IC News

Professional golf was once an all-white sport played at all-white clubs and covered by white announcers. But in June, viewers of the Charles Schwab Open saw the action interspersed with powerful perspectives on race, voiced by some of CBS Sports’ top broadcasters, thanks to a video project orchestrated by IC alumnus Ellis Williams ’13.

Williams, a CBS Sports producer, was the point person for a series of video interviews with CBS Sports broadcasters of color. The interviews aired individually as one-minute spots during the tournament, with James Brown providing a final 46-second spot. Online, the segments were stitched together to form one video that plays for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the exact amount of time George Floyd was pinned to the ground by police.

Titled “8:46,” the project touches on topics such as the history of oppression, racist experiences and the American Dream. Williams also poses these challenging questions: Why is the conversation about race uncomfortable? Why do we need to have it? And where do we go from here?

Williams talked about how the typical 30- or 60-second spot wasn’t sufficient to address such a complex subject.

“We felt that wasn’t enough time to speak to the depth and complexity of the Black experience, so we leaned into that and built the premise as 60 seconds to talk about X topic,” he told the sports website The Athletic. “We devised eight topics such as racism, black history, reactions to today, equality, and being an ally. Our approach was to start with a conversation and through the discussion discover what topic was their truth.”

Williams credited the faculty in IC’s Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity (CSCRE) — including Belisa Gonzalez, Sean Eversley Bradwell, Paula Ioanide, Gustavo Licon and Asma Barlas — with helping him to address the difficult topics brought up in the video.

“My maturation in having these discussions, adding depth and complexity to the Black experience, is attributed to the work of the many talented doctors at the Center,” he said. “Each gave me a different tool with which to engage in meaningful discussion; contextualizing my experiences.”

His experience as a Martin Luther King Scholar, and the mentorship of Dr. Roger Richardson, Malinda B. Smith, and Nicole Eversley Bradwell, IC’s Director of Admission, provided the foundation to seeing the world critically.

“Regardless of the paths we ended up taking professionally, they encouraged us to use them to walk closer toward justice,” he said. “It’s an example of community; this group of educators gave me a home in the CSCRE and a ‘thank you’ can’t even begin to convey the love and appreciation I have for each and every one of them.”