CHASED WOMEN, NASCAR DADS, AND SOUTHERN INHOSPITALITY: HOW NASCAR

EXPORTS SOUTHERN CULTURE

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

IN

AMERICAN STUDIES

OCTOBER 2020

By

Ava H.K. Ladner

Dissertation Committee:

David Stannard, Chairperson Robert Perkinson Joseph Stanton Njoroge Njoroge Mark Howell

Keywords: NASCAR, South, Race, Gender, Religion, Tradition, Technology, Racing

DEDICATION

To My Girls, who walked, oversaw, and comforted me through the entire process

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank my committee for accepting my proposal. David Stannard saw promise in this project early on and guided me in seeing how this research could be more substantial than I had originally envisioned. Joseph Stanton read some of the early pieces that I wrote about the sport and offered valuable feedback. Robert Perkinson always provided a perspective that I had yet to consider and encouraged different ways of thinking. Njoroge Njoroge saw ways to delve deeper into the material and find new means of expression. Mark Howell never missed a chance to correct my NASCAR blunders or to offer encouragement when I needed it.

I owe the University of Hawaiʻi a debt of gratitude for allowing me to become the best version of myself over these past years. I thank the Travel Industry Management program for granting me an assistantship that allowed me to continue my research during the early stages of my studies.

I thank Kath Sands for encouraging, pushing, and chiding me when needed. I deeply appreciate her energy and care as I encountered new challenges along this journey.

I appreciate the support from the UH libraries for constantly sending books my way. And then for helping me to clear my name when some of them never found their way back.

I would like to thank Barry Ladner, the only family member who consistently asked about my progress and agreed to be the sounding board to much of my NASCAR-related thinking.

Most importantly, I would like to thank my friends, without whom I would have never made it: Ky Kim, for their willingness to chat life and scholarship whenever possible; Christina

Ayson, for being such a positive and wonderful force; Pahole Sookkasikon, for being like a brother to me; Tyler Greenhill, for being a sweet giving soul; Aida Arik, with whom I have shared so, so much; Jeffrey Tripp, for letting me into his life and for being a steady presence throughout my

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journey; and Kevin Kelly, for asking the needed questions, providing me with a place when needed, and for being a friend all these years. Mahalo nui loa.

And finally, my thanks go to EunBin Suk, who saw the best, the worst, and the middle-of- the-night-writing me and provided the cheer needed to get through these final stages. IU.

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ABSTRACT

This work explores the relationship between southern culture and NASCAR. The sport began in 1948 in Daytona Beach, , though its history can be traced back to moonshine running in the Blue Ridge Mountains. NASCAR’s innate sense of southern culture means that the sport employs and exports the region's behaviors and attitudes. These messages manifest themselves through patriarchy, violence, racism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, religiosity, and the traditions that accompany these elements. As NASCAR reaches between 3 and 5 million fans

36 weeks a year, the sport can consistently proffer these messages to its audience. This project argues that NASCAR is a conduit for problematic messages that are continually digested and regurgitated across the US. This relationship furthers the cycle of the South, both being apart and a part of the country, demonstrating how the South reflects the US and acts as its own culture.

The goal of this dissertation is to better understand the pathologies that the sport delivers to the country and how they are derived from the South’s historical conventions.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract v

List of Tables vii

List of Figures viii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. 7 The Roots of NASCAR: The Confluence of Southern, Moonshine, and Automobile Culture

Chapter 2. 50 White Lightning, White NASCAR: The South, NASCAR, and the Practices of Exclusion

Chapter 3. 104 Panic and Disruption: NASCAR’s Fear of Queerness and the Troubling Presence of Women

Chapter 4. 159 Media and NASCAR: Film and Music as Accompaniment

Chapter 5. 206 The Paradox of Southern Tradition and NASCAR Technology

Conclusion 233

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 – NASCAR Ratings on Fox, 2007-2014 39

Table 1.2 – NASCAR Cup Series: US Nielsen Ratings, 1996-2014 40

Table 4.1 – soundtrack 195

Table 4.2 – soundtrack 196

Table 4.3 – Bristol Introductions as selected by fans 199-200

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 NASCAR Dad’s For Bush Button 32

Figure 2.1 NASCAR Demographic Profile 52

Figure 2.2 Edward “Fireball” Roberts 54

Figure 2.3 LeeRoy Yarbrough 54

Figure 2.4 54

Figure 2.5 Tweet from President 69

Figure 3.1 146

Figure 5.1 Tweet from 219

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9

INTRODUCTION

The sport of NASCAR has been a fascination of mine for a long time. The curiosity began while living in Athens, Georgia, surrounded by friends who expressed passion that I had seen only for football. For a sport built upon the fundamental premise of racing in circles, I struggled to see the allure and fully comprehend the beer-drenched spectacle that I saw on many

Sundays. Still, NASCAR captivated me, touching upon something I had yet to realize while becoming prevalent in my world.

My fascination began to evolve because of two moments. The first came on ,

2001, when Ralph crashed and died on the last lap of the . This event reverberated throughout the South, and whether you were a fan or not, you found yourself in a conversation discussing his passing at some point over the ensuing weeks. His death resonated beyond the region, becoming a national tragedy that stretched beyond US borders, making the event even more significant. The fact that U2, a massively successful band from

Dublin, Ireland, paid tribute to Earnhardt, with guitarist The Edge wearing a #3 shirt in memoriam at their Grammys performance on the day of Earnhardt’s funeral provided further evidence as to his impact.1 At the time, however, I neither knew the sport well enough nor recognized how to reconcile how meaningful the moment was and how it profoundly affected people. While that first instance could be found on a macro-worldly event, the second arrived in a smaller way.

The next occurrence that inspired me to consider NASCAR differently was when I discovered one of my peers at the University of Georgia was considering the sport as the topic for her master’s thesis. As at the time I focused on the and antitrust

1

collusion, the idea of concentrating on NASCAR seemed to be peculiar, though seeing it as potentially worthwhile. To see the sport deserving further investigation required understanding, not just NASCAR but the South in ways that I had yet to develop. To assist in this education, I benefited from my brother’s extensive knowledge of the sport.

He had been following the sport since the mid-1980s and seemed to have an encyclopedic recall of races, cars, and drivers. His childhood love of all things automobile meant that the sport had ensnared him early, and for his knowledge, he became an integral resource. While the ability to tap into a comprehensive source on the sport at will may have been advantageous, I had yet to construct what it was that piqued my intellectual curiosity about the sport.

While living in and conducting a bibliometric data study, my research idea came to fruition. The project examined the trends in research associated with . The data showed an increasing scholarship on NASCAR in the early 2000s, which reflected the sport’s growing popularity. However, when checked against the terms “society” or “culture,” the results showed a surprising lack of scholarship. While the popularity of the sport peaked during the first decade of the 2000s, the scholarship still abstained from discussing the culture that constituted the sport’s foundation.

Many works looked at trends in the sport, its structure, or just seemed to celebrate

NASCAR. Mark Howell’s From Moonshine to Madison Avenue (1997) appeared to be the earliest study examining culture and depicted the sport’s rise from an overlooked enterprise to a big-money affair. When Newman and Giardina published Neoliberalism’s Last Lap? NASCAR

Nation and the Cultural Politics of Sport in 2010, it seemed as if the topic had been fully covered, and further examinations would be redundant. Still, their book used the neoliberal

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capitalist framework as their lens, which excluded vital discussions on the sport’s history and the racism and misogyny that accompany it.

This dissertation attempts to fill in the gaps between Howell’s understanding of the sport and Newman and Giardina’s observations. Using southern culture as the lens and foundation for the sport, the goal is to recognize how this influence manifests itself in all facets of NASCAR.

This study relies on a myriad of different approaches, from scholarly works to social media, from film, television, and magazines to posted comments. The analysis uses a similar combination of historical, cultural, and theoretical frameworks applied in concomitance with close textual readings.

At its heart, this work is one that seeks to investigate how NASCAR built and continues to flourish as a bastion for White, Christian conservative, masculine principles. The sport mirrors the convictions of the South, its birthplace and enduring home. The violence toward minorities outside of the sport is echoed on the track; the desire to protect the male sphere moves between both worlds; the chauvinistic attitude towards women reiterates itself from the region onto the racetrack. This study centers on how White masculine desires permeate the sport and inform its practices and the effects on people of color, women, and technology.

