I don't care about Tiger Wood's personal life, and so I had no plans to write about it. But now I must.
Sitting on a train yesterday, I overheard a conversation between the middle-aged couple sitting behind me. They were discussing the Tiger Woods controversy.
The woman mentioned the news that Tiger's wife was taking their children to her native country of Sweden of the holidays.
The man's response made me want to gag: "Good! Hopefully she learned her lesson," he said. "That's what she gets for marrying a colored guy."
Yes, he used the word "colored". In 2009. On the east coast. I guess old-fashioned prejudices live on even here in the modern urban environment.
I found myself wondering if this man knows of any white guys who have cheated on their wives. If he reads the papers or listens to the evening news, certainly he's aware of the pasty likes of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, evangelical former pastor Ted Haggard, and former U.S. Senator Larry Craig, all of whose marital infidelities are well documented. And they are just the more high-profile tip of the big white iceberg of Caucasian infidelity.
A 2005 article in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy titled Infidelity in Committed Relationships II: A Substantive Review, by Adrian J. Blow and Kelley Hartnett, noted that "African Americans and Whites do not differ in terms of lifetime incidence of infidelity."
But, unfortunately, some people will still not let the facts get in the way of their bigotry.
I hear the things you speak of all the time on Septa.
ReplyDeleteIt just happens that there are not many people who analyze the whole situation and they speak without knowing it all.