use way too much land to play an arrogantly wasteful game

I've never learned to play golf, and I like to tell myself that it's a matter of principle. It may also just be that no one's ever invited me to play the game, and that I've never lived all that close to a public course, let alone had connections to a "country club." But mostly, yes, it's a matter of conscience: golf has long struck me as an incredible waste of land and other resources, all for the blithely arrogant joy of people dressed in silly, expensive clothes. I'm also turned off by the shroud of white supremacy that still permeates this sport.

I disapprove of the way golf courses are basically gigantic lawns. I dislike lawns in general, and I think people who have them should convert their plots of land to natural plants or gardens. Then they would stop wasting water, pesticides, gasoline and other forms of energy, all for the sake of a sterile, monotonous, monochrome carpet. When such a flattened and tamed landscape takes on the dimensions of a golf course, it reminds me of the American white supremacist conquest and "taming" of lands that were occupied, and often cultivated, by supposedly "savage" Native Americans. That's why the joy of golfers strikes me as "arrogant."

And then there are other connections between golf and whiteness, such as the nearly all-white cast of players, the racial exclusivity of "country clubs," and the use of the game by wealthy, well-connected white men as an especially cozy node in their Good Old Boy networks.

Has the non-white mastery and dominance of Tiger Woods really changed the pervasive whiteness of golf? Isn't the common claim that "golf isn't racist anymore because its best player is black" just as ridiculous as the claim that America is suddenly post-racial because its president is black?

In a discussion of the whiteness of professional golf, Ken Jones makes an interesting observation about the golf world's paradoxical appreciation of Tiger Woods: "The impression you sometimes get is that people [white people, that is] try to forget that Woods is black when revelling in his triumphs." But then, again as with Barack Obama, white people often hold up this heroic black figure because he's black (or supposedly black), in an effort to prove that white racism no longer exists.

Of course, Woods himself has also been accused of trying to forget the common perception of himself as "black," by labeling his mixed self "Cablinasian" instead, and also by shying away from public statements about racism, in golf and elsewhere (last year, when a reporter began a question about Obama, Woods reportedly smiled and said, "Oh, God, here we go."). I've often wondered if Woods' evasions of this sort, if that's what they are, seem necessary to him so that he can focus on his game; maybe facing up to the ongoing, overwhelming whiteness of golf, and to that world's racially vexed adoration of himself, would be, at the very least, distracting.

Anyway, it's Friday, and I originally meant for this to be a lighter, more humorous post about the blithe, rather oblivious whiteness of golf. To that end, I'll turn things over to George Carlin, who might provide further fodder for your thoughts, should you feel inclined to address in a comment the whiteness of golf. Or its elitist classism, which I guess I've almost completely overlooked here. And, as usual with this dearly departed genius: ALERT, CRANKY PROFANITY AHEAD.





UPDATE: Here's a solution! Okay, it's just a fantasized solution--from Japanese Manga artist Shintara Kago: