Noose left in Bubba Wallace’s NASCAR garage only grows the resolve to end racial hatred | Opinion
It took a single coward in the cover of darkness, or was it a few? It took this one act to remind us how far we have not come, how far we have yet to go. It took this one gut-churning symbol of hatred and inequality to verify to all why America is in the streets right now — exactly why a national movement is marching for change.
A noose, placed in Bubba Wallace’s garage.
A noose, at Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Alabama, placed in the workspace of the NASCAR Cup Series’ lone Black driver.
A noose, someone’s answer to the man who led and won the fight to see NASCAR recently step forward and ban Confederate flags at all of its tracks.
A noose, in 2020 America, and suddenly we are in the 19th century again, where men in pointy white hoods carried torches, where 41 persons of color were found hanged in Gainesville, Texas, in 1862, where 30 years after that the governor of South Carolina, Benjamin Tillman, said, “We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will.”
Wallace never saw the noose, only the unimaginable prejudice and gall that put it there. A member of his team found it late Saturday night and immediately informed NASCAR.
“Today’s despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism,” Wallace wrote on Twitter. “We will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate.”
This is why Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem
This is why thousands nationwide — Black and white — march for George Floyd and for Breonna Taylor and for all of the other victims of the systemic racism that can foment deadly police brutality.
LeBron James, fellow drivers and others from in and out of sports have expressed their outrage over the noose left for Wallace.
Wallace’s mother told him, “They are just trying to scare you.”
The driver wrote, “This will not break me. I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.”
Weather on Sunday delayed the race at Talladega to Monday afternoon. Wallace drove for Richard Petty Motorsports, and the team’s legendary namesake, at age 82, attended the race and spoke out Monday in support of Wallace — the sport’s old, Southern guard backing not only driver, but cause.
“I’m enraged by the at of someone placing a noose in the garage stall of my race team,” Petty said. “The filthy act serves as a reminder of how far we still have to go. The sick person who perpetrated this act must be found. I stand shoulder to shoulder with Bubba.”
Wallace would finish in 14th place in a race won by Ryan Blaney in a wild finish.
I wished we could have quick-started a GoFundMe page to bribe Fate to let the No. 43 Chevrolet win.
To see Bubba Wallace atop his car with a raised fist in triumph, opening up his fire suit to reveal the I CAN’T BREATHE / BLACK LIVES MATTER T-shirt he’s been wearing?
I would have paid to see that. To feel that moment.
NASCAR in a statement called the leaving of that noose a “heinous act” and said it is working with law enforcement to “identify the person[s] responsible and eliminate them from the sport.”
Could it have been someone working for a NASCAR race team? An inside job? After all, the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic limits fans at this race to 5,000 and bars them from the garage area. Who had access to that garage? (Who, in God’s name, is carrying around a bleeping noose!).
We want to think this was one deranged lone wolf who does not speak for others. Our heart wants to believe that.
Just as some of us want to keep believing the One Bad Apple theory to mollify the outrage after the latest police killing of an unarmed Black person.
Then you looked outside the massive track at Talladega and saw the parade of trucks and other vehicles carrying Confederate flags in defiance of NASCAR. You saw the small plane overhead pulling a Confederate flag and the message DEFUND NASCAR.
Ah, sweet home, Alabama! Right?
Change happens slow because it takes more than a law. It takes a collective conscience. A shared outrage. The force for change reminds us that what America is is not the government of any one moment in time, but the consensus of the heart of its people.
Racial hatred can seem like a monolith, a giant glacier. But cracks over time. It melts. By degrees it shrinks.
Hatred based on skin color remains a living, breathing thing among, but we see it slowly painted into a corner. We see its oxygen supply lessen. We see it as the desperate, fading anachronism it has become.
Will America ever be free of it? Of course not. There is no such thing as a perfect union.
But we are getting closer when we see the way George Floyd died, and we see the noose left in Bubba Wallace’s garage, and it is consensus outrage we feel, and anger.
And more than that: Resolve.
“This will not break me,” as Wallace wrote.
When multitudes are marching for justice and the sport of the Deep South is the one out front for equality, palpable progress is happening. Change is.
It is happening by degrees, too slow — always. But hatred is going to lose.
For our children, and theirs, it must.
This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 12:00 PM.
