Posted on 06/13/2020 6:00:17 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The stars and bars have been banned from NASCAR racetracks.
Finally.
On Wednesday afternoon, three days after the Cup Series showed a unified front against racism at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and only a few hours before Bubba Wallace's No. 43 Chevy hit the track at Martinsville Speedway adorned with an image of black and white hands embraced, NASCAR announced it was officially pulling the battle banner of a nation long gone off of its racetrack properties. It's the culmination of a one-man campaign by Wallace, who this week appeared across major news outlets and called for NASCAR to finally do what it has wanted to for years. Now it finally is.
Good.
In its statement, NASCAR wrote: "The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry. Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community it creates is what makes fans and sport special. The display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties."
Damn right.
The Confederate flag is gone. I will not miss it for one single second.
Because gone with it is the perpetual need for me to apologize to my coworkers of color, who politely winced whenever we entered a speedway infield to be greeted by a line of Confederate flags. Gone is the instant evidence always used against me by friends and colleagues who refused to accept my pleas of "NASCAR has changed, really!" because they only had to point over my shoulder at the flags whipping in the wind in HDTV every Sunday afternoon. Gone are the skeptical rolled eyes that Wallace has had to combat his entire life. Same for NBA All-Star-turned-NASCAR team owner Brad Daugherty, or NASCAR official Kirk Price, or the family of NASCAR Hall of Famer Wendell Scott, the only other black driver to make his living as a Cup Series driver. All of them have spent their lives going to the racetrack, having achieved their dream of working at the highest level of stock car racing, only to have to explain over and over again why they chose to work at a place where multiple symbols of hate are displayed out in the open.
Before we go any further, I want to address the "Heritage Not Hate" crowd. I'm talking about those who sound like me and look like me and, like me, have a deep-rooted Southern upbringing. Let's be totally clear here: By agreeing with NASCAR's decision, I'm not betraying anyone or anything. And don't start lecturing me on history, either. You don't have a boot to stand in when it comes to teaching me what that flag means. You go tale-of-the-tape with me on our Confederate DNA, and you're going to go down harder than Pickett's Charge.
I am a direct descendant of slave owners. My family still owns the home where my forefathers lived while the human beings they owned worked all around them. As I write this, I am sitting on the North Carolina coast just south of Fort Fisher, the would-be protector of the port of Wilmington that was overrun by Union forces during the winter of 1865. My great-great-great grandfather and uncle were taken prisoner after fighting under that flag and were shipped off to a prison camp in Elmira, New York -- a.k.a., "Hell-mira" -- and when the Civil War ended, they walked home, 600 miles, to Rockingham, North Carolina. I have a photo of myself as a newborn, being held in the arms of my great aunt, who, as a child, talked to those men about what they fought for and lost. In the end, they were buried as citizens of the United States of America, with their nation's real flag, the Stars and Stripes, displayed over the gate to the cemetery.
So, don't come at me with claims that I don't understand what the flags of the Confederate States of America stood for, or what it stands for now.
My forefathers lost that war. I'm glad they lost it. They were on the wrong side of history. They've all been dead for more than a century and yet I've found myself still working to correct their wrongs. My brother has stood in the same field where the slaves once worked for my family. The man with the deed on the house, holding hands and weeping with the descendants of the people of whom my family once held the deed.
So, yeah, spare me the arguments about what that flag really means. I know exactly what it means. It means pain. It means anguish. It means embarrassment. It means the most shameful blight on the pages of the history of the United States, and that's no small achievement.
Even if there had ever been a stitch of honor left in that flag after the Civil War was over, that was wrung out when hate groups chose the stars and bars as their go-to banner, under which they set fire to crosses, lynched black Americans, and held aloft as they stood at the doors of desegregated schools and screamed at innocent children, schoolbooks in hand, who did nothing more than be born.
There was a time when the swastika meant nothing, too. It first appeared in Asia 5,000 years ago. It was meant to signify the sun. But then someone came along and turned it into the symbol of one of the greatest evil forces that Earth has ever known.
