Team views ‘insightful’ racism film
Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams picked a movie for the team to watch Sunday that was anything but easy to watch.
“The Uncomfortable Truth.”
“Afterwards, just watching the guys faces, I think some of them will watch again because it’s one of those movies you can learn from,” Williams said Monday.
On a day off, Williams had the team watch a 2017 documentary on Amazon Prime about Loki Mulholland, the white son of a Civil Rights activist, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, who discovered family helped establish “institutional racism” in America dating back to slavery 400 years ago.
“He said that was the one thing he had lined up for us,” Suns All-Star Devin Booker said about Williams. “He wanted us to watch that film. It was a really good movie.”
Amazon Prime describes the nearly 90-minute documentary as a “comprehensive and insightful exploration of the origins and history of racism in America told through a very personal and honest story.”
Williams said he’s watched the documentary three times.
“I thought it was fascinating to hear a white person tell the story, the historical, factual story that his family was involved and how it happened slavery and African-Americans for decades,” Williams said. “The courage of Loki Mulholland to make a movie like that, I thought it’d be a good thing for us to watch as a team.”
With the Black Lives Matter movement and call for social justice reaching an all-time high after the tragic death of George Floyd, an AfricanAmerican male, after a white Minnesota police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for several minutes on Memorial Day, Williams saw this documentary as something that’d make his players think.
“There’s so many facts in that movie that people are not aware of,” Williams said. “They may not understand Abraham Lincoln’s stance on slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation. I thinks facts remove assumptions.”
Williams continued on the assumption thread by saying uninformed people who have a platform is a problem.
“A lot of time, we get ourselves in trouble, especially people who have a microphone and start to talk about things we assume,” he said. “I think if we can educate ourselves and educate our kids and educate guys in the NBA, we can remove assumptions. Once you remove those assumptions, I begin to understand someone else’s background. When you understand their background, I have to make a decision. Am I going to accept that person or am I going to pass judgment, but at least i know some facts.”
Williams understood the documentary could bring emotions out of the players, but hopes they can “be better” moving forward.
“I’ve expressed to them, without trying to be overbearing, when you find out these facts to try to look at it through the lens of love and understanding,” Williams said. “It’s hard when you watch this stuff to not get emotional, but sometimes, the emotion take you to a place that you can recover.”
Williams candidly said he’s not sure people are learning from their history.
“I’ll do my part,” Williams said. “This is an action for me to be with some guys that I care about deeply and share with them some things that impacted me because slavery impacted my family.”
Williams elaborated how his paternal grandfather traced the his family tree all the way back to the slavery plantation his family resided and the origin of his last name.
“He documented generation after generation all the way back to this particular plantation in Lenoir County, North Carolina,” Williams said. “He shared with me, with our family, over 10 years ago. At the time, I was so affected by it, I didn’t even say anything because I was blown away.”
Repeatedly describing that family history as being “heavy,” Williams could see it wasn’t easy for his players to intake it. “To see their eyes looking at me, it was pretty cool, but also, I wasn’t surprised,” he said. “I was thankful to have that moment with the guys.”
It’s part of the uncomfortable truth Williams is trying to educate his players upon so they can have knowledge and see life differently moving forward.