The White Shadow: A Good '70s TV Show

Basketball Coach Challenged Students Who Quest to Banish Wraiths of Poverty

Every inner-city kid knows what Snoop Dogg drives and wears and every suburban girl knows what Paris Hilton’s dog/fiancée’s name is, but there was a time when kids had better things to do. It’s wonderful to nostalgically return to the days when my suburban San Fernando valley existence was temporarily suspended, and I and others watched favorites like The White Shadow.

This escape from the harsh realities of being second-homeless to experience the inner-city turmoil of a team of mostly black kids struggle through a disadvantaged high school with a white basketball coach was another world, indeed.

The wraiths hanging over these kids are poverty, drugs, inertia, lack of opportunity, laziness, lack of motivation, and sometimes intellectual inability. Like the King of the Wraiths in LOTR, Ken Howard inversely spreads an aura, a shadow of emotion on those who come into his wingspan.

Merely the presence of a Caucasian in this ghetto wasteland has magic powers. But this shadow is one presumably of hope and courage for victory against socioeconomic oppression, bathing the team with his “white shadow”, empowering them with the vision to see a better future.

The cynical construct was such that the kids were barely attending high school for the education, more in a marginal tradeoff to participate in the school’s talented basketball team, led by a coach who had played in the “Show”, college/the NBA.

The irony is that the best opportunity to come a white college-educated former NBA-ers’s way is the same job any bachelor grad might get, a gig teaching at the dead-end high school the kids may not get to leave with any demonstrated advantage.

The class rings of power may or may not actually improve their lives. But the dream, as always, was the Precious. This was the dream every player might get a pro contract or a college entree thanks to their backetball talent. The tone of each episode was quasi-nostalgic, as if they were already looking back. The principal was Mr. Cunningham, and it was like a Happy Days of Jefferson High, and Coach Howard was the Fonz.