Sports have been at the crux of social unrest and uncomfortable conversations about race long before we knew George Floyd’s name.
Think of Jesse Owens. Joe Louis. Jackie Robinson. Tommie Smith. John Carlos. Muhammad Ali, to name a few.
In the four years since NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was blackballed by the most powerful entertainment entity in this country, questions about silent protests during the national anthem before a football game will have flipped from “which players are kneeling” to “which players aren’t kneeling.”
But the times, they are definitely a’changin. Take NASCAR, or NeckCAR, a Southern creation that paid homage to our grandfathers’ running moonshine around the mountains of North Carolina to the beaches of Daytona. Its racial profile has been as white as flour, its stories unfolding under the unfurled stars and bars of the Confederate flag.
But more than any other sport, NASCAR, I would argue, is stepping into the fight against racism. It banned the Confederate flag on track grounds. That move was an easy one; the flag should have been canceled a long time ago. The argument of “Heritage not Hate” at best is, as a friend of mine suggested, “Heritage AND Hate” and truly begs the question: How much heritage is in that flag?