The first chapter examines the South and NASCAR’s combined history, establishing how the sport has inherent practices derived from its southern birth. The intersection of White supremacy, chauvinism, violence as practice, religion as justification, and southern conservatism, create a decidedly unwelcome atmosphere for outside challenges. The nation within a nation that

W.J. Cash saw as the South provides the structure, while the New South’s enabling mindset offers the overriding ideology. These elements have not been forgotten or changed as the South has evolved, but rather repackaged and reconstituted for modern usage.

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The second chapter uses John Coski’s The Confederate Battle Flag to explore the racist practices of the South and the sport. The practices that partner with the flag’s use are the same ones that create barriers for and other people of color in both the region and

NASCAR. The flag is an ominous sign of bigotry and violence, and its omnipresence serves as a new symbol of denial and hate. Furthermore, this chapter examines the practices of whiteness and the challenges that Blacks faced in trying to race in NASCAR.

In chapter three, the focus shifts to an examination of gender and sexuality. Shackleford notes that “regional culture and the technologies that convey such culture do matter. And

NASCAR’s southern origins mean that a violence-tinged masculine tradition remains embedded in the structure of the sport.”2 The hyper-masculinity inherent in NASCAR cultivates a protective attitude against anything that does not adhere to normative heterosexual expectations.

Thus, the discovery of a driver with AIDS challenges the system with the potential for queerness amongst the ranks. Additionally, the attempts by female drivers at finding success are both limited and met with hostility — the encroachment on a clearly defined male space by women re-envisions masculinity and performance.

The fourth chapter examines the messages about the South and NASCAR that have been delivered through alternate means. The goal here was to look at how film produces and reifies aspects of southern culture, masculinity, sexuality, and the sport. Films with southern roots have a long history in cinema, as do those focusing on moonshining and cars. However, few are about

NASCAR, and it is this corpus that provides the basis for exploring the themes being distributed by film. In a similar vein, southern rock and country both originate in the South and provide a soundtrack to both the films and NASCAR. The two entities are never far from invoking southern stereotypes.

4

The fifth chapter conflates southern tradition with NASCAR technology. The sport often faces criticism for being less advanced than other racing series, and the focus here is to examine that prospect. The notion of tradition, coming from a southern perspective, imposes barriers on

NASCAR’s adoption of new technology. When the sport has made changes, the resistance shown by fans provides another element in the concept of tradition and how it builds community and cohesiveness.

As someone who has attended races, watched them on TV and written about them for a motorsports website, I recognized that I still needed to edify myself regarding the sport’s history to craft a comprehensive project. Though not a southerner by birth, having lived in three southern states has helped me understand the culture from personal experience. This project’s limitations stem from my biases, my chosen foci, and my lack of cultural lived experience.

5

INTRODUCTION – ENDNOTES

1 Lars Anderson, “ 3 Still Roars Ten Years After,” Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com, February 21, 2011, https://vault.si.com/vault/2011/02/21/number-3-still-roars-ten-years-after.

2 Ben A. Shackleford, “Masculinity, Hierarchy, and the Auto Racing Fraternity: The as a Celebration of Social Roles,” Men and Masculinities 2, no. 2 (October 1, 1999): 180–96, https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X99002002004.

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CHAPTER 1

THE ROOTS OF NASCAR – THE CONFLUENCE OF SOUTHERN, MOONSHINE,

AND AUTOMOBILE CULTURE

Introduction

When celebrated stockcar racing in a piece published in Esquire in March of

1965, he brought to mainstream American culture a sport that had thus far held prominence in the Southeastern region of the . His celebration of driver exposed a culture that had seen significant growth in the post-World War II United States. The country’s love of the automobile, its robust manufacturing sector, budding economy, and conspicuous consumption combined with the rise of this new form of auto racing gave rise to attitudes and an ideology that countered notions of progressive ideals. Stated another way, the sport acclaimed by

Wolfe carried with it the lasting practices and constructs of White conservative male hegemony.1

The sport of NASCAR, debuting in 1948, was a direct response to open-wheel auto racing, which had predominated the industry since the beginning of the century. The sport gave rise to a counterculture that resisted the cultural influence associated with the other form of racing and yet at the same time was still based on many similar elements. The two share the same foundations, namely auto racing, but are decidedly different in their approach. The branch that NASCAR has formed is unique in its adherence to principles that look outdated, such as the continued use of the V8 358 cubic-inch engine, or are problematic but considered “traditions” and values to be protected.

Wolfe glorifying a driver who served jail time because of convictions for moonshining encouraged the practice of supporting and seeing them as someone who challenges

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societal norms and pays the consequences, thus becoming ever more so the hero. Johnson, however, also represents someone who grew wealthy by participating in a sport that denied opportunities to many while also continuing to espouse meritocratic rhetoric.

Many of NASCAR’s early drivers had similar backgrounds and never received the same adulation, but they serve as a representative collection of both a sport and a group of people.

With its home in the South, NASCAR at its core upholds the southern condition of defiance against the rest of the country, an ideology that has existed since the country’s inception but was steeled by the Civil War—something frequently seen from the southern perspective as the “war of Northern aggression.” Never mind that the South seceded or that the Confederate Army shot first at Fort Sumter, the North, and by proxy, the federal government is continually invading the

South. After the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the burgeoning free-market economy, especially the union workforces of the North and Midwest, became new outside hostilities.

This invasion concept permits a defiant attitude toward messages sent from other parts of the country, even as the South is heavily reliant on federal funds and has developed as an international marketplace. The result is one where the South welcomes what it wants and denies the rest. Perhaps this practice is best exemplified by the establishment of foreign automakers’ plants in the South, such as , Nissan, and BMW while forgoing unionized labor and allowing these industries to build with no tax restrictions. They are all at once becoming global, challenging practices in the US, and competing against other regions of the country.

The use of “they” insinuates a collective group. The South, herein, are those states who unified to form the Confederacy in the Civil War, but they, in no way, act uniformly on all matters. While voting records indicate that these states think in like-minded ways, they are faced

8

with their individual issues and can lean differently depending on the topic. That is to say that despite their shared history and similar mindsets, just as in the rest of the country, each southern state works independently.

What matters here is not one specific line of thought or place of existence, but an overall notion of southern concepts that manifest themselves in many ways. There is not necessarily a need to divide as much as there is, more importantly, a need to comprehend things in a way that resembles groupthink. The South is at once easily understood and hard to define, distinct in comparison to the rest of the nation, but still very much part of the country.

This project is one that examines how the ideology of a region, one birthed early and reified over time, has continued to endure while at the same time evolving in ways that have ensured its survival. It changes only because its hegemonic impulses are threatened but does so to maintain its power. It faces challenges, yet is never destroyed, even in the aftermath of military and economic defeat.

This chapter focuses on the inception of NASCAR, how it came to be, and the tenets that surround it. The goal is to emphasize the power that White males in the South and in NASCAR have built and manage the sport. It is a conflation of several elements: southern culture, masculine sporting culture, the questionable applications of Christian doctrine, and the sport’s

White fan base.

The Roots of NASCAR

The sport enjoys a meaningful relationship with the South, one that differs from many sports that seemingly have no specific home. For sports, such as football, , or hockey, the birthplace is a recognizable part of their inception but seemingly abandons place as it moves

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into national existence. However, starting with its birth in Daytona Beach, Florida, and

NASCAR headquarters, the Hall of Fame, and most teams’ homes in and around the Charlotte,

North Carolina area, the sport has developed a decidedly southern identity. Past attempts to stray from these roots have proven difficult. Even as the sport grew in stature, arguably becoming the second most popular sport in the US in the early 2000s, it could never outrun its southern identity—something that appealed to many in various parts of the US. The notion that NASCAR is southern is a complex issue because of the variety of elements that contribute to the sport’s existence.

The Beginning

When the sport came into existence in 1948, the US automakers held prominent economic positions in the country. John Heitmann detailed the significant influence that Henry

Ford had exerted on the industry with the company’s manufacturing of the Model T in the first half of the century.2 The economic success allowed Ford to expand his empire beyond just the assembling of Ford automobiles, moving into other businesses, such as tire production or other areas of manufacturing. Ford’s looming stature meant that over the years, he could gain presidential favors that would match his business ideals.

By the 1930s, Ford’s overwhelming grasp of the American auto industry had begun to wane as he aged and other companies rose to the fore. Brands, such as , ,

Chevrolet, and , all gained some of the market share that Ford had cultivated. This shift was positive for consumers as it brought more variety and maintained a competitive balance in the industry, even though it took time.

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The economic struggles of the country in the 1930s also proved to be a challenge to auto sales as people spent their money on necessities rather than vehicles. Though sales slowed, the companies had amassed enough wealth to survive. They then found a peculiar providence with the Second Great War when vehicles were needed, and the factories began machining equipment for the war effort.

