In the week leading up to Martin Luther King Day, there was high racial drama in the golf world.

On January 4, Kelly Tilghman, one of the hosts on the Golf Channel, was analyzing the third round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship with co-host Nick Faldo.  In a regrettable turn of events, they began commenting on the dominance of Tiger Woods (who wasn’t even playing in the tournament) and wondering whether there were any young players who might challenge him in ‘08.  Chancing humor, Faldo offered that the young players might have to gang up on Woods.  Trying to follow Faldo’s lead, Tilghman laughed, “Lynch him in a back alley.”  One wonders if she knew immediately that she had committed a gaffe that placed her career in jeopardy.  She surely didn’t know that it would lead to the end of another person’s career.  She knew it all soon enough.

After cries of outrage and calls for her firing, Tilghman apologized two days later for her insensitive comment.  Woods  said that while the comment was unfortunate, it was a non-issue for him–which caused him to be criticized for not being angry enough about such a racist comment.

Golfweek Magazine decided to lead with this story in its next issue to underscore the Golf Channel’s dilemma because of Tilghman’s slip of tongue.  I suppose to underscore the dilemma with a bold magic marker, the cover of that issue carried the words, “Caught in a Noose” next to the image of a noose.  As you may know, all hell broke loose.

Tilghman was given a two-week unpaid suspension by the Golf Channel–not enough time to interfere with her coverage of the Buick Invitational, in which Woods will participate.  Dave Seanor, the Golfweek editor who approved the noose cover, was fired.

Did the employers act appropriately?  Yes.  Why were the two employees treated differently?  They worked for different employers.  Could the Golf Channel have fired Tilghman instead of suspending her?  Yes.  Could Golfweek have suspended Seanor instead of firing him?  Yes.  If the two employees had worked for the same employer, should the employer have taken the same action with both employees?  Yes.  Under the circumstances, which employer took the most appropriate action?  I don’t know. 

It’s difficult to imagine a professional sports commentator saying on live TV, even when the context is one of kidding around with your sidekick, anything about lynching a black man.  It’s also difficult to imagine a respected magazine using a noose to make a point about a story that’s already racially charged, especially after the magazine’s internal debate about the front cover “was very, very, vigorous.”

All employers say they don’t tolerate racist words or behavior.  But as we can see, when that statement of policy is applied to a set of facts, it gets applied differently by different employers.  Employers have that kind of discretion for the most part.  Employers still get to make calls of business judgment.  But when employers have to exercise discretion and make judgment calls in full view of the public, it’s no longer just a matter of what the employer thinks is best or right.  It usually becomes a matter of what the employer thinks the public thinks is best or right, and sometimes what the employer thinks the public thinks is influenced by what the media says the public thinks.

An article in the Washington Post gives a little insight into how all this worked with Tilghman and Seanor.  Tilghman and Woods are friends (as are Tilghman and the author of the Post article).  Tilghman was the first female Golf Channel host ever and had experienced “the sting of discrimination” herself.  Tilghman had never previously ”uttered anything even remotely similar” to the lynching comment she made about Woods.  There was nothing else to hint “at anything mean-spirited or bigoted” about Tilghman.

And Seanor?  Well, apparently, he didn’t have any friends.  We’re not told whether he had previously exhibited any racist tendencies, just that there are no African-Americans on Golfweek’s staff.  The African-American golf champion Jim Thorpe, who is also a friend of Tilghman, said of Seanor, “Let him get barbecued.  That was a major mistake on his part . . . absolutely stupid.  That was throwing fuel on the fire.  Why would you do that?  He knew better.”  Apparently, Tilghman had acted negligently, while Seanor had bad intent, though Thorpe didn’t say how he knew that.  Neither did Charles Barkley, who seemed to agree with Thorpe.  ”I don’t want to hear that the golf industry’s biggest problem is something Kelly Tilghman said.  If Golfweek really wanted to examine racism, as the editor [Seanor] said he did, they would look at golf and country clubs excluding Jews and black folks. . . . Look at their restrictive policies and explain why the only black folks you see at most clubs are working in the kitchen . . . just like it was 100 years ago.”  (Interestingly, neither Barkley nor Thorpe mentioned that the site of the Mercedes-Benz Championship was The Plantation Course on Maui.)  Maybe if Seanor had gone with a front cover of a “Whites Only” sign, he would have been ok.   But I don’t know.

I do know slavery and lynching and Jim Crow are shameful chapters in our country’s history.  I know racism still exists in America.  Having practiced employment law for over 30 years, despite all our anti-discrimination laws, I know that race discrimination claims are regularly made against employers, sometimes with allegations that supervisors or co-workers have used symbols like a noose or words like lynch to show their racial animus.  I know about the history.  I know about the law.  But I don’t know what you can say about the issue of race without running the risk of being misunderstood or branded as outrageous or insensitive. 

I would never say anything or do anything toward an African-American that’s demeaning or racist.  At least, I would never intend to.  I suspect that Kelly Tilghman and Dave Seanor would have said the same thing.  Kelly Tilghman said something without giving any thought to the painful baggage her comment carried with it.  Dave Seanor, after thinking about it long and hard, used an image that he intended (at least, I think that’s what he intended) to bring the issue of race into sharp focus for a largely white golf world.  Instead, he gave credence to Faulkner’s surmise that the legacy of our past racial sins  would be a destructive curse.  Given the fact that the cover of Golfweek had been hotly debated, Seanor had to know that controversy could ensue.  It’s highly doubtful that he contemplated his own destruction.

Today,  the issue of race is so intractably untouchable that we can’t talk about it in public without shouting and labeling and posturing.  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are living proof of this unfortunate truth as they fight their way through the presidential campaign.  Toni Morrison once approvingly described Bill Clinton as the first black president, but apparently, Hillary wasn’t the first black first lady.

I don’t know what Martin Luther King would say about all this.  I do know that when he was killed, he had begun talking about issues other than race, like the Vietnam War and poverty.  He was criticized for this by members of the Civil Rights Movement and by other groups, because they felt he was moving too far away from the issue of race.  Maybe he was moving away from it, not because the issue had been resolved but because he knew that blacks and whites had a plethora of serious issues to solve and that we needed to move beyond racial equality to equality–period.

My only post on Martin Luther King Day was King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  It still gives me goose bumps.  It makes me want to believe in the transformation King spoke about, just as I’m convinced most citizens in our society–black and white–want to believe in it.  The problem is that in 2008 we can’t speak about the issue of race–not in a civil, thoughtful way.

Tiger Woods begins playing in the Buick Invitational today.  I expect he will play with exquisite power and grace as he always seems to do.  Kelly Tilghman begins covering this championship for the Golf Channel.  I expect she will be gaffe-free, perhaps flawless, this time around.  Dave Seanor begins this golfing event without a job. I expect he will wish that he had been given a second chance so he could be working this tournament in preparation for the next issue of Golfweek.

I don’t know what Dr. King would be doing or thinking.  I’m inclined to believe he would be sad.

Kancha Ilaiah has written “Turning the Pot,” the first Indian children’s book to openly challenge the 3,000-year-old caste system.  Calling it essential reading for every child in India and comparing it to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Ilaiah wants to raise youthful awareness of the injustices of the country’s caste system and to highlight the achievements of low-caste workers.  Ilaiah is another dreamer, but at least, they keep coming.