NASCAR Bans the Confederate Flag at races

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I'm not really a race fan, nor do I particularly care about the Confederate flag or what it stands for or what it was meant to stand for or whether or not it is a racist symbol or not. All i know is that for NASCAR to ban it is kind of a big deal for a lot of their fans and it doesn't really have anything to do with the sport (if you consider racing a sport) anyway.

I say who cares, but you can bet this is going to upset a lot of people in the racing world who will see NASCAR as bending over for the media and limiting freedom of expression - which it actually is IMO.

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The US Confederacy lasted a shorter amount of time than the popularity of mumble rap but yet over the years it became iconic of southern pride. I say this as someone who went to college in the south but never really had a great deal with feeling proud about it. For me, my only exposure to this flag was the "General Lee" Charger in The Dukes of Hazzard

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The thing about this ban is the fact that it was already banned quite some time ago from being used in any sort of sanctioned official capacity but NASCAR has gone a step further and said that private individuals are now banned from displaying the flag at any NASCAR event.

For me, NASCAR is boring: I do not watch it. But you better believe that I am going to be watching to see how much compliance the true fans of this sport are willing to extend to this sort of ruling handed down by the heads of NASCAR. People are pretty stubborn and you can bet your bottom dollar that someone who spends and absolute fortune to be able to park their RV in the middle of a major event is going to raise a Confederate flag at a major event and there are going to be a lot of people in the crowd that are going to applaud this gesture.

Things could get unruly from that point forward.


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I think this was a terrible move on the part of NASCAR because they are only asking for trouble at events once they start to allow people to go to them again. Some extremely stubborn, extremely wealthy person is going to put one up in the middle of an event and cause a scene and then what? Will they stop the race in order to arrest this person? What are they going to arrest him for? Will they risk the crowd going into full riot mode over something like this? What if all the people in the center of the track coordinate a simultaneous raising of the Confederate flag at Indianapolis motor speedway, which has a capacity of over a quarter of a million people?

What then?

The flag itself is rooted in the Civil War obviously, and the Confederates were the side that, for the most part, was pro-slavery. Does the flag mean that now? What about all the state flags that were pro slavery at the time... are those next to go? What is the point of all this other than a social justice gesture on the part of the organization?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. In the meantime I am going to watch just as many NASCAR events this year as I did last year: Zero.



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8 comments
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Nascar is based mainly in the south and a majority of their drivers are from the south as well. The confederate flag is a symbol of the rise and fall of the south and people from the south are ok with the loss. While there is some link to the bad side of black history and this recent BLM going on more and more people are sick of seeing history markers. That's the problem. People hate to remember the history but they forget they are in the process of making history as well. Can you imagine 200 years from now people will be talking about the year 2020 when pretty much the whole world just had enough. While most of this stuff is still going on right now with corona and BLM lets remind ourselves we are all in this together. We need to find a way to resolve our differences. Don't let a piece of history ruin you life.

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I agree with you. I think that in the future a lot of the darker side of this being exposed (hopefully) as well such as the political motivation, grandstanding on the part of particular parties (or all of them for all we know,) and the general destruction of stuff too would be a good thing.

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I didn't hear this news until i read your post. I don't really care either and I guess I can understand that some people are upset about it but I think what is really going on is that people are just searching for more and more stuff to be upset about and when those all get sorted out they will find some more, and then some more, and then some more...

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i am sure there is going to be at least a couple of incidents where people refuse to comply or even organize to include even more confederate flags at events. This will be counterproductive and stupid but people are kind of tired of being told what they can and can not do

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when i was living in Virginia we would see the ocassional confederate flag on pickup trucks and what not but not really flown for any sort of statement. Ok, but now that I think about it I don't even remember which side of the civil war Virginia was on. I think it was the south.

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Virginia was the capitol of the Confederacy

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well you would think i would know that... haha, state education... what can i say.

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i live in a redneck portion of North Carolina, exactly where you would expect this sort of flag to be a flyin' but it isn't. I don't think that very many people actually care, even in the country boy community but i do recall some really stupid shirts that came out many years ago where they tried to compare the Malcolm X "logo" to the Confederate flag suggesting that if one of them is allowed, then they both need to be.

Personally i think everyone is just virtue signalling as much as possible right now. Hopefully it will taper off soon. Love your last sentence by the way, and I feel the same.

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