"Crying about the rules won't win him any friends. Go race where you like the rules."
Meanwhile, back at "Rainbow Racing," Pit Chief Jesse Jackson has been WORKING on those rules....just not necessarily in Gordon's demographic....
;^)
NASCAR NEWS - Saturday, July 17, 2004
NASCAR realizes it needs diversity in the driver's seat
By CHARLES ELMORE
Cox News Service
NASCAR has burned rubber on more than a few stereotypes in
the past four decades. Limited to the Deep South? Seventy-
five million fans all over the map say otherwise. A guy
thing? Not the whole story. Up to 40 percent of fans are
women, surveys show.
Despite the sport's boundary-stretching boom, this fact
remains: No black driver has won a major stock-car event
since Wendell Scott did so 40 years ago.
After winning a Grand National race at a one-half-mile
track in Jacksonville, Fla., on Dec. 1, 1963, Scott could
get his eyes on the prize, but not his hands. A "scoring
error" awarded first place to a white driver, Buck Baker.
Scott received another trophy a month later, long after
fans had gone home.
"Everybody in the place knew I had won the race," Scott
said later. "The promoters and NASCAR officials didn't
want me out there kissing any beauty queens or accepting
any awards."
It may seem far away, a story from a distant era of racial
fear and tension. Yet in 2004 -- even as NASCAR revs up a
diversity program to attract minority drivers and fans --
there are no black drivers regularly competing in NASCAR's
premier circuit.
Golf has Tiger Woods. Tennis has Venus and Serena Williams.
Racing has -- well, there was Willy T. Ribbs, the first
black qualifier for the Indy 500 and later a NASCAR driver.
The breakthrough wins never came. Corporate sponsors and
backers such as entertainer Bill Cosby dropped away, and
Ribbs faded from view.
At the moment, there is one black driver in NASCAR's top
three tiers, Craftsman Truck Series driver Bill Lester.
He has an electrical engineering degree, but left a project
manager's job with Hewlett Packard to pursue a dream that
started when he saw a race at age 8 and got hooked.
"I'm a race-car driver who happens to be black, not a black
race-car driver," Lester has said. "I'm not here trying to
wave the flag for diversity. The fact of the matter is I
realize that I have a responsibility being that I'm
African-American out in this sport and so I welcome that,
but that's not all I am."
Recently, NASCAR named retired basketball star Earvin "Magic"
Johnson as co-chairman of a steering committee to boost
diversity in the sport and develop what Johnson called
"an urban marketing strategy." Meanwhile, a "Drive for
Diversity" program is lining up sponsors for six minority
and women drivers who hope for an eventual shot at the
sport's top level.
NASCAR pays for scholarships in Scott's name and his son
serves as mentor in the diversity program, noted Ramsey
Poston, managing director of corporate communications
for NASCAR.