Southern Knuckledraggers Admit Women to the Augusta National Golf Club in 2012

The gentlemen from the Augusta National Golf Club, host of the Masters Golf Tournament, finally admitted its first women members, Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore, in its 80-year history on August 20^th, just 22 years after first admitting black men members. This landmark event inspires a memory from a scene from the sagacious film, Caddyshack, when Al Czervik tells his Asian American golf buddy, “I hear this place is restricted, Wang, so don't tell 'em you're Jewish, okay?”

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News calls the landmark event the “end of a Neanderthal policy.” Even Obama "thinks it was too long in coming, but obviously thinks it's the right thing to do," according to White House spokesman, Jay Carney. So this was “a long time coming.” But why did it take so long? How did Augusta National manage to remain current—hosting the Masters Tournament and maintaining members like Bill Gates, Pete Coors, and Warren Buffett–when it had such archaic and offensive traditions? More importantly, even if this was a long time coming, what is most problematic is that it took so long to happen and American women had to wait for the Good Ol’ Boys Club at Augusta to take their time inviting women to tee off.

Augusta National was not upholding any honorable traditions when they excluded women until Monday and African Americans until 1992: they upheld racism and sexism. Until 1983, Augusta National’s caddies were exclusively African American, a relic of Jim Crow that ignored the social revolution since the end of the laws in 1965. Augusta National also struggled to keep up with women’s issues, as evident by former Masters Tournament Chairman, Hootie Johnson’s, 2002 remark, “There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours and not at the point of a bayonet.” Why was 2002 not on his “timetable” for gender equality?

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times opened her story the day of the announcement with, “Condoleezza Rice has lived a life of firsts: first black woman to be Secretary of State, first black woman to be national security adviser and the first African-American, first woman and youngest person to be provost of Stanford University. On Monday, she added another first when she became one of the first two female members admitted to Augusta National Golf Club.” Bumiler brings up an important point: Condoleezza Rice is a trailblazer for 20^th and 21^st century women of color. Yet why is Augusta National even on the list her of unprecedented accomplishments? Isn’t it problematic that her membership is significant enough to add? Moreover, shouldn’t someone else have broken that barrier a long time ago?

In Ms. Magazine Blog contributor, Rebecca Nelson’s, piece on Rice and Moore’s recent membership, she highlights the elitist, sexist, and racist ideology implicit in the club’s requirements for membership. She recalls sociologist Jessica Holden Sherwood’s 2010 article for Ms. that examines how the exclusive club mentality creates “breeding grounds for a toxic mentality” and affirms the homogenization of the privileged class. Holden Sherwood observes, “symbolic boundaries like these feed and legitimate all class, race and gender inequalities.” Augusta National’s tradition of exclusion is an intolerance of difference and, as a result, reinforces problematic hierarchies among race, class, and gender spheres. With luck, the inclusion of Rice and Moore will point the club’s community toward inclusion of diversity without inequality and will inspire and reflect an ideal for our current society.

While Monday’s announcement is an accomplishment for American women, it is also a testimony to how far we have to go in achieving equality in the 21^st century. One consolation walking away from this is that “golf” is finally no longer synonymous with “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.”