Nearly a year after Bubba Wallace successfully pushed NASCAR to take the long-overdue step of banning the Confederate flag from its events, he’s continuing to use his platform to talk about racism, injustice and police brutality.
Only this time, Wallace is having those conversations mostly alone, with little to no help from his fellow drivers or NASCAR itself.
When Wallace tweeted last week the names of Daunte Wright — a 20-year-old Black man killed by a Minnesota police officer not two weeks ago — and Adam Toledo — a 13-year-old Latino boy killed by Chicago police last month — NASCAR as an organization and those who compete in it remained largely silent.
“It seems like every day now is a different hashtag,” Wallace said last week during a press conference. “Just sad.”
When former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd, sports teams, governing bodies and #brands tripped over themselves to release (sometimes hollow) statements about justice, accountability and change. NASCAR said nothing.
During the months of nationwide and global protests following Floyd’s murder and up through the verdict, athletes everywhere were largely united in its efforts to keep conversations going and push the simple and crucial message: Black lives matter. But in the wake of the verdict, Ryan Blaney, who is white, was the only top-tier NASCAR driver besides Wallace to tweet about Floyd or any substantial reaction to the guilty verdict.
So yet again, the burden of openly talking about and fighting racism falls on Wallace, NASCAR’s only Black driver. And, at least publicly, he’s shouldering it nearly by himself when those in the predominantly white sport committed otherwise.
Wallace said he’s saddened, angered and frustrated by the frequency at which names become hashtags as a result of violence, and understandably so: If the shamefully recurring news of police killing Black people and people of color doesn’t elicit those emotions, at a minimum, you’re not paying attention or don’t care to.
“What are we supposed to do?” Wallace rhetorically asked.
“It’s unfortunate to watch and to see everything that’s going on. It’s tough to talk about, honestly, because it seems like there’s no progress being made — especially [the video] I watched last [week] where [police] shot the 13-year-old kid and [his] hands were up. So that’s simply doing what you’re asked to do. And still not good enough.”
Last year after Chauvin murdered Floyd, NASCAR released a statement, which read in part:
“For us to heal and move forward as a nation, we all need to listen more and be united in the stand against racism, hatred, senseless violence and loss of life. And we must all hold ourselves accountable to driving positive change.”
(As we noted at the time, the statement lacked names, calls to action or any mention of police brutality and systemic oppression.)
A week later, drivers released a collective video statement pledging to listen, learn and “use this education to advocate for change in our nation, our communities and, most importantly, in our own homes, even after the headlines go away.”
Headlines about police killing Black people and people of color are tragically ever-present. So why aren’t NASCAR and those in it speaking up now?
They were ready and eager to stand with Wallace and follow his lead last summer when it was perhaps more convenient — or when it was easy to belatedly acquiesce to banning the Confederate flag. But when it came to the trial that’s captured the nation’s attention for weeks while police extrajudicially killing people of color dominated the news, only two stars in the premier Cup Series said anything.
It’s not as if NASCAR drivers are unattuned to other national tragedies, either. Denny Hamlin — the co-owner of Wallace’s No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota — spoke out about the FedEx shooting in Indianapolis and honored the victims on his FedEx car last weekend.
After listening and learning, the next natural step is to speak out and act, and part of that is continuing to talk about racism, how it affects people and what tangible steps can be taken to address it. Another part is not allowing Wallace to bear the burden of keeping that conversation going — regardless of how uncomfortable it may make his white peers.
“It’s much easier for me to talk about these topics of unarmed Black men and being a part of discrimination by the police,” Wallace said. “Like them, I’ve been a part of it. When it affects you directly, it makes it easier, and it makes you, unfortunately, comfortable to talk about those things versus anybody else in the field.
“I tried to do my best at encouraging my peers and other competitors to do the same,” he continued, “because you know the great quote of: ‘If it doesn’t affect you indirectly, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect the other ones around you directly.’ So that’s big, and so the more people that understand that is huge. So to be comfortable and to be in a spotlight that I am, yeah, I am the one to talk about it. People are going to come to me and talk about it, so they know that I’m going to give them [an] honest and true answer.”
But in NASCAR, it shouldn’t be Wallace’s responsibility to talk about racism. To be sure, Wallace is a magnetic leader. But in a sport dominated by white men, addressing racism in and outside of the sport isn’t his responsibility at all.
“It was the right thing to do,” Blaney said during a press conference Thursday when asked about tweeting about the Floyd family and the guilty verdict.
“I wanted to say something just showing support just because I thought it was the right thing to say. I think the right thing to do was the verdict that came out. … You’re never going to be able to repay a life to the Floyd family. But the best thing you can do is have someone who is held accountable for their actions, like that officer was.”
To its credit, NASCAR recently announced it’s working with several organizations — including Institute for Sport and Social Justice, RISE, the Women’s Sports Foundation and The Trevor Project — to help “accelerate change and empower” people both in and outside of NASCAR. Wallace quote-tweeted the governing body’s announcement with Wright’s name and later said he’s “proud of the efforts from NASCAR.”
On an organizational level, these partnerships seem like a good start and follow NASCAR president Steve Phelps’ promise to advocate for inclusion in the sport. But to be an effective leader and push its fans and audience to critically think about what Wallace described as a “never-ending battle” against pervasiveness of racism, NASCAR needs to be vocal as well. It needs support Wallace when he addresses racism and help amplify his voice while still speaking out on its own.
Wallace and Blaney aside, drivers should be embarrassed they’re so regularly silent about violence in this country, particularly against people of color. Many of them have significant platform, but they’re letting the burden of talking about racism largely fall to the driver who surely experiences it far more than his competitors. They continue to fail to adequately address the subject of racism.
“It is all of our responsibility to no longer be silent,” they collectively said in their 2020 video about listening and learning.
The bare minimum effort when it comes to making “real change” is to keep talking about the issues that must be fixed, and NASCAR drivers haven’t even been able to do that. They need to do better.
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