As hard as it is for some of us to believe, there are people who because of their accomplishments in life we somehow expect to be similarly respectable in their political and social views. Some people regard Jack Nicklaus as the greatest professional golfer of all time. We rarely hear of his political and social views, so he seldom gave people reason to reconsider their putting him on his pedestal. But “heros” do on occasion let their fans down. In 2005 with the continuing success of Tiger Woods on the PGA tour, a reporter for a Vancouver, British Columbia newspaper asked Nicklaus why there were so few minority players on the tour, and if the PGA could do more to attract more minority golfers. This was a fair question to ask, given the golf’s reputation and history as a country club sport for privileged white people.
Nicklaus said “Blacks have different muscles that react in different ways” as a means of explanation for why he and other white golfers had no responsibility for opening up the game to young minorities by not playing at golf clubs that ban minorities. In fact he said he didn’t “buy” that he or other white golfers should do more to open up the game to minorities. Nicklaus only put his foot further in his mouth when he tried to “explain” his comments to Sports Illustrated:
"I said the kids today are gravitating to the sports that best fit their body and the environment where they're growing up. The white society to a large degree is becoming non-functional. (Whites are) spending time in cars, they're sitting behind desks, they're not out exercising, whereas the young black kid is in an environment where he is exercising. His muscles develop, and they develop to the degree of that type of sport. I think the opportunity is there for young black kids to play golf, just like the opportunity is there for young white kids to play basketball. But I don't think they're gravitating to the same level."
What made these comments so particularly out-of-touch was that Woods was burning up the golf world and leaving white players mostly in the dust. Maybe that is what he was afraid of; Woods had appeared on the Mike Douglas Show at the age of 2, and on That's Incredible at the age of 5, looking as if he could play better than most white adult amateur golfers. His father pushed him to learn to play golf at an early age; there were no “opportunities” there otherwise. Nicklaus could at least have been honest about the racist world that had spawned and supported his career. But that had been forgotten, until now when Nicklaus posted this on social media:
I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised by any of this, given Nicklaus' aforementioned comments. If Trump has been attacked from “many directions,” it is because he deserved to be. Doing the “right thing” by the country? Is doing the “right thing” trying to take away a health care law that is the only thing that stands between us and insurance companies that will not provide affordable insurance to individuals or those with preexisting conditions? What has Trump actually done for “average” people? Nothing, but feed into paranoia and prejudices against immigrants; everything else he has done is to benefit those of his “class.” It wasn’t just “strong family values” that helped Nicklaus, but a 1940s and 50s society of white privilege that discriminated against minorities and denied them opportunities--the society that white nationalists who are Trump's most vocal supporters want to return to.
Nicklaus seems uncomprehending about how thinking people cannot look past Trump' insulting anyone who disagrees with him or his racist attacks on minority groups vulnerable to his bigoted, insular base. Most people may be loathe to call an “icon” like Nicklaus a racist, but it is difficult to reconcile his support of Trump’s racism unless there is an element of racial insensitivity in himself. It turns the stomach to read that he actually believes that this racist “loves” everyone in this country; Trump only “loves” those who share his insanity. The fact Nicklaus believes that far-right conspiracy theory that Democrats want to create a “socialist” society is despicable, and symptomatic of a person still very much defined by his rearing during a time of racial separation and an "us" against "them" culture.
It is appalling to believe that supposedly “intelligent” people can can look past the horribly real flaws of Trump and be completely blind to the division and hate that he and he alone is responsible for and feasted on since he started that “birther” bullshit, and even before that with the Central Park Five case; today we learn that Trump and his ICE thugs are so eager to deport asylum seekers that they are simply tossing children without parents across the border without regard even to what country they actually came from.
This is the monster that Nicklaus is telling us to vote for. Don’t listen to this morally flawed individual, or anyone else who shares his skewed vision of the world that Trump has wrought.
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