Woods recalls racist attack
Tiger Woods has agreed for a new book by basketball star Charles Barkley to talk again about the racist attack he suffered as a youngster.
The book is entitled “Who’s Afraid Of A Large Black Man?” and in it Barkley interviews various figures from all walks of life, including former President Bill Clinton and the actors Samuel L Jackson and Morgan Freeman.
Woods, this week trying for the second leg of a first Grand Slam of all four major titles, says: “I became aware of my racial identity on my first day of school, on my first day of kindergarten.
“A group of sixth graders tied me to a tree, spray-painted the word ‘nigger’ on me and threw rocks at me. That was my first day of school. And the teacher really didn’t do much of anything.
“I used to live across the street from school and kind of down the way a little bit. The teacher said ‘okay, just go home’. So I had to outrun all these kids going home, which I was able to do.
“It was certainly an eye-opening experience, you know, being five years old.”
There were other occasions when he was shouted at growing up and he also recalls when he was 18.
“I was out practising, just hitting pitch shots and some guy just yelled over the fence and used the ‘N’ word numerous times at me. That’s in 1994.”
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