'Race, Basketball, and the American Dream' explores race relations through basketball

To professor Matt Andrews, race and basketball go hand-in-hand. 

It's something he notices during every game he watches. 

“[Basketball] is where ideas about race are presented and challenged and reworked, Andrews said. “As I say on the first day of class, I cannot watch a basketball game without thinking about race.”

Since 2019, the history professor has presented this idea to students in History 585: Race, Basketball, and the American Dream. With such a storied basketball program at UNC, the curriculum portrays the sport through the lens of race. Andrews said that this course explores both popular culture's impact on race and how basketball challenges existing ideas of race.

“I think that it's interesting to hear about something like sports in the context of American history, only because it does shape a lot of the way that we are and think today,” Sarah Jimenez, a history major and a student in the class, said. 

When building the curriculum, Andrews looked to his own bookshelf. He scoured his archive of basketball literature and recognized the amount of racially coded language underscored in various coverage of the sport, including stories in Sports Illustrated magazines. 

With that in mind, he curated a list of documents that build knowledge of racial theory as well as trace the evolution of race relations throughout landmark eras in basketball history.

HIST 585 spans from James Naismith's creation of the sport on Dec. 21, 1891 in Springfield, Mass., to basketball in the “bubble” due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

On the first day of class, Andrews gives his very own “racial biography” to his students — a start unique from all his other courses — because of the significance of his white identity to the topic at hand. 

“Because this course is all about ideas about race, about whiteness and about Blackness, and about the kind of theories that are out there, I say, ‘So this is who I am,’” Andrews said.

The course has allowed students from a variety of interests to think critically about interpretations of race. Coming from a STEM background, Riley Harper didn't know much about sports history. But the course has allowed him to gain a deeper understanding of race relations in the United States through basketball. It has led him to question more about society.

“Going to UNC, which is a pretty well-known basketball school, I think it's been cool to connect this course and also just the subject of history to the broader student culture, like the Dean Dome and Dean Smith,” Harper said. 

Coming from all different backgrounds, many students enrolled find their preexisting belief systems challenged, as Andrews encourages students to make up their own mind.

And Andrews has been able to have an impact on his students' thinking. One of the firsts was a student who wasn't a believer in the severity of racism. After the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer in 2020 and became a highly discussed topic in the NBA, this student emailed Andrews saying that his class was the first “crack” in his thinking. 

Seeing the impact of Floyd's death, the student realized the impact racism had on the world around him.

“I want the class to crack the way everyone thinks about race in some way, shape or form,” Andrews said.

Andrews does this by gearing his teaching style toward his 20-year-old self. He wouldn't have been thrilled to learn about topics like race and gender alone, but the introduction of sports would have been a game-changer.

He said it would have gotten him, and so many others, in the door. 

What started as a sports focus has also evolved to include the University. Students read “Game Changers” by Art Chansky, spotlighting Charlie Scott, the first Black varsity basketball player at UNC in 1967.

“Race matters. Race has mattered,” Andrews said. “I want people to see what African Americans have been up against historically.”

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