Positive change faces long road
Change takes time. I keep telling myself that. Systemic racism isn’t going to go away in a day or a week or a month or a year, not after living with it here for more than 400 years. I know that.
But does the process of change
have to be so painful?
We hit another brutal low Sunday when a noose was hung in the garage of NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway. Wallace is NASCAR’s only full-time Black driver.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death May 25 at the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Wallace successfully lobbied for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its races. NASCAR, surprisingly, obliged after rejecting all attempts to ban the flag for years. It took public pressure after Floyd’s death for NASCAR to finally do the right thing. Better late than never.
The Confederate flag is a long-standing symbol of slavery and racism in this country. But as abhorrent as it is, a noose is worse because it was used in the lynching of slaves. Is there any other symbol that is more repulsive? The FBI was called in to investigate how a noose found its way into Wallace’s garage, a supposedly secure area that was off limits to all but credentialed personnel. I’m not a lawyer, but this strikes me as being a hate crime. I hope the perpetrator is punished for a hate crime.
Prominent NASCAR owner Chip Ganassi, a Fox Chapel native, hadn’t heard about the noose incident when I reached him by telephone early Monday morning in Alabama. He quickly condemned it, calling it “horrific … ”
“Our sport doesn’t need this. No sport needs this. We have to be better than this,” he said.
I don’t know Wallace, but I get the impression he is strong enough to deal with this reprehensible display of cowardry by someone who wouldn’t have the courage to face Wallace in person. Wallace said as much Sunday night in a tweet. “As my mother told me today, ‘They are just trying to scare you.’ This will not break me. I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.”
The support for Wallace has been admirable — incredible, actually — from within NASCAR and around the sports world.
Every other NASCAR driver and their crews pushed Wallace’s No. 43 car to the front of the grid Monday for the start of the raindelayed GEICO 500 at Talladega in Alabama. Wallace, wearing a face mask that replicated the American flag, cried as he hugged each driver. There might not be a better moment in sports all year.
Fellow driver Clint Bowyer earlier tweeted a picture showing him on a motorcycle ride with Wallace and posted, “I’ll race with him on Sunday and ride with him on a Monday. I do this because he’s family, our @NASCAR family!!! It’s hard for me to comprehend all this, but one thing is for sure … When you [expletive] with family you’re [expletive] with us all.”
Even more powerful was the response of NASCAR icon Richard Petty, who owns the team for which Wallace races. King Richard, as he universally known in auto racing, is 82 and hadn’t made a public appearance since the COVID19 pandemic began. “There is absolutely no place in our sport or our society for racism,” Petty tweeted. “This filthy act serves as a reminder of how far we still have to go to eradicate racial prejudice … The sick person who perpetrated this act must be found, exposed and swiftly and immediately expelled from NASCAR … I stand shoulder to shoulder with Bubba, yesterday, today, tomorrow and every day forward.”
NASCAR had to appreciate Petty’s appearance almost as much as Wallace.
It has been a tough year for every sports league and organization, but it has been especially rough for NASCAR. In April, Kyle Larson, a rising star among drivers, used the worst racial slur during the live broadcast of a simulated race that was designed to keep racing fans connected during the pandemic. He was fired two days later by Ganassi Racing.
Banning the Confederate flag from its tracks couldn’t have been easy for NASCAR because it has a lot of racist fans whose money spends at the races and buys the products of its advertisers. Many of those despicable fans showed up for the GEICO 500 Sunday and Monday and wore, waved and displayed the flag in the parking lots. Someone commissioned a plane to fly over Talladega Sunday with the flag trailing along with the words “DEFUND NASCAR.”
Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief racing development officer, responded on Twitter to that flyover by posting a picture of a black hand and a white hand in a handshake, posting, “You won’t see a photo of a jackass flying a flag over the track here … but you will see this … hope EVERYONE enjoys the race today.”
Sadly, there are a lot of jackasses in this world. Unfortunately, we’ll hear from many more in the days ahead.
But change is coming, way too slowly perhaps, but it is coming.
Positive change is more powerful than loathsome hatred.
I’m convinced of that. How can anyone not be convinced after seeing that wonderful scene at Talladega Monday with Wallace and his NASCAR family?