NASCAR driving toward diversity
WASHINGTON—The intimate luncheon was all part of NASCAR’s commitment to diversity. The guest list included some of the biggest names in sports journalism, a few college journalists a year or two away from starting their professional careers and even Major League Baseball’s senior director for workforce strategy, diversity and strategic alliances.
Of all the professional sports leagues or circuits, NASCAR is perhaps the last group one would automatically expect to make a pitch at the joint convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists this week.
Based primarily on my lack of awareness, I’ve often stereotyped NASCAR and its followers as white, rural folks who love waving their Rebel Flags. That mindset is a tad ignorant, at best, so I jumped at the chance to visit with some members of NASCAR’s multicultural development department.
Many of the attendees at the NABJNAHJ Convention have helped erase stereotypes throughout their career, telling diverse stories while providing the proper context from perspectives that had been missing in newsrooms for years. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to learn about a sport that I had ignored most of my career even though I had countless opportunities to go to the Daytona 500 while covering spring training in nearby Kissimmee, Fla., for more than a decade.
I carried an open mind and a hearty appetite to the luncheon at an Italian restaurant a short walk from the convention hotel. Once the tiramisu desserts were devoured and the other guests were gone, it was time to get to the point. It was important to ask why NASCAR deemed it important to send a cadre of multicultural and marketing department employees to the largest gathering of journalists of color.
“It’s really important for us to be visible to journalists of color,” NASCAR’s Director of Multicultural Development, Dawn Harris, said, “to make them more aware of our diversity and inclusion initiatives and really to engage the journalists as well as the collegiate chapters of the organizations to invite them to participate in some of our outreach initiatives such as bringing groups out to the track.
“We held one panel the first day of the conference that addressed some conversation about diversity and inclusion but also around innovation in our sport. We really want people to know just how cutting edge and how advanced some of the programming is to really give people more information to make it more interesting to them to want to cover the sport.”
It was interesting to hear of NASCAR’s hope to encourage more journalists of color to cover the sport. There aren’t any black drivers racing on NASCAR’s top circuit, the Sprint Cup Series, 55 years after the late Wendell Scott became the first black driver to race full-time in NASCAR in 1961. He became the first black driver to win a premier NASCAR series event in 1963 at Jacksonville’s Speedway Park.
Almost 25 years after he died, Scott was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in January 2015. Scott’s legacy resonates to this day with African Americans, but there’s no denying the NASCAR stereotype.
“We’re aware of that perception, which is why it’s important for us to be more visible at events like this,” Harris said. “And a lot of times once people come to a race a lot of the stereotype is debunked. We really want people to experience it for themselves and more to get what we call a third-party endorsement.
“So if you come and people have known you as reputable and you share your experience with your network of people that you know, we’re working to encourage people to do that so that there is that authentic ‘Well, I was there and this was my experience,’ as opposed to a perception or something that somebody heard about from an unknown source.”
Harris estimates that 20 percent of NASCAR’s fans are people of color, and I had to admit that’s about 15 percent more than I would have guessed. But as a journalist, you’re not supposed to guess. You’re supposed to report and see for yourself.
I’ve been so focused on baseball over the last two decades while also holding a passion for soccer and college football and an interest in the NFL, NBA and NHL, I had no idea Cuban American Aric Almirola won a Sprint Cup Series race in Daytona in 2014.
“He’s definitely helped to get more interest in the sport,” Harris said of Almirola. “He’s from Central Florida. He’s from the Tampa area by way of (Cuban roots), so he definitely has done a lot of outreach and marketing, particularly in the Florida area, central Florida, but he’s certainly garnered more interest in the sport as well.”
Almirola caught a major break in 2003 when he was accepted into the Joe Gibbs Racing/Reggie White Driver Diversity Program. NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program is in its 12th year. Darrell Wallace Jr., who is black, and Daniel Suarez, a native of Mexico, have worked their way up through NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program. They race in the XFINITY Series, which is one level below the top tier Cup Series. Suarez became the first Mexican native to win a NASCAR National Series race two months ago at Michigan International Speedway.
Wallace, 22, and Suarez, 24, hope to advance to the top tier of NASCAR one day. When they do, I’ll be happy to say I’m not surprised.