NASCAR fans defend, display Confederate flags at Daytona
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Steven Rebenstorf has numerous flags flying atop his canopy tent inside Daytona International Speedway.
The Confederate flag is front and center.
It’s been like that for years. And the 57-year-old Rebenstorf has no plans to take it down — not even if NASCAR decides to ban the flag from its racetracks.
“They’d have to come and get it,” Rebenstorf said Saturday, pointing out that his American flag purposely flies a few inches higher than the rest.
Reben stor f a nd ot hers staunchly defended their Confederate flags at NASCAR’s first race in the South since the racing series and its tracks urged fans to no longer wave the banner. Dozens were scattered throughout the vast infield all weekend leading to Sunday’s Coke Zero 400.
“It kills me that NASCAR is jumping on the bandwagon,” said 55-year-old Paul Stevens of nearby Port Orange. “They should just let it pass, let everything die down. But NASCAR is too quick to try to be politically correct like everybody else.”
NASCAR took a ha rder stance on fans and the Confederate flag after last month’s South Carolina church massacre. The series stopped short of banning fans from displaying the flag at its events, but Daytona and 29 other tracks asked fans to refrain from flying them.
Not everyone obliged. Daytona also offered to exchange Confederate flags for American flags this weekend, and track officials said a few made the swap Sunday morning.
Larry Reeves of Jacksonville Beach has a tattered Confederate flag on top of his motor home.
“It’s just a Southern pride thing,” the 66-year-old Reeves said. “It’s nothing racist or anything. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. My family is from Alabama and we’ve been going to Talladega forever. It isn’t a Confederate thing so much as it is a NASCAR thing. That’s why I fly it.”
Li ke ot hers at Daytona, Reeves believes the flag flap is much ado about nothing.
“It’s not a big deal one way or the other,” Reeves said. “If I can’t fly it, I won’t. But if I don’t have to take it down, I’m just going to leave it up.”
Rebenstorf plans to leave his up no matter what NASCAR mandates.
The St. Petersburg resident spent six years in the Navy, served in the color guard and has strong feelings about vexillology, the scientific study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags.
“The Confederate flag has absolutely nothing to do with slavery. It has nothing to do with divisiveness. It has nothing to do with any of that,” Rebenstorf said, pausing to stand at attention and salute during the national anthem Saturday. “It was just a battle banner until the Ku Klux Klan draped it around themselves. Now, all of a sudden, it represents slavery and that’s not at all true.”
The Civil War-era flag has been under attack since nine black men and women were gunned down at a historic church in Charleston on June 17.
The suspect, 21-yea r- old Dylann Roof, had posed with a Confederate flag in photos posted on a website that displayed a racist manifesto attributed to him.
NASCAR, which has roots in the deep South, moved quickly to distance itself from the flag despite backlash from fans.
“I think what happens in this situation is you have people on both sides who feel very strongly about something and they’re very passionate about it,” track president Joie Chitwood said. “You can’t argue with someone’s passion or their opinion.”