Roles of Agency and Structure in the Lives of William Gates and Arthur Agee and their Families in the Movie Hoop Dreams
The Movie Hoop Dreams is about two African-American teenagers trying to realize their dreams of being professional basketball players. In their basketball glory, Arthur Agee and William Gates experiences several hardships they are forced to endure and overcome. Both Gates and Agee live in Chicago from a poor Black American neighborhood. Agee and his entire family reside in West Garfield Park, while Gates lives in Cabrini Green. The journey to their school is a long walk taking about ninety minutes walk. Enduring complex and lengthy practices and workouts and adapting to a new social environment, the two teenagers struggled to enhance their athletic talents in an occupation with extremely stiff competition. Due to their culture, race, and social class, Agee, Gates, and their families face many challenges in the US that they were forced to endure.
First, William Gates faces racism and discrimination in his new school. Gates joins a new school that comprises mostly Caucasian students, whereas he is a Black American teenager. Gates faces many challenges due to his color. He faces challenges mainly relating to facial abuse (Hoop Dreams, 00:40:00). However, Gates’s racial discrimination in his new school does not hinder him from using his talent and fame to improve his current situation. The problems he faces act as a stepping stone for him to keep pursuing his objectives of becoming a success at some point in life. William Gates still becomes a senior priest in his village, effectively giving back to the community despite his failure in joining the NBA. Even though racism by his fellow students was a painful experience in Gate’s life, he did not allow it to get into his head and bring him down. Racism and discrimination in the school are among the reasons for his older brother’s death and access to the NBA.
Additionally, William Gates experiences class problems due to his social class. His new school, St. Joseph, comprises students of various social classes. Gates comes from a poor social background. As a result, he faces challenges relating to interacting and coping with students from a higher social class. He is rejected by individuals from a higher social background, creating loneliness and rejection (Hoop Dreams, 00:03:19). Due to these feelings of rejection and loneliness, Gates suffers emotional stress, which makes him struggle in class to attain good results. It is discouraging and living in a place with a feeling of being the odd one out mainly due to the failure to fit into every individuals’ level. Gates finds it challenging to be in a school consisting of financially well-off students when he is poor. However, he is not discouraged by being the only poor person in the school as he continues to pursues his set objectives of becoming a successful basketball player.
Similarly, St. Joseph school did not care about the well-being of the African Americans. At the start of the film, basketball coach, Spike Lee, explains to Gates and Agee during basketball preparations that they are in the basketball team mainly because they can make big money for themselves and make the school win (Hoop Dreams, 00:24:00). The whole basketball thing is about money for the school. That is why they decided to include minority students who are good at it. The Spike scene elaborates how the people of color were being exploited and discriminated against in the schools of the whites. Soon after, the tuition fees at St. Joseph’s are drastically raised, and Agee is thrown out for poor performance in basketball as the school anticipated. Due to the rise in the school fees, Arthurs family cannot pay the school’s tuition fee, but instead of the school trying to help him by finding donors and sponsors to help Arthur pay his school fees, they tossed him out. Again, the school did not care for the well-being of students of color. They did not care about the class performance of Agee. Instead, they focused only on the basketball success to allow him to attend school. William, on the other hand, continues to perform well on basketball. Due to his success in basketball, the school finds a doner to help him pay his tuition fee when it is raised (Hoop Dreams, 01:13:20). Also, William is employed by his donor to allow him to raise some extra money. In St. Joseph schools, profits and sports were given more priorities than education. While Agee is taken back to a school where there is education is of low quality, Gate is allowed to learn at St. Joseph because of his performance in basketball. The basketball coach recruits younger players for the team and tells them that their primary focus should be on sports and not grades.
Williams is forced to believe that sports are the only way he can change his economic situation. He says that basketball is the way out of slums (Hoop Dreams, 00:15:06). Gate’s family is poor, and he believes basketball is the best way to change that situation. It is easy for the team coaches to alter student’s minds to pursue short career positions and opportunities in sports with the institutional and societal racial discrimination surrounding them. Due to their culture and color, Agee and Gate do not see career opportunities. With the confidence of not being like their families, they get to hold onto chances offered to them by their coaches in terms of social backgrounds and struggle for job opportunities. The minds of the Black students in St. Joseph’s school were transformed to dream about being basketball players as the only means of success.
Hoop Dreams pursues to reveal how Black Americans experience injustice due to structure and agency. The presence of structural racism in the school shaped the minds of Agee and Gates to pursue challenging goals and objectives of gaining entry into the NBA. The students grasp into that opportunity because they desperately want to move out of the struggles of unemployment and low-income family dynamics that they currently face (Hoop Dreams, 00:25:37). However, the school uses that opportunity to exploit these students and use their skills to earn profit. They make the students believe that their value is in that they perform well in sports. The students also believe that their abilities in athletics need to be given greater priority compared to their education.
In conclusion, the movie Hoop Dreams is an exciting and attractive movie about two African American teenagers (Arthur Agee and William Gates). The movie uses the two characters to portray how injustice, racism, and discrimination are presented to people of different races and cultures. In addition, it portrays how agency and structure play an essential role in people’s social interaction.
Works Cited
Marx, Fredrick, and Peter Gilbert. Hoop Dreams. Video accessed at https://watchdocumentaries.com/hoop-dreams/. 1994.