The economic boom associated with the White middle class that followed the war helped establish spectator sports. These Americans enjoyed a surge in leisure time and had loose capital for these expenditures. While the far-reaching narrative is one that the nation prospered at a staggering rate, not all sectors benefitted in the same way as people from lower socio-economic statuses and minorities struggled. The South stood was one area where prosperity came at a slower rate as the mostly agricultural region witnessed its farms being bought up by large or conglomerate corporations.3 Robert Lewis notes that the regions added more than a million manufacturing workers to its industry and more than four billion dollars’ worth of equipment, but that growth came in specialized areas. Lewis argues that this article argues that wartime manufacturing investments either reinforced the South's existing economic structure or built an extremely fragile and unevenly developed economic base that did not last beyond the end of the war.4 The founding of NASCAR emerges as a juxtaposition to the relative lack of industry in the

North and Midwest, fashioned from masculine desires and economic opportunity.

While the idea may seem obvious, masculinity served as one of NASCAR’s foundational values. The love of the automobile, with its adopted patriarchal structure dictating who should drive, tapped into the male desire for independence coupled with the societal notion that men take on the role of engineering. That racing fed the male ego through high-velocity driving, and the spirit of competition created the foundation for a closed community. Many drivers found

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their way to the track through moonshining, but mechanics played just as much a part, working on 1940s Fords and making them race-worthy. Louis “Red” Vogt left school at a young age and was both proud and sensitive about his lack of education, as well as his southernness, remarking,

“don’t you ever call me a goddam Yankee.”5 What he lacked in schooling, Vogt learned through trial and error and an intuitive understanding of the internal combustion engine. What should be noted here is that NASCAR came to fruition from a grassroots method, which stood in contrast to open-wheel racing, which was considered more affluent and benefitted from support from global auto manufacturers. The attitude that these early drivers and mechanics brought with them was one of stubborn defiance, a belief that how they raced was more than acceptable. Because stockcars did not feature the same level of sophistication and financial backing, the races often featured local amateur drivers, which erased the elitist attitudes from auto racing.6 The combination of these factors established stockcar racing as a particularly southern practice, developing a specific identity from the beginning, filled with both male and southern exclusivity.

The drivers who raced in the early years were a select group of southerners, except for

Robert “Red” Byron, who took the role of the outsider because he came from Colorado.7 Drivers from , , and Georgia comprised much of the field, something that owed much to their ability to race because the tracks were in the proximity of either where they produced moonshine or where they delivered it.8 Hence, the sport served two functions for some as they could earn money as moonshine runners but could further support their income with race winnings. The cost of racing is also an influencing factor, and another reason that early

NASCAR satisfied the tastes of the working man was its accessible prices. The Fords, , and that comprised the field were the second and third generations that pushed the

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Model T for affordability and practical existence. The moonshiners and their mechanics had been tinkering with these cars for years in efforts to avoid taxation.

Here again, the federal government is depicted as an ever-intrusive force seeking to invade the South, pushing their will and agenda on the southern man. This mindset, cultivated decades before the Civil War and reified through the war and Reconstruction, is ingrained in southern ideology and continues to exist in numerous ways. Bumper stickers, such as “North 1,

South 0 – Halftime” or “If You Love the North So Much, Why Don’t You Go Back,” are not uncommon sights on vehicles in the South. This conscripted attitude, adopted to oppose outsiders, can be an undefined term depending on where one happens to be or what one happens to be doing but casts suspicions on anyone who is not known. Thus, in NASCAR, the outsider represented those who seemed uncommon to those within the community of moonshiners.

This community then established specific codes of behavior and expectations cemented through the practice of sport. Sport itself is both its own culture and yet one of culture, developing its practices while also reflecting the culture at large. Hence why NASCAR is defined by its multifaceted nature: automobile culture within sporting culture within southern culture within American culture. This trail allows for it to be both removed and yet very much embracing of ideologies. Still, perhaps it is best to see the strains as being of distilled elements, dominated by masculine dogma, conservative Christian values, and rugged individualism.

These aspects unite to create a protected sphere, one supported through analyzing race and gender in the sport. The focus is on how NASCAR developed the convention to govern as if by de jure. The remnants of honor and the southern temperament dictated this construct. W.J.

Cash argued that the southern mindset commanding the region’s attitudes was developed through

“blindness and complacency,” as the common man handed over his political views to the

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paternalistic landowners of the South.9 Over time, this practice faced little disruption and thus continued in earnest. Without such trivial things as politics to burden himself with, the “poor white turned his energies almost wholly to elaboration of the old backcountry pattern of amusement and distinction,” an analysis that applies to the tinkering and driving of autos.

That NASCAR runs many of its first races on lands of the yeoman southerner is fitting, using grounds of agricultural production for a modern spectacle. Driving in circles suits Cash’s concept of poor Whites in the region than anyone may find apt. The sport suits his cynical characterization of a group without prospects as the wealthy do their best to ignore it.

That it was relatively cheap to produce helps as early tracks were dirt and built on farms.

This aspect is partially why the series schedule varied as much as it did over the first years of the sport, as tracks were still in the process of reaching today’s standards. The track costs were low, ticket prices minimal, and even the cars themselves cost what could be considered affordable at the time. With the cars having some degree of uniformity, drivers became the center of attention.

Cash’s manifesto on the South may have predated the birth of NASCAR, but many of his condemning comments about southerners foreshadow the very principles that encompass the sport. While Cash can be accused of being overly critical of the region of his upbringing, his examination of the South is foundational, providing the first comprehensive look at the people’s temperament. That he alludes to the impulsive, emotional state of the southerner is something of particular use for both NASCAR’s national rise and its critics, who cast their dispersions on the sport.

Another aspect tied to the mentality of the participants and something that helps move the sport forward in its popularity is the frontier notions of individuality. As sports such as football grew ever more popular, and baseball maintained its grip on the sporting landscape in the 1950s,

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NASCAR, like golf, represented a departure from team-based competitions. Horse racing also features individual competition, something that provides a foundation for NASCAR.

Horse racing earned prominence in the first half of the nineteenth century. Historian

Kenneth Greenberg showcases how thoroughbred horses symbolized aristocratic stock, how they represented the status of the stable and the owner therein.10 In that framework, racing a horse took on the air of a duel, an affair of severe physical and social implications—whether the participants went through with it or not. With such gravity, horse races forged social status and reputation. It is not a stretch to see NASCAR as a modern interpretation of horse racing by the lower class of the South, where the cars are the steeds and the garages their stables. The cost of maintaining a car would have been significantly lower, and the ease of buying one much more palatable than buying a well-bred horse and retaining it in peak form. NASCAR historian Ben

Shackleford argues that the sport was built on “inexpensive vehicles” that were “based more on keeping racing machines economical than on the reality of what came off production lines.”11

Armed with notions of honor, violence shaped the contrapuntal formation of the southern temperament. Cash writes of the perpetuation and acceleration of the penchant for violence, owing to the South’s initial position as the frontier.12 In Albion’s Seed, Fischer also discusses the social construct of violence, something he refers to as the “legitimate social violence in Virginia” as a backbone of the hierarchical structure.13 It is from the genteel Virginians that many in the

South could take measure and model their behavior. The notion of violence being integral in the

South is echoed by historian John Hope Franklin, who argued that the South was founded on violence, from its frontier ethos to its Gaelic-infused population, and seen in the popularity of lynching that emerges after the Civil War.14 Of course, this sense of violence was cultivated

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early, as found in the adherence to the “peculiar institution” and the treatment of slaves to the way of settling personal scores through duels.

This conflated nature of the southern man becomes a mainstay of the culture and maps itself onto the sport of NASCAR. When Mark Howell provided one of the first analyses of the sport, he tried to reconcile “how NASCAR racing had found such a home within the culture that had, at one time, considered it insignificant—just an excuse for rednecks to get drunk, fight, and watch men smash cars in horrific, and sometimes fatal, accidents.”15 His statement sees the sport as appealing to a specific populace and that alcohol-infused thinking and the visceral enjoyment of destruction replaces any sense of intelligence. Howell recognizes that the sport’s rural past is part of NASCAR’s stereotyped present, which emphasizes the aggressive nature of full-bodied automobile racing.16 There are two notable aspects of the comment worth discussing.

The change that set the groundwork for modern NASCAR came in 1971 when Winston brand cigarettes became the primary sponsor for the series and created the Winston Cup.

