What’s up guys, I’m Steve Vasquez for Uproxx.
There's a new doc series called Us Against The World set in the landscape
of rural Kentucky basketball.
You're in a predominantly white area.
They don't want to be beat by black boys.
I’m here with Hip Hop Editor from Uproxx Music Aaron Williams to talk about
why it matters, right now.
So you've got "Hoop Dreams," "More than a Game," "Through the Fire," you know, classic
basketball documentaries.
How does "Us Against the World"
hold up against those?
Don't forget those "30 for 30" documentaries.
I love those, "The Big 5."
It's such a great documentary because
it's very engaging from the very beginning.
You really want to believe that everything's
going to be okay and this is just a microcosm
of what we're seeing with "make America great again."
This is how it starts.
This is where it grows out of.
It's not necessarily this overt torches
in the street sort of uprising.
I want to bring up a clip here.
This is an exclusive clip.
It's never been seen.
Why don't you let us know what we're about to see.
I think this clip sort of sets up the series as a whole.
It sort of establishes that Cordia High School is a very small high school in rural Eastern
Kentucky that has not had a tremendous amount of basketball success until they hire Coach
Rodrick Rhodes, who did play at the University of Kentucky, also was an NBA player.
He starts attracting kids who normally who
wouldn't have ever chosen this school to play at.
So what you're about to see in this clip is how the town reacts to these students despite
their basketball success.
Cordia's not known for basketball and then, you know, when they roll out there for the
first game, boom.
Three pointers, lightning speed, alley-oops, seven footers.
It should be the feel good story of the year, but not everybody was happy.
The chants were actually taunts aimed at Cordia High basketball players Marlon King and Emmanuel
Owatua, who are black transfer students from Canada.
Making matters worse, the boys second home had its glass door shot out Saturday and on
Sunday, this was done to their mailbox.
I know a lot of people might have a hard time believing that this is the state of America
today.
There is this trope, I think, sometimes of the good negro who comes in and you can be
accepted as long as you're, you know, like J. Cole said in the song "Kenny Lofton."
I mean, they only love you when you dunking the ball and then once you stop doing that
thing that entertains them, that benefits them in some material or immaterial way, they
start seeing you as that guy that yelled at Taylor Swift that one time.
So let's talk about the film's main character, Coach Rodrick Rhodes.
I think it's really interesting because he doesn't come from Kentucky.
He played at the University of Kentucky and it seems that he fell so much in love with
his experience there that he wants to come back to that area and give back.
He's always charismatic and charming throughout the entire documentary series.
We don't get enough male interaction in entertainment where we see positive relationships of genuine
love between two men; they can be father and son, they can be coach and athlete, they could
be brothers.
It's very hard to say, "Hey, this is how men should behave.
This is how a man comports himself in day-to-day life and in the professional realm," because
so much of American socio-economic success is founded in the right behaviors and it's
an incredible balancing act for these kids because then they have to also learn how to
switch back and have those behaviors that help them survive in these rough neighborhoods.
So having a coach is having someone who says, "Look, you can do it.
You can be tough and strong and without sacrificing passion and goals."
So to take it back to "Us Against the World," what does it mean when a community decides
to take that opportunity away from the kids.
Taking the opportunity away from the kids is like taking an opportunity away from everyone
because they say two heads are better than one.
So if you put 100 people on a problem, then you can solve that problem way faster.
One of those kids that's being denied a college education might have gone on to be a scientist
who cures cancer, someone who goes onto...into politics and uses their political career to
change laws and standards and policies and taking away the 14 percent of that 100 people,
it's doing untold damage to our society as a whole.
But it also damages those kids.
Alright, I'm Steve Vasquez for Uproxx First.
This has been Aaron Williams.