SO MUCH CONGRATULATIONS to Hubert Davis. I am legit pumped about the Hubert Davis era.
With Davis’ introductory press conference happening at 2 p.m. today, Stone Walls is sending out an unplanned quick word on the historical significance of his promotion to head coach for men’s basketball at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
(But before I get to that, we’re all buying the photography of Hanna Wondmagegn or booking her to make us look amazing, right? Good.)
First, some caveats are necessary. For one, at Stone Walls we are careful to center people of color in the stories that have shaped this place but have typically gone undertold. Even well-meaning narratives about racial progress in American and local history have tended to feature tropes placing white feelings and white saviors at center stage. This post steps out a little from that Stone Walls ethos, but there’s a reason.
Also, Hubert Davis is absolutely deserving. In my view, which isn’t worth much but here it is anyway, he was the right choice, regardless of any outside “home run” hires that might or might not have been realistic. Davis is a stellar choice who appears extremely qualified and suited to excel. He earned the job, just as Roy Williams had when Kansas hired him in 1988, as Bill Guthridge had in 1997, and as Dean Smith had when he was promoted in 1961.
Further, the following isn’t meant to be any sort of comprehensive retrospective on Roy Williams as a person or coach. But I thought it was instructive to note some relevant circumstances that has Stone Walls bending its own rule, stated in the first caveat, as Hubert Davis becomes UNC’s first Black head basketball coach.
It also needs saying for context here that Roy Williams, the outgoing coach of tremendous stature, has seemed to have held some less-than-great views on some social justice issues. He’s not said a ton, but what he has said indicated that if he’d said more it would’ve induced some cringing. I don’t believe he’s backward or anything like that, far from it. He just doesn’t strike me as particularly enlightened. My guess is his feelings are more a product of being a man of competitive obsessions and narrow focuses rather than broad interests and deep contemplation. But that’s my take from afar and largely irrelevant. Nonetheless, as a very public figure over the years, the extent that he’s been willing to be combative in public has seemed to skew mainly toward crankiness over things like media coverage or his inability to drink from his preferred soda’s bottle at NCAA press conferences.
That was definitely the case when it came to speaking out about the Confederate monument on his campus that celebrated an oppressive history or about the exploitative nature of major college athletics as they became a financial behemoth that made him a very wealthy man. When contrasted with Dean Smith’s advocacy against the death penalty, for example, in a time and place in which he did so, the difference is stark. (And to be clear, Dean Smith gets too much and inaccurate credit for desegregating Chapel Hill, but it takes time for these narratives to be corrected. Again, see also caveat number one.)
Okay, the caveats are out of the way.
So. All that being said, Roy Williams’ apparent final act as coach, amid what looked like crippling self-doubt and players leaving the program, was worthy work on the behalf of progress.
Because of historical and stubborn systemic racial inequities, Roy’s apparent vigorous lobbying for Hubert Davis to be his successor is worth pausing to reflect upon. After years of taking a special interest in Davis’ character, skills, and career, Roy hired him as soon as he got a chance, and then I’d imagine mentored him to be a boss himself one day, as any good boss does. That all mattered.
And then on his way out, Roy seemed to have said loud and clear: This is the guy.
Who knows how cranky he got about it or how that preference landed at first on his bosses and peers or how much cultivation of that idea went in ahead of time. Maybe it didn’t require a lot of persuasion. I’d like to think it did not. But that advocacy was a choice Roy made and an act followed through on.
Among some keep-it-in-the-family folks, there seemed to be more loudness on behalf of Wes Miller taking the helm. Certainly nothing against Miller, but hiring him over Davis or some other Black coaches in the Carolina family tree would’ve spoken volumes about the benefits of white privilege. What counts as impressive for some goes overlooked for others.
When it comes to disrupting these cycles, frequently it takes someone with power willing to throw that weight around on behalf of others for them to even get an equitable chance at anything, let alone an equitable outcome, let alone a gig like UNC head men’s basketball coach. Advocates are needed. Personal and professional capital must be spent.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, of the unwillingness of white allies to give up something in order for progress to be realized. He said: “The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.”
The price can be big. But often it’s relatively small — a willingness to be uncomfortable, to make someone else uncomfortable, to challenge people we love and respect, to make a relationship bumpier than it was. It can be a sacrifice to speak up, to use one’s position to enhance that of others. Risk on the part of the privileged has to be a part of the equation.
The lack of Black coaches in all sports and at all levels has been a problem for generations. Back in April of 1999, my first year as a student at UNC, Hugh Pressley and I wrote for the Daily Tar Heel about that very issue at UNC and in the ACC.
Not a lot of ground has been gained on that front in the ensuing 22 years. As John Thompson wrote in his posthumously released autobiography, in some ways they might be worse. (Passage transcribed below.)
But some things still haven’t changed.
Black coaches still aren’t fairly represented in college basketball. We actually have less influence than when John Chaney, Nolan Richardson, George Raveling, and I were on the bench. Only four Black coaches have won a national championship: me, Nolan in 1994, Tubby Smith at Kentucky in 1998, and Kevin Ollie at Connecticut in 2014. If those four, I’m the only one who didn’t get fired or forced out.
When I talk these days with Chaney, Nolan, and George, we call ourselves the Final Four, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the NCAA tournament. It refers to the environment for today’s Black coaches. Their challenges are an updated version of the obstacles that I faced. Almost fifty years after I came to Georgetown, after Black coaches won four national championships, after Georgetown erected my statue in a building that carries my family name, most Black coaches still do not have the freedom to not be successful.
I’m not arguing that Roy gave up a great deal. I also imagine he did what he did for more personal and individual reasons regarding Hubert Davis. But he did so nonetheless.
Hubert is a terrific choice for the job. He might be seen as a risk by some fans, but so is just about everybody in this day and age of college basketball. So was Dean Smith. So was Roy Williams when Kansas rolled the dice. Mark Few seemed a sure thing to win his first national title last night until Gonzaga got blown out.
On ESPN yesterday, Hubert Davis said: “I have a passion and a desire to walk the same path as Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge and Coach Williams. But I’m also enthusiastic and ready to go to be able to do it with my own personality, and in my shoes.”
His shoes. So much congratulations.