Obtaining the big-money sponsorship of Winston and its parent company, the R.J. Reynolds

Tobacco Company financed a boon for the sport. The corporation changed NASCAR by mandating a schedule with fewer races, limiting it to, at the time, 31 events, though this number fluctuated during the 1970s. This scheduling change and the RJR sponsorship coupled to mark what is considered modern NASCAR. The sponsorship also helped to bring the sport widespread attention. Junior Johnson approached the company in an effort to obtain their support, asking for five-hundred to six-hundred thousand dollars. The representative for RJR responded, “Look, we just got booted off television. To be quite honest, we’re looking to spend a whole lot more than that. We were thinking more along the lines of eight hundred million dollars or nine hundred

16

million dollars.”17 The loss of the television platform by Congress mandating that cigarette commercials be removed shifted RJR’s focus, and they found an eager partner in NASCAR.

The addition of R.J. Reynolds also served as a method of popularizing the sport as a national rather than a regional one. Though the Reynolds Company was headquartered in

Winston Salem, North Carolina, the company held a nationwide ubiquitousness. When they aligned themselves with NASCAR, they spent tens of millions to sponsor individual races, renovated tracks, and perhaps most importantly, launched regional and national marketing and advertising campaigns.18 The added benefit for NASCAR was the “legitimacy that major corporate backing gave NASCAR.”19 With its “aggressive, all-American” assertion of Winston

Cup racing, RJR marketed the sport to the nation and attempted to forego the sport’s ties to its roots.20 Hence, the backing of a major corporation was one of the driving forces in the sport’s success as “RJR served as a connection between southern culture and a national audience.”21 In

1971, the sport still had to woo the general public, and the fact that the cars appeared different, with their fenders intact, compared to Indy cars, presented a challenge.

The words “full-bodied automobile racing” are paramount for a few reasons. In comparison to NASCAR, open-wheeled racing, which possessed more popularity, did not feature cars with passenger vehicle bodies on them. The cars were leaner, with the wheels exposed, making them lighter but also developing a distinct style of racing. Open-wheel, or Indy cars, avoided contact as much as possible because any incident could prove fatal to the car and driver.

It is inaccurate to call Indy racing more delicate or polite, but the cars made for a different style compared to stockcar racing.

Stockcars, with their bodies intact, allowed for the southern prevalence of violence to become part of the on-track etiquette. The famous and clichéd quotation from Days of Thunder,

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that “rubbin’ is racin’” details something that Indy cars could not do, that the drivers use the cars to aggressively overtake each other and continue racing—often with much success. The body of the car provides a sense of insulation, where the driver enjoys protection so that they can “rub” without fearing for the loss of life. Contemporary drivers find themselves in a cocoon-like safety cage that ensures their survival almost regardless of whatever incident they may encounter or instigate.

That leads to the fact that NASCAR is considered an aggressive sport. In most elite forms of auto racing—IndyCar, Formula 1, or Australian V-8 Supercars—the driver and car are conjoined engineering marvels that avoid contact to benefit the relationship to the full. The sport of NASCAR, however, has not only embraced its aggressive nature but, at times, has openly encouraged it. And while there may not be “that much redneck-ery in the sport these days,” that does not mean that it has left behind its southern temperament.22 That temperament, on display to a nation, catapulted the sport from niche to national.

NASCAR Moves into the National Consciousness

In the 1970s, NASCAR still attracted little widespread interest. The races had almost no television presence, being relegated to bit portions of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” program and minuscule, if any, mention on nightly news shows across the country. Outside of the southeast, the races received scant attention from the print media, further curbing the appeal of the sport.

After February 18, 1979, the sport of NASCAR ceased to exist as an extra in the sporting theatre, grabbing the spotlight and emerging into a lead role. The reason for the significance of this race is a fortunate combination of circumstances and events. The race was not NASCAR’s

18

first, with that distinction accompanying the airing of the 1971 race at Greenville-Pickens

Speedway, but full televised races had yet to become the norm. The sport’s television partner

CBS felt willing to take a chance on broadcasting a whole NASCAR event. The network’s risk was rewarded by a snowstorm that blanketed the Midwest and northeastern parts of the country, something that would keep the people indoors and searching for something to do. In a time before cable and with limited television options, the race grabbed a significant percentage of the population’s attention.1

Though the race began slowly, under caution as the cars lapped the track, drying it from overnight wetness, once the drivers saw the green flag, it grew increasingly entertaining. On lap

32, three cars were involved in a crash of great significance—mainly because it included the

Allison brothers, Bobby and Donnie, and the Winston Champion for the previous three years,

Cale Yarborough. endured the most damage and drove an uncompetitive wounded car for the rest of the race. Yarborough took on some damage, went two laps down while fixing his car, and eventually returned to the lead lap and would battle for the victory.

Donnie Allison had evaded any problems and was leading late in the race. Yarborough had caught him and was behind him, looking to make a slingshot move to win on the last lap. Neither would win. Instead, the two of them, with nearly a half-lap lead over the third- place car of Richard Petty, became entangled going into turn three. They bounced off each other and the wall and ended up settled in the grass as Petty passed them both and cruised to victory with right behind.

1 In his book, He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back, Mark Bechtel writes in detail about this Daytona 500 and the profound influence that it would have on the sport.

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Still, what propelled the sport to national prominence was that after the cameras had followed Petty across the finish line and onto the pit lane, they returned to the infield where the cars of Allison and Yarborough sat. The two men engaged in a heated discussion that, after brother Bobby parked his car nearby, turned physical. That fight, between Bobby Allison and

Yarborough, is, in many ways, the catalyst for the advent of NASCAR as a countrywide sport.

Many consider it to be NASCAR’s first water-cooler moment, the first instance of the sport reaching outside its familiar confines. The fight landed NASCAR on the front page of the

New York Times sports section for the first time. With a captive audience, thanks to the snowstorm, people grew interested in NASCAR in a way that had previously not existed.

Though it would take some time, the rise of created a platform for the sport to excel.

Before addressing the event that sent NASCAR on the path to becoming the second-most popular sport in the US in the first decade of the 21st century, it is key to note that NASCAR had already laid the groundwork to move it in that direction. Geographer Douglas Hurt notes the shift in race event locations from 1949 to 2003, recognizing that in 1960 and 1969, the sport had begun its expansion and placed more races outside of the South, including the Northeast,

Midwest, and .23 This shift shows an attempt to grow the sport, akin to attempting to discover where and if it might be successful. Most of the races still occurred in former

Confederate states, but this expansion is the beginning of an attempt to make it national. With one fateful snowstorm, the sport was able to find a way into the American imagination.

Wolfe was not wrong when he introduced a new term to the broader public, calling Junior

Johnson a “good ol’ boy.”24 The expression is, in many ways, loaded. James C. Cobb equates the idiom with the newer term, “bubba,” asserting that both constructions “are drawling, disarming

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sort who actually thought much faster than he talked and was generally adept at seeming less competent or ambitious than he really was.”25 While Cobb’s definition is appropriate, the usage of “good ol’ boy” when referring to Johnson and what should be considered most of those persons involved in NASCAR is another term he addresses: “redneck.” If the “good ol’ boy” is an uncritical follower of the southern culture, the redneck is his hyper-southern cousin. The relationship between the redneck and the South grew entwined when the redneck moved from the counterculture and into the mainstream.

Though “good ol’ boy” came into the literary imagination with Wolfe’s use in “The Last

America Hero,” it likely existed long before it arrived in print and is now situated in a family of terms describing White positionality. “Redneck, cracker, and hillbilly were simultaneously presented as an ethnic identity, a racial epithet, and a workingman’s badge of honor.”26 Even then, these terms distinguish themselves from their low-status “White-trash” cousins. White trash situates itself differently. It has neither the means nor the attitude to seek a change in life and maintains a position at the lowest levels of the socioeconomic status. Authors, such as Larry

Brown, Rick Bragg, Harry Crews, and Janisse Ray, to name a few, all focused their works from within White-trash milieus, having experienced it in their younger years. Their sense of pessimism and persistent relentlessness distinguishes them from the rednecks and “good ol’ boys,” who long for better things.27 These strata meant that “While one segment of the southern population moved toward middle-class respectability, another element fought to preserve wilder traditions.” 28

These wilder traditions form the foundation of the early NASCAR ethos. Stockcar racing combines southerners’ love of automobiles, daring, violence, heroes, and hell-raising.29 With its heavy association to moonshining, outlaw should have been added to the list as moonshining

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“furnished an outlaw’s way of dealing with change, yet one that respected by most people, and it kept alive the untamed aspect of mountain culture.”30 Associating identity with the land, seeing mountain people as hillbillies sets them apart from rednecks, who have come down from the hills. But even as some have emerged rich as the South became more industrialized, Daniel asserts that the continued running of the sport, even as it has become more commercial, “renews the outlaw spirit.”31 Isenberg’s depiction of NASCAR fans offers a concise way of considering these various White identities.

