Confederate flag wavers un-American
Bianchi: NASCAR is right to banish divisive, destructive symbol of past.
The shocking thing isn’t that NASCAR finally banned the Confederate flag from its race tracks; the shocking thing is that this is actually still considered a shocking thing.
Here we are 155 years after the United States of America defeated the Confederacy in a bloody Civil War and, yet, astoundingly, there are still NASCAR fans who are actually upset because they will no longer be able to proudly display a flag flown by an army that fought to keep black Americans in chains.
How pathetically sad is it that Ray Ciccarelli, a NASCAR Truck Series driver, announced on social media Wednesday night that he planned to quit the sport shortly after NASCAR’s decision to ban Confederate flags at races?
Cicarelli tweeted using poor grammar, punctuation and spelling that certainly didn’t help the ignorant image of those he was trying to defend: “I don’t believe in kneeling during the Anthem nor taken ppl right to fly what ever flag they love. I could care less about the Confederate Flag, but there are ppl that do and it doesn’t make them a racist all you are doing is [expletive] one group to cater to another and i ain’t spend the money we are to participate in any political BS!! So everything is for SALE!!”
Isn’t it hypocritically ironic that Cicarelli and many Confederate flag-waving sympathizers believe black American athletes taking a knee to protest police brutality are disrespecting the American flag and military, but it’s A-OK for them to truly disrespect the American flag
and military by flying the treasonous, racist symbol of a rebellion that tried to destroy our country?
Even Gen. Robert E. Lee, the leader of the Confederate army, disassociated himself from the rebel flag and opposed erecting Confederate monuments after the Civil War because he knew it would create too many harsh feelings and bitter debates. He knew he was on the wrong side of history. Wrote Lee shortly after the surrender at Appomattox: “I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”
A few years ago when I was covering the Daytona 500, NASCAR honored three Congressional Medal of Honor winners, including Army Sgt. Gary Littrell, a Vietnam veteran who risked his life and spilled his blood protecting the only flag that matters — the Stars and Stripes. I asked Littrell then if it bothered him that NASCAR fans fly the Confederate flag of an enemy that tried to turn the United States of America into the Divided States of America?
“The rebel flag is part of our history, but we only have one flag now,” Littrell told me. “There’s only one flag I salute and one flag that makes me put my hand over my heart when it passes, and that’s Old Glory.”
So, then, why? Why would any right-thinking American want to selfishly and arrogantly fly a flag at a sporting event that is an offensive, racist symbol to an entire segment of our population and an unpatriotic affront to those authentic American soldiers who fought so all of us —– no matter the color of your skin —could be free?
Why would any rightthinking American want to so cavalierly fly a flag that represents hate and pain and burning crosses and ghastly lynchings to so many? Why would any right-thinking American so imperviously fly a flag that has been co-opted by the KKK and neo-Nazis and monstrous men such as Dylann Roof, who is on death row for the murders of nine black churchgoers slain in Charleston, S.C., five years ago?
And please spare us the rhetoric about how banning the Confederate flag is some sort of violation of the American Constitution.
Puh-leeze. If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a million times: Yes, Americans have every right to display a symbolic flag — no matter how ugly and divisive it may be — on their own private property. And NASCAR has every right to ban these ugly, divisive symbols from its private property, as well.
Besides, any NASCAR fan who says they will no longer attend races because of the ban on Confederate flags isn’t really much of a NASCAR fan at all. If you can’t enjoy sitting underneath an American flag on the Fourth of July, watching the cars roar by at 200 mph while drinking a few beers with your buddies then that’s a you problem — not a NASCAR problem.
Here’s all you need to know: Richard Petty, the King himself, is the owner of Richard Petty Motorsports — the race team that employs Bubba Wallace, the only black American driver on the NASCAR circuit. Earlier this week, Wallace strongly and successfully urged NASCAR officials to ban the Confederate flag and then drove his Richard Petty Motorsports Chevy with a “Black Lives Matter” paint scheme during Wednesday night’s race in Martinsville, Va.
If Richard Petty, an old right-wing conservative who grew up in the South, is OK with the Confederate flag ban, then the rest of you just need to shut up.
The hood of Bubba Wallace’s Chevy featured a black hand and a white hand gripping each other in solidarity.
That’s a symbol all Americans should embrace — unlike the divisive, destructive flag that represents the most shameful, embarrassing blight in our nation’s history.