BLACK FLAG NASCAR!

This Post First Ran in October, 2005.

There is an old expression, which goes something like this: “Dance with the one what brung you!”

It is my firm belief that Nascar’s Headquarters should have this “expression”, in the form of a sign, in very large red letters, permanently mounted over it’s front door! Maybe it would serve as a reminder that the folks who got Nascar where it is today are now being told to go to the back of the bus!

Now, I’m a Southerner (By the Grace of God!). I’m a dues paying member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a native South Carolinian, and a resident of North Carolina.

The Granddaddy of the Nascar tracks (Darlington Speedway) is just an hour from my hometown. Here in North Carolina we have two major speedways one at Charlotte and the other at Rockingham, NC.

In my younger days, I was a member of Nascar, a track announcer. I have spent many hours around Speedways enjoying myself beneath the fluttering folds of the Confederate Battle Flag at those racetracks. That flag was displayed as a sign of our Southern Pride… at a “Southern Event”. Many windshields, on the cars of Southern race fans, would display the logo depicting a checked flag crossed with the Confederate Battle Flag. The CBF was a part of the festivities surrounding race day, race week, and the many activities of the infield of the Southern tracks.

No more. Nascar has turned it’s back on the very fans who gave birth to the sport which has made millions for Nascar and the France family. Nascar has effectively told those fans they are no longer welcome at a Nascar sanctioned event.

These days Nascar is discouraging the display of Confederate Battle Flags at the races. They are even going so far as to have “flag exchanges” at which they encourage fans to exchange their CBF for a racing team’s flag, or colors. The press is reporting that now Nascar is promoting “Mexican flags” in the place of Confederate Battle Flags in the stands.

Why? Good question.

A new arrival on the Nascar tracks is a Mexican driver by the name of Adrian Fernandez. I have seen reports, which refer to him as the “Dale Earnhardt of Mexico!”

The thing is, race fans, Mexico had not a thing to do with the birth and sustenance of Nascar! Nothing! The South had everything to do with it.

Stock car racing began, with bootleggers, running illegal booze (White Lightening) through the winding, mountain, roads of the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and other Southern States. The “good ole boys” began racing each other, instead of running from the taxman, on a handful of dirt tracks, scraped out of the hard red clay of the Southeastern states. Friends and neighbors would gather on Saturdays, or Sundays, to watch the local “rum runners” display their car handling skills. Somebody, somewhere, hit upon the idea of charging those folks to watch the fun. They paid gladly… and have been paying ever since. Thus was born the “Southern Sport of Stock Car Racing”. It is a part of the lore and legends of the South. Indeed, it is a part of Southern Culture. At least… it has been.

Now, Nascar is taking Stock Car Racing away from the very creators of the sport, indeed, of the business, from which their millions have come. Talk about ingratitude! It doesn’t get worse than this!

That beautiful old flag, with the St Andrews Cross upon it, that flag under which so many Southerners gave their lives, is a part of Southern Heritage and Southern Culture. That flag, race fans, will still be flying when the last Nascar sign is torn down and burned on the garbage heap of history.

The groans from the “greats of racing” such as: Fireball Roberts, Little Joe Weatherly, Tiny Lund, Possum Jones, and so many, many, more, can be heard over the scream of the high performance engines on today’s Nascar tracks. Disbelief rolls through the ranks of the “long passed” drivers whose ghosts still haunt the red clay tracks in the small Southern towns and the super speedways of the big cities here in the South.

Nascar has forgotten “who brung ‘em”. It seems, it simply doesn’t matter to them anymore. But it matters to us… the Southerners who find they are no longer welcome at what used to be a Southern Cultural Event.

To discourage, or refuse, the Confederate Battle Flag at a Stock Car race is tantamount to discouraging entry to, and attendance by, Southerners. That flag represents who we were… and who we are. Southerners! We are a unique people on this continent. A people proud of who we are, and proud of our Heritage and our Culture.

Nascar has reached its “high water mark”. It has nowhere to go now, but down. It is time, past time, for another Stock Car Racing Sanctioning organization to come forward and show respect for the creators of the sport and gratitude for the fan’s support. Southern racing fans will embrace them with warm and welcoming arms.

In the meantime, Southern racing fans should boycott Nascar events. The only way one can bring meaningful pressure to bear, on an organization as large as Nascar, is through their wallets.

It’s time for Southerners to reclaim their sport, reclaim that part of our heritage and culture, and proudly, wave the Confederate Battle Flag while doing it.

It is time to Black Flag Nascar!

“Longstreet”