“Wannabe bandits were among the thousands of spectators at NASCAR who launched into rebel yells, drank too much, and ogled the floozy on the float with her “big blonde hair and blossomy breasts” and cheap Dallas Cowgirl outfit. They embraced a certain species of freedom — the freedom to be a boor, out in the open and without regrets. The “upscale rednecks,” the rising white trash middle class, identified with these hillbilly racers, men who had escaped the overalls and gained as much respect as could be had in accepting wads of cash from Detroit. Class structure had not changed appreciably for the rural poor: money may have made a hillbilly or two reputable, but those left in the hills were not reaping any social benefits”32

The description recognizes how NASCAR culture permits certain behaviors and the various identities of race viewers. The spectators are all from one group but in different positions within the social hierarchy.

Cobb notes that rednecks are, even in the South, “countercultural,” though what culture they may be veering from is a questionable notion. That is to say that rednecks are breaking from mainstream southern culture but are still embraced by it, seen as antagonizing the norm and appreciated for it. This cultural maneuvering is the attempt to explain why White southerners adopted a stereotype they once bitterly resented. Sociologist Richard Peterson pointed out that

“to call oneself a redneck is not so much to be a redneck by birth or occupational fate, but rather to identify with an anti-bourgeois attitude and lifestyle.”33 This shift has led to pop-culture ideologies of the redneck identity, as seen by redneck chic, redneck television, redneck comics,

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and redneck music. Yet definitions of rednecks, bubbas, and hillbillies conveniently omit any racist attitudes that are encompassed in this identity. The failure to situate “good ol’ boys” in the racial framework of the South allows people who identify with this nomenclature to escape prejudice. What can be found here is, in many ways, the cultural base of the sport of NASCAR.

From Ferrence’s perspective, the redneck takes over the economy, the government, even the cultural image of the country to close the door against other tired and poor who might seek similar inclusion.34 Indeed, the term became more powerful when “At the end of the century,

‘redneck,’ ‘hillbilly,’ and other pejoratives assumed, if anything, grater currency and intensity.”35

The rise of the redneck is a practice in boundary-building, or as many have chanted for in the

South during the Trump presidency, a wall.

The Rise of NASCAR

“He is the resurrected Confederate soldier.” president H.A.

“Humpy” Wheeler offered those words about Dale Earnhardt in 1995.36 The description is a fascinating one in cultural placement and desire, coupled with a sense of allusion to rebellion, of challenging normative ways. Wheeler continued, “Earnhardt will stand his ground and say, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ And the people who love him are the people who are told, every day, what to do and what not to do, and they’ve got all those rules and regulations.”37 These comments come from a piece that examined Earnhardt’s cultural impact, noting his robust popularity while detailing the image he had cultivated as “The Intimidator.” Aligning Earnhardt with a

Confederate soldier and the South is easy, as he was a native of Kannapolis, North Carolina, and never hid from his upbringing. At the same time, however, Earnhardt also disputed the use of the

Confederate Battle Flag (Rebel Flag) and was acutely aware of his southernness and what it

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meant. Earnhardt also showed respect to those around him, as appreciated when his African

American housekeeper mentioned that the bumper sticker on his truck with the flag made her uncomfortable. After her comment, he removed the flag from the truck with a knife as a showing of his desire not to offend anyone.38

For Earnhardt to associate himself with the flag and redneck southernness would be a misguided business decision. Earnhardt, while at once a talented driver, was a showman who understood that his on-track success coupled with successful marketing could make him a household name. But to call him a Confederate soldier is problematic. It makes for good copy, and Wheeler certainly knew his ticket-buying audience in the South, but Earnhardt was no more a Confederate soldier than he was a Union doctor. The focus here, however, is on two things: his maleness and his southernness.

After Earnhardt died in a crash at the Daytona 500 on February 18, 2001, a decline in viewership marred the sport paired with a sense that it had died along with him. His death solidified the beginning of New NASCAR that had been evolving since the 1979 season. With a contrastingly different driving style than his father, Dale Earnhardt Jr. gained prominence in the sport, but he was not the only young driver that would become the face of modern NASCAR.

Drivers, such as , , , , , and the Busch brothers, Kurt and Kyle, became stars of the 2000s.

Not only could these drivers entertain their audience with fast laps at the track, but they also knew how to market both themselves and their sponsors. These crafted presences provided material for the rantings of fans on various websites. The criticism that these drivers do not represent the sport as their predecessors did is a failure to recognize that to do so would be almost impossible. Drivers of the past frequently worked on their cars, but that is left to

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engineers now. When ’s character in Days of Thunder said, “there ain’t nothin’ stock about a stock car,” he was declaring NASCAR’s modernity, and with it, the advanced role of technology. The driver now is tasked with being the face of a team, a sponsor, and sometimes an organization.

As the sport has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry, the team concept has become more pronounced. Racing organizations, such as Hendrick Motorsport (HMS),

Racing (RCR), Racing (JGR), and Roush-Fenway Racing (RFR), employ three or four professional drivers each, creating a team concept that is also anathema to the racing of the past.

In this scenario, the teams under each organization share information for the understood benefit of everyone. This development may not have been what the founders and caretakers of the sport have had in mind, but it is the current climate.

Southern Religion at Work

No sport ties itself to religion, or more specifically, Christianity, as does NASCAR, and no region of the US like the South. The Religious Landscape Study performed by the Pew

Research Center in 2014 indicated that 76 percent of southerners adhered to some form of

Christianity, a number which sat six points above the national average. By region, the South led the Midwest by 13 points, signifying the prevalence of Christianity’s influence.39 The practice of

Christianity in the South establishes a large part of the logistics used to battle outside forces and encourage violence. While some southern churches, at one point, advocated for the abolition of slavery, the shift in dogma changed the attitudes prevalent in the region. “The decline of religious emancipationism in the South after 1800 contributed to the hegemony of the slaveholding minority.”40 This de facto permission toward the violent practices of chattel slavery

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maintained the obvious racial divide, as churches also supported the brutal treatment of Black parishioners. However, Boles notes how the religion of the South altered its messages to support the societal practices and economic success of the region. In fact, Beth Barton Schweiger goes so far as to say that “Southern souls crafted a narrow Christianity that ignored social reform.”41

The tenets of southern Christianity often focused more on emotion than intellectual acuity. Following in Cash’s assertion that “there is no mind in the South,” that the people use feeling as their guide, Boles remarks that the “southern clergy desired evangelical results, not systematic theology.”42 The evangelical attitudes also coalesced with growing business interests as Woodward notes that “churches, with their huge publishing houses, their large investments in colleges, universities and schools, and their private endowments became vested interests.”43 This church model works with Boles’s summarization of anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Claude

Levi-Strauss, structuring religion as a model “of and for reality—that is, perception and action— and that myth is a way of mediating the contradictions within a society.”44 The sum total of these ideas is that the Christian church facilitated the growth of negative prejudice toward outsiders while conforming to the moneyed interests of the time. Religion constituted a method of argument, a way of defense, and a reason to fight. For NASCAR, religion was integrated into the sport’s identity, allowing it to withstand negative criticism.

There are a couple of reasons justifying the relationship between NASCAR and

Christianity, with one of them addressing the risks associated with driving at high rates of .

Few athletes can openly acknowledge how close they are to death every time they compete, but

NASCAR drivers are well aware of the risks. Though safety improvements continue to be made, such as the installation of foam-backed SAFER (steel and foam energy reduction), barriers around the track, or the HANS (head and neck restraint) device worn by drivers, the sport’s

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fatality rate still represents a major concern. In sports, NASCAR’s three major divisions are the only national sporting events to televise the invocation, and while often generic in tone and content, many are deliberately evangelical.45 This devotion to the invocation is intimately tied to the history that the South has with Christianity.

