Like many African Americans, I consider myself very sensitive to any comment or action that reeks of racism. That being said, I can honestly say that, in this incident, I barely got a whiff.
Though I do not believe her lynching comments emanated from racist beliefs or malicious sentiments toward Tiger based on race, she did make a huge mistake: a mistake based on ignorance.
The heinous legacy of lynching in these United States would seem to be an historic relic well known to any American with at least a high school education. I have since found out that this assumption is not necessarily true.
A white colleague of mine asked me why anyone would be offended by the statement. As she explained to me, her friends had often used the word “lynch” to describe a violent beating with no allusion to race.
What was even more illuminating is that she emailed some of the white friends that she had grown up with in her semi-rural enclave in Pennsylvania, and asked them to define lynching. The responses referred to beatings but did not reflect the historical and racial ramifications of the word and practice.
How could that be? Records from Tuskegee Institute document that between 1850 and 1951, there were 3,437 African-American lynching victims in the United States. The practice was so widespread and horrific in nature that in 1930, even white Southern women felt a need to form the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching as an activist organization to help quell the rash of lynching throughout the South.
Despite the profundity of this hate-inspired piece of Americana, it comes as no surprise that there are those, like Kelly Tilghman, who would use the word without regard for its racial overtones. They just don’t know better.
The issues that have most affected black America are often relegated to the footnotes of American textbooks and the basement of our American conscience. The journey of the Mayflower is required reading, but the tragic reality of the Middle Passage remains an intellectual elective.
To many people from the dominant culture, African-American history is an unavoidable ritual of February, not the acknowledgement of the contributions and concerns of a people worthy of respect and recognition.
Our history and culture are not universally consumed, and are therefore subject to disrespect, ignorance and the increasingly more frequent slip of the tongue.
I am convinced that Kelly Tilghman did not use the term with racist intent, however, the issue of intent, or lack thereof, does not totally absolve her from what she said. Murder without intent is called manslaughter, but both come with a penalty.
Until our history and experiences are discussed and taught in depth to all Americans, just consider this latest episode par for the course.
Richard McCulloch can be contacted at
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