Fore Score and Nine Holes Ago: How language and symbols in the sports world perpetuate racism

This week professional golfers are competing in The Masters Tournament, which is one of six major tournaments. The Masters — originally The Augusta National Invitational Tournament — began 89 years ago when Bobby Jones — amateur golf champion — and Clifford Roberts — an investment banker in New York — teamed up with a mutual desire to start a national golf club. A plot of land in Augusta, Georgia was selected, and in 1934, The Augusta National Invitational Tournament was official. Jones was originallyhoping that the club would be informal and relaxed, a place where friends would gather and occasionally have tournaments. Roberts had a different vision; He wanted to change the name to The Masters Tournament and focused more on the potential future and what the tournament could become. Jones believed the name to be “too presumptuous”, but after five years of persuasion from Roberts, the tournament was inevitably renamed The Masters.

What’s in a word? The term “master” comes from the Latin word magister which means chief or head. According to Merriam-Webster, master has many definitions, such as a male teacher or an artist/performer/player of consummate skill. It also can mean one having authority over another, one that conquers, one having control, an owner — especially of an animal, the employer — especially over a servant, husband — or the male head of a household, and a person who holds another person in slavery.

The “master bedroom” was first used in the 1900s to describe the room reserved for the master, usually male, of a household, and it has been used regularly ever since. However, in 2020 we saw real estate agents, like the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR), shift away from using the word master to describe the largest bedroom of a home or bathroom, choosing phrases like “primary room with an en suite bathroom” instead.

In the technology world, the terms master and slave have been used for software and hardware to describe which device controls another. Some changes have been made in the tech world to remove these terms, like in 2014 when computer programming software evolved to use the terms “primary/replica” and “leader/follower” instead of “master/slave”. In 2020, companies like Twitter and JPMorgan removed the terms “master”, “slave”, and “blacklist” from their code after two engineers lobbied for more inclusive language to be used in programming. The term is also being dropped by some universities.

This shift in language comes at a time where there’s been a major evolution in the last decade regarding overall equality. In the NFL, the Washington Redskins changed their name first to the Washington Football Team, eventually becoming the Washington Commanders in 2022. In the MLB, Cleveland changed their name from Indians to Guardians after the 2021 season. Some teams, like the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves, and the Chicago Blackhawks, have decided to opt out of rebranding for now.

More than 100 Confederate monuments, memorials, and symbols have been removed since 2020, following a series of rallies and protests like the one in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 where a counter-protest to a “Unite the Right” rally turned deadly. Mississippi was the last remaining state to use the Confederate flag, and in 2020, lawmakers voted to remove and replace it.

Finding Common Ground The issue is clearly sensitive and has been highly politicized. For some, especially those in the South, the flag and other Confederate symbols have been seen as a tribute to their ancestors that fought in the Civil War. Mississippi state representative Ed Blackmon addressed the removal of the flag during public comment saying, “I would guess a lot of you don’t even see that flag in the corner right there. There are some of us who notice it every time we walk in here, and it’s not a good feeling.”

The Masters Tournament — and the sport of golf overall — have been involved in many discussions about inequality. Co-founder Clifford Roberts said, “As long as I’m alive, golfers will be white, and caddies will be black.”Forty-one years after its creation, Lee Elders became the first black golfer to play at the U.S. Masters. Still, Augusta National didn’t have its first black member until 1990 when Ron Townsend joined the club. Women weren’t accepted into the club until 2012, when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore were invited.

My connection to golf is personal. In 1990, my parents met golfing at a work function at Palmira Golf Club in St. John, Indiana. Almost two decades later, my brother would return to the same course to play for our high school. Though it’s never been something I was drawn to, the game of golf — and sports in general — have played a major role in my family’s story and how we live our lives. As a woman, I have not been spared in the sexist nature of it all. Still, I try to empathize with those that fear the unknown and the emotions that come with exploring it. People often have a hard time accepting change because the things we believe to be true are rooted in our identities.

When Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, saying “Four score and seven years ago” — a reference to the signing of the Declaration of Independence 87 years earlier — he described our nation as one where all [men] are created equal. 160 years later, we are still grappling over what the word “equal” means. As the head of Twitter’s engineering team Michael Montano said, regarding the elimination of the term “master”: “Words matter.” Language is a tool used to convey thoughts or ideas, as well as to persuade. At its best, it can be used to connect us, bringing people together, even those that aren’t like-minded. When language is used to degrade or exclude certain people in a community, it can be considered a failure because it goes against the reason we have a common language in the first place. However we decide to move forward, it’s important to at least recognize the way our choices, decisions, and language effect other people as whole.