The Second Awakening, 1780-1820, brought with it a sense of hope for the region, one that fought against the perils that accompanied taking over new lands. For the southerners spread out across conquered lands, Christianity became a way to link and foster a sense of community even if the people of the area could congregate only on Sundays.46 The messages that were being disseminated united local citizens at first and then the broader population due to the itinerant preachers delivering their orations in the South. As the South became a more established plantation economy, religion also served as a way for the middle and lower class to connect that allowed them a voice they felt they did not have with the planter elite.47 The relationship between the planters and religion, however, also established a new direction for the religion, advocating for muscular Christianity. Heyrman found that the concept became utilitarian in the

South because of how it blends both religion and the ideology of honor:

The merging of evangelicalism and honor in the South colluded with other circumstances to call forth an unintended consequence. Although meant to spiritualize the culture of honor, the strategy of making evangelicalism appear aggressive and militant lent itself in the wake of a deepening sectional crisis to the spiritualizing of all assertions of southern manliness, militancy, and masterly prerogative. Primed by decades of proving themselves men of honor in recognizably southern ways.48

The attitude brought forth created a heightened rhetoric based on the beliefs of honor, that protecting the South was a right, one given by divine influence.

The South, men said and did not doubt, was peculiarly Christian; probably, indeed, it was the last great bulwark of Christianity. From the pulpit, the word went forth that infidelity and a new paganism masking under the name of Science were sweeping the world. From pulpit and husting ran the dark suggestion that the God of the Yankee was not God at all but Antichrist loosed at last from the pit. The coming war would be no mere secular

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contest but Armageddon, with the South standing in the role of the defender of the ark, its people as the Chosen People.49

The term “muscular Christianity” emerged in England in 1857 but took on different meanings when incorporated in the North and the South. In the North, the term was often associated with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and sport, whereas in the South, Heyrman asserts that it became associated with southern honor and militancy. The othering of the Yankee, which accompanied muscular Christianity, is crucial because it helps provide the foundations for the sectionalist beliefs that divided the nation before the Civil War. It is one that created an intractable division between the two sides on the issue of slavery and hindered meaningful negotiation.

The further ties that Christianity developed with conservatism in the South fostered a denial to see the possibility for change in a positive light. From a psychological perspective, the reaction that the South embraces is one in response to the threat of mortality. While the salience of mortality reasons that people are aware of their death and that it influences the choices they make both through a personal and cultural lens, the threat of mortality is a stance that ignores this behavior. Instead, the goal is to protect and preserve in an attempt to forestall any chance of demise.50 When considered in this framework, religion becomes an essential method of preserving traditions with uncompromising stubbornness, a construct that first encouraged fighting to keep slavery before the war and then shifted to maintaining a southern way of life after it.51 To back this idea, Faust argues that Christianity was at the core of the southern ideology and its drive for war. “A pure Christianity” lay at the heart of the Confederate revolution, one zealot insisted, “and Providence is using the South for the grand work of its preservation and extension.”52 Of course, most of these beliefs are a recognition that the South is as religiously solid as it is politically—even though it may have detractors in its midst. But the

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practice of protestant Christianity is as common as the likelihood that the region will vote in one way for every presidential election; there is a predictable element to both.

Even in defeat, the South found a way to see that religion would still be on their side, that they were the chosen people of God. Thus Wyatt-Brown notes that losing the Civil War did not engender contrition or new awareness, but rather that “contradictory though it might seem, success was always attributed to nobleheartedness duly rewarded by divinity. On the other hand, defeat meant no disgrace, no godly judgment, for instance, upon Southern devotion to the slave institution.”53 Though it is difficult to see the region as acting like one person might, the South found a way to avoid criticizing itself for bringing on a war for economic practices desperately in need of reform. Rather than looking inward, southerners looked toward heaven, finding a new sense of hope, one that God still blessed the South. Cornelia Spencer stated this idea best when she wrote, “I feel that, though we have fallen, we shall rise again. God chastens whom He loves… I would rather be the South in her humiliation than the North in her triumph.”54 The belief that the South will rise again became a rallying cry for the region and a form of a second war cry against the North and outside influence.

The Southern Conservative Christian Mind

The ideologies the South developed and maintained after the Civil War are backed both by Christianity and the conservative political mindset pervading the region. The two are potent allies, if not conjoined at this point, and their combined doctrines make adopting progressive ideas challenging, especially when expected with any alacrity. “The church is well-known as a powerful influence for conservatism, while the strongly conservative are slow to throw away anything so important as religion, and so the two interact and support each other.”55 The nearly

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symbiotic relationship is one that is self-aware and steeped in traditional and Old Testament values. “This is the ‘Bible Belt’ country and the stronghold of verbal inspiration. The emphasis is upon the ‘Thou shalt nots’ of moral restriction and the Books of Daniel and Revelation provide the proof-text of its teaching.”56 This aspect makes it easy to observe the correlation between

Old-Testament-thinking, codes of honor, the violent South, and seeing how it has continued to try to protect itself against all concepts of change. In this model, change is equivocal to loss of control and the results being unwanted or uncontrolled shifts.

The differences between the North and the South grew more apparent as industrialization gained prominence. Poteat sees the church as falling to the “perils” of the industrialization of the

North but sees southern religion as being able to speak out against such a takeover.57 Rather than seeing industrialization as an opportunity or an inevitable step, the South fought it as though it would corrupt the concept of the South at its core. This perspective was also a means of control that kept the White patriarchal structure firmly intact, as the fear is that any change would disrupt the power of the hegemony and change a southern man into a less honorable character.

Of course, it is laughable to place the fear of change solely on the South, as the rest of the nation has its own challenges embracing change. Many scholars, such as Vann Woodward,

Faust, Cobb, Gilpin, and others, have seen the South both as Cash would call it, not quite a nation within a nation, but the next thing to it, but also as a representation of the nation at large and its anxieties.58 The duality of the South’s existence, both within and apart, puts it in a strange position that accepts its perceived failings to battle how the nation considers it comparable with backwardness. Howard Zinn attracted public attention when he contended in 1964 that “those very qualities long attributed to the South as special possessions are, in truth, American qualities” and explained that “the nation reacts emotionally to the South precisely because it

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subconsciously recognizes itself there.”59 Cobb’s use of Zinn is an indication of the angst and apprehension the rest of the nation frequently feels toward the South—that the South is a way of quarantining the troubles of the country and doing so allows other areas to feel better. That construct, however, ignores the influence that the South has had on the rest of the nation.

Other regions fail to acknowledge the overall influence of the South, instead focusing on its food, literature, or sense of nostalgia and traditions or even its lust for college football.

Nevertheless, the South factors in politics, economics, education, race relations, gender relations, concepts of sexuality, and it provides a voice to more than just the people of its region. Zeitz indicated the explosive growth of evangelical Protestantism outside the South as well as the national popularity of and NASCAR leading to what seemed to him an inescapable conclusion: “Southern culture has become American culture.”60 That is what makes

NASCAR a critical element of American society. Though it can be overlooked and derided by the public, it highlights the values that it grew up with and, in doing so, helps encourage the further inculcation of southern culture into the broader American one.

The notable arena where NASCAR has shown its influence has been the presidential elections of the past couple of decades. When Cobb published Away Down South in 2005, he remarked that “although 42 percent of NASCAR fans are female and it [NASCAR] boasts a solid and still growing national fan base among men earning more than $75,000 a year, in the

2004 election the term ‘NASCAR Dad’ clearly implied a macho, socially and politically conservative working-class white man, southern in outlook if not in heritage and hell-bent on returning George W. Bush to office.”61 This construct of the NASCAR dad became a demographic in itself and one that both parties sought, seeing these conservative suburbanites as a vital voting bloc that could swing the 2004 election.62

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Figure 1.1 – Image depicting the use of NASCAR Dads during the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2004. Source: Wilson Library Archives, University of North Carolina2

The singling out of this group foreshadowed a similar pattern that accompanied the 2016 election when a focus gravitated on White blue-collar workers in the Mid-Appalachians. J.D.

Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (2016) became the catalyst for focusing on this group, as the work portrays the struggling people in Kentucky and Southern Ohio and their frustrations in feeling left behind in a changing world. But the people that populate this book represent the frustrated identity of anyone who feels lost in the modern world after having lived on a skill-set that is now antiquated. For Donald Trump, his appeal to the coal industry, regardless of its economic or environmental value, elicited a positive response that countered more progressive or liberal ideas.

