When a bastion of southern weekends says a symbol of hate is no longer good ‘ol country livin’, it should be clear the Confederate flag has no redeeming cultural value. If Nascar’s suggestion that the flag isn’t welcome at its races anymore wasn’t a robust enough message, then the words of their CEO Brian France should have made the point clear.
“I personally find it an offensive symbol, so there is no daylight about how we feel about it,” France said in an Associated Press interview back in June.
But apparently France’s words did not trickle into the parking lots at Daytona recently, where his racing fans still launched their Confederate flags into a diesel haze as if hoisting the Jolly Roger over an RV armada. Hate flapped in the ocean air above clueless ruminations that a cultural treasure was being hijacked in the name of correctness, as if decades of bigotry were equivalent to a misused pronoun.
Take Steven Rebenstorf, who flew his Confederate flag above a pre-race tailgate and protested to the Associated Press: “The Confederate flag has nothing to do with slavery, it has nothing to do with divisiveness. It has nothing to do with any of that.”
Or Larry Reeves, who said to the same Associated Press writer: “It’s just a southern pride thing.”
The Confederate flag has nothing to do with regional bonding. Its history has been wrapped in stands against efforts to deliver basic human rights to African Americans.
Any attempt to explain away this past as an outsider’s misinterpretation sounds feeble and naïve in the crash of an America ready to retire the flag for good.
“Those claims of innocence don’t work for me,” says Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. “They don’t work for a lot of people. The flag rings a lot of historical bells.”
How long does it take to change a culture of hate and naiveté?
No one could have expected Nascar’s statement to entice all of their fans to leave the Confederate flags at home. Some will bring them no matter what. Still, Nascar has long outgrown its back road bootlegger roots. Nobody’s racing moonshine past the sheriff on the mountaintop anymore. Nascar is now a mainstream experience, filling raceways in big cities all over the US. Racing no longer has room for hate. Sooner or later all of Nascar’s fans are going to have to accept this.
Already the pressure is growing. Most racing fans seem to understand that a racist logo is disappearing from their sport. Those holdouts will eventually feel the solitude that comes with expressing an empty sentiment and eventually they will turn. But until they do there will be scenes like that in Daytona where thickets of Confederate flats flew, each in a pointless anachronism in a world that is rapidly modernizing.
“How long does it take to make it disreputable when part of the fun for people is to fly it disreputably?” Ownby askes.
One year? Five years? Ten years?
Eventually the Confederate flags will start to feel silly as society moves on.
Eventually those who see the flag as wholesomely southern will understand the hurt it sends. In the late 1990s, the University of Mississippi banned sticks in their football stadium – the first step in eliminating a tradition of waving Confederate flags in the stands. Now, Ownby says, the number of Confederate flags around Ole Miss pregame parties has plummeted. Stray flags linger but having them simply became socially unacceptable.
“That (good ‘ol boy) segment of the south and segment of America, they are a part of the past,” says Ferrel Guillory, a professor at the University of North Carolina with an expertise in southern politics.
“They aren’t at the center of things. I’m playing pop psychologist here, but one of the reasons they hold onto the flag is they aren’t at the center of things any more.”
Nascar long ago realized their survival depended upon portraying themselves as an inclusive organization, acceptable to all races in all regions. Their statement asking fans to put away their Confederate flags was significant, given their heritage, but also a statement of how far they have moved from a time steeped in racism. Soon those fans still waving the Confederate flag and claiming a phony innocence will have to move away too or find themselves on the fringe of a society that has already deemed the flag a hateful relic.
“It’s really, truly a racist symbol,” Overby says, expressing in six words what Nascar should have said in their statement inviting fans to leave their Confederate flags in the garage.
A culture has already changed.
Nascar no longer wants a flag once so prominent at their events. Southern pride is something else now. Sooner or later their fans are going to realize this. Racing has moved on. How long before the most stubborn fans in the parking lots follow along?
