NASCAR is a sport that was born out of being an outlaw. During the prohibition era, Moonshine Bandits would outflank police in their car while they hustled moonshine throughout the South. This led to people making faster cars as a need to get away from the police. When prohibition ended in 1933, these Southerners love for Moonshine and speed were still intact.
This led to Southerners making their cars faster and begin to run races to see who had the fastest sprint car. This new fad soon becomes a sport which is now known as NASCAR. The first official NASCAR race was on February 21, 1948.
When looking upon any NASCAR event, you will see an overwhelming amount of Whites in the crowd. It is very rare that you see any ethnic minorities. It is even more rare to find an ethnic minority driver, with there being currently only one African-American driver in NASCAR, Bubba Wallace. He has endured taunting by fans with some of them saying, “He should just shut the hell up and be grateful that they even allow him to drive a car.”
The racism within the NASCAR fan base has gotten much worse to coincide with Donald Trump rising. The racism has gotten so bad that Robyn Vandenburg, host of the NASCAR show Bump n Run has been shocked and appalled by the racism and is even questioning whether she should continue to cover a sport that has so many blatantly racist people within their fan base.
Some of the comments seen in Facebook NASCAR sites refer to the Obamas as the N***** word, gorillas, and Muslims. They are ready for a race war and any African-Americans that they see take a step on their property that they are killing them. African-Americans are always guilty, and the police can do more wrong, that the police should kill ‘more of them’. All African-American women are nasty, dirty, and loud. If someone is not in the GOP, then they are un-American and un-Patriotic. They are in essence a traitor.
This culture is not just with the fans as well. African-Americans that have been employed by NASCAR have faced discrimination as well. Mauricia Grant filed a $225M suit against NASCAR due to a hostile work environment. Among the things that she was called has been: Nappy headed Mo; Simpleton; and Queen Sheba. If she arrived for work, they said that she was on ‘colored people time.’
NASCAR claims that it is an all-American sport with all-American values. We see that even though the organization itself tried to clean its image by such gestures as banning the Confederate flag at its race-track, the fans seem not to care. They love basking in their racism and raised hell at the request of not bringing the Confederate flag to the track.
Are all NASCAR fans racist? No. Do they attract a lot of the Southern provincial, good ole’ boy types? Yes. Could a group of African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims or any other minority group feel comfortable attending a NASCAR race? Probably not.
I am certain that when the elections are over that the racial rhetoric by Trump’s bluster will have calmed down. Hopefully, these people will say that a pluralistic society like American cannot tolerate and will not survive if people like these bigots are allowed to oppress others unhindered.
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