Playing upon conservative Christian values and the political right was just as crucial as entreating a dying industry. In 2004, George W. Bush’s ties to Christian conservatives also played especially well in a region increasingly dotted with megachurches boasting memberships in the thousands and caught up in movements to restore school prayer and require the display of

2 Wilson Library Archives, University of North Carolina.

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the Ten Commandments in public buildings.63 While the South may have supported Bush that winning the region was not enough to win the presidency, that other portions of the country must have felt some comfort with his messages. In much the same way, Trump used the backing of evangelical Christian leaders to cement his ability to appeal to southerners. What makes Trump’s success a peculiar exception to previous candidates who have swept the South is that Trump’s heritage was one for which northerners would find more congruence in comparison to their neighbors in the South. Regardless of the regional ties, religion played a significant part in

Trump’s vote-getting appeal during his victorious presidential campaign. His relationship with the Christian right is as public as it is fascinating but exemplifies the concept of the spectacle.

When examining Trump and his movements, one way to consider him is as a product of the society of the spectacle—he is the total of his images, and as a whole, they do most of the speaking for him.64 This scaffolding works well with the spectacle that is NASCAR.

As a televised sport, presentation is its most significant selling point. Newman and

Giardina have focused on the imagery that accompanies NASCAR events, from the trackside to the broadcasts, and they have considered the sport to be one of neoliberalism’s last great stands.65 Whether or not one might agree with their economic perspective, their assessment of the spectacle is an excellent basis for viewing the sport as a blurred world of colorful images. But the invocation stands as one moment during the race-day events when there is an element of tranquility. For a short time, everyone involved becomes aware of their mortality, and the potential for solemnity resonates throughout. The invocation may once have stood as a grave moment, but it became something else, a spectacle in and of itself, the few minutes given to reflection now taken to be just as much theater as anything else.

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The shift to changing the invocation to an exhibition found its pinnacle at a second-tier race, where the minister offered a surprising oration. Here is Pastor Joe Nelms’s now (in)famous invocation at Nashville Speedway for the opening of a Nationwide Series – renamed XFINITY

Series in 2015 – race in 2012:

Heavenly Father, we thank you tonight for all your blessings you sent, and, in all things, we give thanks. So, we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines that you brought before us. Thank you for the Dodges and the . Thank you for the Fords. Most of all, we thank you for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power that we see before us tonight. Thank you for GM performance technology and RO7 engines. Thank you for racing fuel and Goodyear tires that bring performance and power to the track. Lord, I want to thank you for my smokin’ hot wife tonight, Lisa. And my two children, Eli and Emma, or as (I) like to call ’em, the little Es. Lord, I pray you bless the drivers and use them tonight. May they put on a performance worthy of this great track. In Jesus’s name, boogity boogity boogity, Amen.66

Several observations may be derived from this statement. Thanking the Lord for “these mighty machines” creates a bizarre relationship between the divine and mechanization that encourages reconciliation between the church and industrialization. The preacher continued, much like an advertisement, listing the names of all the manufacturers represented at the time of the race. At this point, if one were paying attention, a serious question should arise as to whether the pastor is a serious man of the cloth or a corporate endorser for the sport. Skipping ahead, the further use of the deity is confusing as Nelms offers that “in Jesus’s name, boogity boogity boogity.” To the uninitiated, this phrasing sounds like non sequitur goofiness, but Nelms is using Darrell

Waltrip’s catchphrase to celebrate Jesus and NASCAR. One final note is to mention the phrase

“smokin’ hot wife,” which seems a little strange coming from a pastor’s mouth as he asks God to watch over the participants. Nelms, however, was referring to the film Talladega Nights and how the main character, Ricky Bobby, describes his wife, Carly. That means that Nelms has tied together blatant commercialism in brand marketing, an apparent reference to NASCAR pop culture, and a nod to a stalwart of the sport all under the umbrella of asking a Christian God to

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help the drivers compete. The convergence of factors is a rare treat of the spectacle, though one that even NASCAR officials may have felt went too far as no one has come close to replicating the notorious invocation.

The invocation has continued to gain attention in how it has remained, for the most part, steadfastly southern, focused on muscular Christianity, and maintaining the status quo. In this respect, the goal is to ensure that both Christianity and the politics of the South remain unchanged. The sport found the perfect complement to this idea when it asked Dr. Robert

Jeffress to give the invocation for a race at Talladega Super Speedway on October 18, 2019.

Jeffress, an evangelical Southern Baptist, leads a congregation of 14,000 in Dallas, Texas, and has been an outspoken proponent of President Trump. Jeffress, however, has delivered questionable rhetoric that, as single messages, is troubling, but taken overall, can be viewed as destructive. A shortlist of his missives includes:

• You can’t be saved being a Jew, and Mormonism is “a heresy from the pit of Hell.” • Democrats worship the child-sacrificing Pagan god Moloch. • Church/state separation is a hoax. • Climate change is an imaginary crisis. • Democrats don’t care about the sexual abuse of women because they’re pro- choice. • It’s impossible to be good without God. • School shootings occur because we teach kids they’re nothing but an evolutionary accident. • Never-Trump Christians are just like Nazi enablers. • If you’re a Christian who voted for President Obama in 2012, you’re also like Nazi enablers. • God gave Trump the authority to take out Kim Jong-un. • The Catholic Church is the result of the Babylonian cult system.67

Selecting Jeffress came as a clear signal of the sport’s open allegiance to both the Trump administration but also the conservative and problematic values that the South adheres to. While few viewers in attendance may have disagreed with Jeffress, his controversial stance when

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saying that the Democrats’ attempts to remove Trump from office would result in a second Civil

War heightened the overt sense of division in the country. Any mention of inciting a second

Civil War awakens the frustrated psyche of the South, the one region of the US that holds the memory of a loss in war. In a surprising move, however, Jeffress refrained from making a political statement and instead gave a standard invocation that focused on driver safety and

American nationalism.68 This subdued message conflicted with the oratory expected from

Jeffress, but that has not meant that the invocation has not been used as a support to Trump.

Two months after Jeffress’s appearance at Talladega, the invocation provided the place for a similar delivery. At , Phil Robertson, founder of the Duck

Commander Company, prayed in his invocation that “we put a Jesus man in the White House,” and followed with “all right Texas, we got here via Bibles and guns.”69 Robertson appealed to his fans as the country redneck that he sells himself and his brand as, but also fused the relationship with his brand, the Trump brand, and the defense of the Second Amendment. The view of Trump as a Christian is absurd, and an argument meant for talk-show hosts, but linking Trump with the

“Bibles and guns crowd” is a method of satisfying and inspiring the right-wing Republicans of the South and elsewhere.

The Christianity that surrounds the sport of NASCAR is overtly displayed by the drivers.

In his continued analysis of the sport, Newman provides a detailed examination of NASCAR’s devotion to Christianity by various drivers and fan responses. He notes that Richard Petty has taken on a more pious personality since retiring, becoming born again. In contrast, Dale

Earnhardt, especially after his death, became the “patron saint of the hillbilly.”70 Earnhardt’s death also served as a moment for southern religious discourse to emerge in all the tributes that surrounded his unfortunate accident. Still, his passing also brought a popular affirmation of the

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love of God. The ties to Heyrman’s construct of distinct southern muscular Christianity is furthered by the manliness involved in being the head of a family and a proud patriot while being a “good ol’ boy.”

What looks like a paradoxical relationship between nationalism and regionalism is surprisingly harmonious. Because the South represents the American identity that many

Americans do not want to accept, it finds itself even more comfortable celebrating its American- ness. When the sport announced that the traditional flyover—when a military plane or helicopter flies over the track—would likely be suspended due to troubling economy, the reaction from fans was one of disbelief, as though removing some of the pageantry would undermine the actual racing.71 While it is easy to criticize the fans for their reaction, they provide evidence for the reactionary aggressiveness that accompanies the disruption of their expected experience. The removal of any tradition brings backlash, and it was no different for one of the most obvious symbols.

In 2015, NASCAR announced a ban on the Confederate Battle Flag at the racetracks.

Known more colloquially as the Rebel Flag, it is a symbol that has drawn considerable attention through the 2010s, becoming a symbol for the alternative right and serving as a representative marker of the popularized redneck trope. For some, a sign of heritage, but for many others, it marks a racist ideology that remains in effect.72 The flag became contentious, as many things that surround NASCAR have—a problematic emblem of the past reimagined as a kinder, friendlier token. That mindset is one of the privileges of the White fans, who comprise over 90% of the sport. The flag has long been a presence at NASCAR races, a companion to fans who have taken to flying the numbers of their favorite drivers or other allegiances from the infields of the races.73

But after the Charleston church shooting in 2015 and the flag’s use as a racist symbol,

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exemplified at the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally in 2017, where alternative-right supporters killed a young woman, NASCAR took a stronger stance to push the flag aside. The sport’s superstar and de facto spokesperson, and a southerner, Earnhardt Jr., spoke against flying the flag, but some fans have still resisted.74 This entrenchment is an illustration of the obstinate ideologies that harbor a fear of change—that recognizing something may be offensive to a group of people means that they have to look inward and give something of themselves.

