NASCAR's surprising wokeness

The sport is embracing the Black Lives Matter movement. Is that really so shocking?

Bubba Watson.
(Image credit: Illustrated | AP Images, Richard Petty Motorsports, iStock)

Lockdown boredom has not been enough to convince my wife to start watching NASCAR, which resumed on May 17. The millions of other Americans for whom this has also been true can be forgiven for not having watched a moving video that aired before last Sunday's race in Atlanta in which a group of drivers, including the seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, spoke out about the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, much less having noticed a NASCAR technical inspector taking a knee with one fist raised in the air during the national anthem. Nor are they likely to have seen the new paint job on the African-American driver Bubba Wallace's number 43 Chevy: a hood emblazoned with two interlocked fists, one black and and one white, and, just behind the numerals, the words "Black Lives Matter."

If you need to take a minute to recover your jaw from the floor, I don't blame you. With no offense to the sport's millions of fans, to say nothing of team owners, drivers, and crew members, I think it is fair to say that in the broader public imagination, NASCAR is not exactly synonymous with wokeness and inclusion. (Only a few months ago, one racer, Kyle Larson, was indefinitely suspended after using a racial slur during a livestreamed event.) In a bizarre and indelibly American sense, that is what is so delightful about these recent actions: The league did not stand to gain very much in the way of public estimation here. This is even more true of another recent move taken in response to a suggestion by Wallace, who showed up to last Sunday's race in an "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt: the banning of Confederate flags at all races and other official events. The fact that this is even a live issue in a professional sport in 2020 says a lot.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.