On Friday morning, hours before the first stock car ran the first noisy practice lap here in the town that birthed NASCAR, there already was a collision near Turn 3.
This one was a cultural crash, racing’s modern sensibility running head-on into its distressed sense of Southern pride. The site was marked by the two Confederate battle flags flying over Gary Allen Gray’s infield campsite. As the life-long racing fan soaked in his inflatable pool, a beer cozied in one hand, Gray made himself comfortable at the center of such a tangled scene.
In the aftermath of the church shootings in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, NASCAR’s leaders condemned those flags — a fan accessory dating to the sport’s moonshiner beginnings — as archaic and divisive.
The most popular driver on the circuit, Dale Earnhardt Jr., the son of a legend, declared the Confederate flag, “offensive to an entire race.”
“It really does nothing for anybody to be there flying. It belongs in the history books, and that’s about it,” Earnhardt emphasized.
So, why keep flying them?
The defenses mounted at the Daytona International Speedway, home to Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Coke Zero 400, were the same as those offered just about anywhere else.
“It’s heritage, not hate,” Gray, a Daytona Beach native, began.
“It’s pride, not prejudice,” he said, warming to the task.
“As a one-time member of the Armed Forces (two tours in Vietnam), I will die before anyone keeps me from flying any kind of flag. That flag right there never hurt anyone.”
Gray became distracted from stacking any more sandbags on his side of the debate. A cart approached, bearing for sale some much-needed ice on this broiling Florida summer day. The driver sounded his distinctive horn to signal he was near. It was to the tune of “Dixie.”
NASCAR faces its heritage
The Fourth of July weekend represented the first opportunity for stock-car racing to try its new quash-the-flag policy at a track in the South. The Sprint Cup Series was in Sonoma, Calif., a week ago, when the ripples of South Carolina’s fight to remove the flag from the State House grounds reached the private enterprise of NASCAR and its various billboards masquerading as cars traveling 180 mph.
Stock-car racing has for years tried to distance itself from the stereotypes of its past: that of a sport born in the backwoods of the South, with a following to match. NASCAR expanded to tracks throughout the country. The demographics of its drivers radically changed, too. In fact, in the field of 45 drivers attempting to qualify for Sunday’s Coke Zero 400, only 10 were born in the South.
That led to abandonment issues among racing’s old-school audience, even before the photo of alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Roof posing with the Confederate flag reignited the debate over its symbolism.
When the inevitable questions arose about the flag’s connection to stock-car racing, there was no equivocation on the part of leadership.
“We want to go as far as we can to eliminate the presence of that flag,” NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France said. “I personally find it an offensive symbol, so there is no daylight how we feel about it and our sensitivity to others who feel the same way.”
Such leading drivers as Earnhardt and stalwart Jeff Gordon echoed France’s call. Other old hands were not quite as strident, but said they would follow the lead.
“I’m a NASCAR member and whatever NASCAR does, I got to go along with it,” Richard Petty, 78, the winner of the most races all-time on NASCAR’s premier series and a current car owner, said Friday.
“I think it’s a passing fancy,” Petty said of the flag issue. “It will go for a week or two. Everybody talks about it. Then something else comes up and it will go off the board and nobody will pay any attention to it.”
That may depend upon how far NASCAR and its tracks push their anti-flag campaign.
This week at Daytona, track president Joie Chitwood chose a diplomatic approach. He has appealed to the fans’ patriotism, asking them to fly the stars and stripes July 4 rather than the Confederate flag. The track even offered a flag exchange program — turn in your tattered Rebel flag for a brand new U.S. banner — a gesture which as of Saturday attracted no takers.
The prospect of banning the symbol is a thorny one for NASCAR and its track owners. Removing the flag from government spaces is relatively simple compared with the thought of forcibly taking it down from fan’s infield flagpole or commanding a customer to remove a shirt bearing the image.
Asks Ed Clark, president of Atlanta Motor Speedway: “OK, if it were your property and you wanted to (ban the flag), how are you going to enforce it?”
“I don’t see that as an option,” Clark said.
Clark said that over the vastness of a speedway, the numbers of those waving the Confederate battle flag represent a negligible percentage. “I would bet you could probably count the Confederate flags on one hand during our last event in March,” he said.
NASCAR looks for high road
Just how deeply the battle flag is ingrained in the NASCAR culture of 2015 is difficult to measure.
NASCAR’s Facebook page was filled with comments of protest over the organization’s stance. But such sites tend to out-shout reality.
At Daytona this weekend, as campers slowly occupied the infield for Sunday’s race, there were flags, flags, everywhere flags. Checkered flags. Flags bearing the numbers of favorite drivers. American flags. College flags. POW/MIA flags. And yes, Confederate battle flags, but by the tens, not the hundreds.
Maybe they stood out a little more in the light of the rekindled controversy. And maybe a few more flew because some people turned defensive and defiant with the flag under siege.
There’s certainly still a market for the embattled emblem. A mile from the track, at the Daytona Flea and Farmers Market, Frank Temple’s Pro Choice Souvenirs sold out of battle flags a week ago, and he’s been unable to find a distributor with any on hand to resupply him.
“People just don’t want anyone telling them what to do,” Temple said.
And even if it’s the sport’s most popular driver, Earnhardt, telling them the flag must go, that doesn’t matter.
“I think Junior’s daddy (the late seven-time Sprint Cup Champion Dale Earnhardt) would have smacked him in the head over this,” Larry Stonestreet, a fan from Port Richey, Fla., said with a smile as he set up his RV site near Turn 1. A battle flag hung from the roof, barely stirring in a slight, sodden breeze.
Larry Durocher, an 82-year-old race fan from nearby Atlantic Beach, had his Confederate flag stolen years ago and likely wouldn’t have replaced it if not for the recent furor. But he got a friend in Tampa to send him a new one that he could drape over his car this weekend as he camped on the infield. He wanted to make a statement, he said.
“If I offend anyone, to heck with ’em,” Durocher said.
As the Confederate flags flew at Daytona, often in ironic company with the flag of the country that was torn apart in 1861, exactly what those banners symbolized also was up in the air.
Just as many outside the sport believe the flag represents the evils of slavery and secession — and racist hatred, in light of the Charleston shootings — some inside the track gates gave it an entirely different spin. To them it is the image of Southern heritage and of a connection to stock-car racing’s own history. And now it also is a stick in the eye to a world they felt was trying to force its beliefs upon them.
“What happened in South Carolina had nothing to do with the people down here,” Gray, who informally calls himself the mayor of the Daytona infield.
That leaves NASCAR in the middle, between the greater public that is served by all those sponsors whose logos are splashed over all those cars and the passions of its root constituency. As a strategy, it so far prefers to rely upon the better nature of its fan base.
“I have great confidence in NASCAR fans that they know and understand how to take the high road on stuff like this,” Clark said.
Added Chitwood, “As we move forward we need to be thoughtful about what’s next, and how can we get to a place where these events can be open and inclusive. And symbols are not the things we talk about, rather we talk about racing on the track.”
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