Barack Obama and Tiger Woods - which is black?

Taken from an op/ed piece in the WSJ from Friday April 9, 2010 by Abigail Thernstrom.

Barak Obama has checked the race box "black" instead of describing himself as multiracial. This despite the fact that his mother is white and he was raised by his maternal grandparents. He has hardly ever seen his black father.

Yet he describes himself as black because it is politically expedient. Yet it seems cynical at best. To call himself black falls back on the racist notions of many people that anyone with any black blood in them is black.

Contrast that to Tiger Woods, who without a racial constituency to placate, used the option to identify all the races in his ancestry. He listed himself as Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian. That sounds much more honest.

Woods has never encouraged fans to see him as the "first black golfer" as Obama pitches himself as "the first black president". Woods, it seems, is much most honest, at least about his heritage.