You wouldn't fly that over Talladega, would you? Because to millions upon millions of Americans, that's what they see and what they feel when they see that Confederate flag. I am 100 percent confident that a real NASCAR fan has the ability to enjoy a weekend in the infield just as much while flying an American flag as they do under the flag of a misguided, defeated nation that hasn't existed for 155 years. If they can't, then they've never loved NASCAR as much they have always claimed. They certainly have never loved it as much as I do.
No, the only place where we should see the stars and bars now is displayed in a museum, encased in glass and context. You really want to teach someone about heritage versus hate? You really want to have a debate with someone about what those flags mean? Go to the Smithsonian. Go to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, at the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Go to Gettysburg, Appomattox, or meet me down at Fort Fisher. We can talk about it all day. At the right places.
But not at the racetrack. Not anymore.
I’ll tell
You now.
No it ain’t !!!
I am guessing you are not from GA or not old enough to remember that in 1956 the Democrats changed our flag to incorporate the rebel flag. You may have missed those 45 years.
Yep. It's next.
It's already happening to a degree at nfl games with the kneeling nonsense.
The nfl solution will ultimately be skip the National Anthem.
Then, it will be the presence of the flag still "offends" some.
Your 20 yr time frame is a generous one....but the prediction is spot on.
The GA Democrats in 1956 changed the state flag to the confederate flag as a way to give the finger to the Federal Government (Republicans) as they were trying to pass the civil rights legislation during the '50s.
Our strong Southern accent displays our Southern heritage better than a redneck flag from the 1800s.
To paraphrase the fine poets from Jacksonville, FL famously known as Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd, a southern man don't that around anyhow.
I will not defend anything the racist democrats did to carry on their racist beliefs. That includes defending the flag they waved as they fought to keep others enslaved.
I hope that helps.
“...bury the history and you bury the reasons why...”
Democrats have a LOT of HISTORY to be ashamed of, for sure!
You speak deep truth about the “ESPN effect.” Every sport they choose to bless with heavy coverage is systematically deconstructed and reimagined as a neutered, sterile and woke clone of the original. Sad fate for what used to be called sports.
Lynyrd Skynyrd are a good case in point since they displayed the confederate flag. Did the members of that band yearn for the confederacy, or was the flag only a totem of their Southernness? Southerners need a more benign totem that all can display, but I can’t think of one. Southern college football mascots sort of work.
and 1st generation of German parents immigrated in 1950.
I have never understood the devotion to the rebel flag
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That’s because you have no roots here.
Thanks, but I was born here. Which makes me ask where would my roots be found if not in GA? If your logic is that my roots are in Germany, then should I support the Nazi flag to pay homage to those in my family that died?
Did you have a relative that fought or died in the civil war? And if so, what were they fighting for? State rights?
The best thing that happened to this nation was the South losing the war. Imagine if they had won and slavery was still accepted.
Slavery in America would have died out anyway.
Islam still practices it.
I think you mean slavery in the Confederate States of America?
What would have been the incentive for the Confederate States of America to abolish slavery if they fought and won a war to keep the specific institution?
Not sure what Islam has to do with the Nascar and the Rebel flag. But, OK.
Most southerners did not own slaves.
Yes, I know. Most people were dirt poor.
My wife’s family were sharecroppers in the late 1800s-1950s. But, they don’t hold any reverence for the Rebel flag. Why should anyone today?
It would have been better if the North and the South went their separate ways without fighting. It could have happened, but Lincoln forced the battle. It was the biggest mistake in American history. There is no reason to join in a pact that cannot then be walked away from. The North under the banner of “saving slaves” killed 100’s of thousands. Just like the US to go into another country to save lives, yet kill many. Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, we had to destroy the country to save it.
I don’t believe the North went to war to “save slaves.” They went to war to preserve the union.
I don’t think I’ve pledged allegiance to ANY state flag
Good for you. However, I didn’t suggest anyone has pledged allegiance to a state flag.
I did use the words support and reverence. Do you support or hold the Rebel flag in reverence? If so, cool for you. Just wondering.
That is why men or women beat on their spouse, to preserve their union?
How is that working out today? Going on 160 years and still no peace or unity.
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