Left of Black S2:E21 | February 27, 2012

The Race-ing and Un-Race-ing of Tiger Woods and Contemporary Black Poetry

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in-studio by Professor Orin Starn and via Skype© by Professor Thabiti Lewis.  Authors of The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal (Duke University Press) and Ballers of the New School: Essays on Racism and Sports in America (Third World Press),  respectively, Starn and Lewis analyze how Tiger Woods has differed from many other Black male athletes in terms of how he is un-racialized and re-racialized at various moments.  Later the scholars discuss the meaning of Woods’ identification as Cablinasian.  

Later, Neal is joined also in-studio by poet Darrell Stover who currently a program director at the North Carolina Humanities Council, a position her formerly held at the St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation| Hayti Heritage Center.  Author of  the new collection of poetry Somewhere Deep Down When, Stover considers how history has shaped the meaning of being a poet, shares his poetic influences, and discusses the importance of reaching out to the larger  community through poetry.  Stover and Neal talk about Amiri Baraka’s immersion in multiple art forms, and discuss the legacy of Gil Scott Heron.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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