Corrective

On February 18, 2001, Ralph Dale Earnhardt died in a last-lap crash at Daytona

International Speedway, just as his son crossed the line, winning the vaunted Daytona 500. That race has become emblematic, an event that showcased the oncoming stars as well as being a story that catapulted the sport into enormous popularity through the first half of the 2000s. This sport is one that grew out of the southeastern United States and became national. Yet, the sport was never meant to become as popular as it did. The lofty status it took was as surprising as it was the ubiquitous presence it developed but also an overreach, deriving benefit from results beyond its merit until it cannot prolong its fortunate circumstances.

The state of North Carolina, where most race teams are housed and considered the unofficial hub of the sport, named NASCAR as its official state sport in 2011.75 Dale Earnhardt

Jr. routinely ranked in the top 20 in Sports Illustrated highest-paid athletes, and multiple-times champion driver Jimmie Johnson won the ’s Male Athlete of the Year in 2009 and earned a nomination for ESPN’s ESPY in the Best Male Athlete category in 2010. It is easy to recognize that NASCAR ascended to a leading position in ’s sporting hierarchy and considered the notion of being regarded like football, basketball, or baseball but could not

38

maintain its place—and it was never going to. But the ideologies from which it was born and delivered to the country are constructs not to be erased.

The sport once argued that it was the second most popular in the US behind football, but its ratings have fallen continuously since their apogee in 2005-2007. Fox Network’s NASCAR coverage saw a dip beginning in 2007, and the trend continued, with ratings in the 2010s following those of the previous decade. Table 1.1, “NASCAR on Fox,” shows how the network once earned over nine million viewers on average but by 2014 had lost two million of them. In the years following, the sport recorded further viewership decline and held steady in the 3 – 4 million viewers average.

Table 1.1 – NASCAR Ratings on Fox, 2007-2014 (From Sports Business Daily, June 29, 2014).76

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The ratings issued from a season-long viewership pattern, rather than focusing on Fox and their coverage that lasts for the first half of the season, support the same viewership drop. Scott

Johnson’s examination of analyzing the ratings shows how the sport reached its acme in the first decade of 2000 and has since declined steadily.77 Table 1.2, NASCAR Cup Series: US Nielsen

Ratings, shows Johnson’s aggregated data and the downtrend that begins in 2007. The television viewership data evince how the sport no longer benefits from the same popularity, the loss of which is a constant topic on message boards and social media.

Table 1.2 – NASCAR Cup Series: US Nielsen Ratings, 1996-2014 (Source: TheScore.com, March 26, 2014).78

Now, in the late 2010s, as the sport has returned to its niche position, a place that many pundits feel it should never have left, NASCAR is sidled with its past as much as ever while confronted with a future of questionable relevance. The emblematic Southern ethos of the sport has also contributed to the steady decline in the number of viewers. The masculine bravado, backed by an overt relationship with Christianity, offers appeal to a select group and seems to

40

ostracize innovation, progress, and inclusion. This confused situation provides comfort to those in the sport. It serves to reify southernness and patriarchal structures, but it also serves as a troubling reminder of former politics and practices.

It is no wonder that the region that features the best TV ratings for NASCAR is also the one that supported Donald Trump with fervor during his successful presidential campaign in

2016.79 The South obviously could not elect Trump on their own, and the Midwest, with its ties to the South, owing to the Great Migration after World War II, followed suit. But the South acted as they have many times before, voting as one solid voting bloc. The region continues enacting laws that seek to limit minority rights under the guise of freedom of religion, making the relationship between the South, Trump, and Christianity more confounding and difficult to unravel. Fans have grown angrier yet ever more protective of NASCAR as its popularity has declined. As the fans find common ground, NASCAR has better fit Anderson’s concept of an imagined community—a grouping of people who never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion; a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.80

The fans of NASCAR have frequently been referred to as the NASCAR Nation, another titling that signals the belief in an imagined community. For Anderson, the notion of a nation rested in the imagined political community—and imagined it as both inherently limited and sovereign.81 In this construct, both fans and participants stake a claim to living in this community, continuing its customs, and defending its existence. The authority wielded by the leaders, from the president of the sport, to the one punishing drivers and crew chiefs for flouting the rules, to the car owners and their expectations for employee behavior, NASCAR is a

41

hierarchal world commanded to sell an image and entertainment as fashioned on outdated culture. Any sense of forced change or progress requires a stern and frequently violent challenge, as evidenced by the attempts of African Americans to join the sport, or women’s efforts to race, or even the introduction of new technology.

The idea of NASCAR Nation prompts a reaction of defense that NASCAR and, by proxy, the South needs to be protected—or just as importantly, the structures that have benefited White heterosexual males must be sustained. The fear of women encroaching on the racetrack or unwanted changes to the traditions of the sport fuels hostility that is no different than responses to race relations or gender/sexual identity constructs in the South.

Maybe another way of viewing the idea of a fan base such as NASCAR’s is to see it as tribalism. As a sport, it features roughly 100 drivers through the top three racing divisions, about the same number of crew chiefs, and around 40 different owners. Even adding support staff at the race shops, the pit crew, and then media figures, the total number of people in NASCAR is meager compared to other sports. With its small numbers, the homogenous identity of the participants involved—White, male, heterosexual, Christian—and a culture unto itself based on auto racing, the sport has created a clan-like culture. Joanne Barker asserts that tribes are likely to replicate the world that surrounds them in their culture. In that way, NASCAR copies tribal cultures as the sport, a world unto itself, reproduces the very social inequalities and injustices of racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, homophobia, and religious conservatism that define US nationalism.82 The South is not just representing its ideals but those of the nation, ideals that may not be as obvious in other regions but still the overall desires of many Americans. What

NASCAR exhibits and allows is a way to both recognize and deny the outdated and

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frustrating relations with the contemporary society that are frequently overlooked and dismissed.

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CHAPTER 1 ENDNOTES

1 Tom Wolfe, “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson - Tom Wolfe Story,” Esquire, March 1965, http://www.esquire.com/features/life-of-junior-johnson-tom-wolfe-0365?src=soc_fcbk.

2 John Alfred Heitmann, The Automobile and American Life (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2009), 46.

3 Robert Higgs, “Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s,” The Journal of Economic History 52, no. 1 (1992): 41–60.

4 Robert Lewis, “World War II Manufacturing and the Postwar Southern Economy,” The Journal of Southern History 73, no. 4 (2007): 837–66, https://doi.org/10.2307/27649570.

5 Neal Thompson, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR (Broadway, 2007), 75.

6 Thompson, 89.

7 Thompson, 91.

8 Thompson, 3–10, 89.

9 W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 52; Cash, 62.

10 Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor & Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1996), 137.

11 Ben Shackleford, “NASCAR : Establishment and Southern Retrenchment,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 28, no. 2 (February 2011): 300–318, https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2011.537922.

12 W. J Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 43.

13 David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 401.

14 John Hope Franklin, The Militant South, 1800-1861 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1956), 3–4.

15 Mark Howell, From Moonshine to Madison Avenue: A Cultural History of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Popular Press, 1997), 4.

44

16 Howell, 95.

17 Joe Menzer, The Wildest Ride: A History of NASCAR (Simon & Schuster, 2002), 199.

18 Menzer, 77.

19 Menzer, 79.

20 Howell, From Moonshine to Madison Avenue, 159.

21 Howell, 186.

22 Dave Hager, “How ‘Days of Thunder’ Failed Nascar | Ew.Com,” Entertainment Weekly, August 10, 1990, https://ew.com/article/1990/08/10/how-days-thunder-failed/.

23 Douglas A. Hurt, “Dialed In? Geographic Expansion and Regional Identity in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series,” Southeastern Geographer 45, no. 1 (2005): 120–37, https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2005.0010.

24 Tom Wolfe, “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson - Tom Wolfe Story,” Esquire, March 1965, http://www.esquire.com/features/life-of-junior-johnson-tom-wolfe-0365?src=soc_fcbk.

25 James C. Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 224.

26 Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (New York, New York: Viking, 2016), 317.

27 Isenberg, 306.

28 Pete Daniel, Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 173.

29 Daniel, 179.

30 Daniel, 175.

31 Daniel, 179.

32 Isenberg, White Trash, 306.

33 Richard Peterson, “Class Unconsciousness in Country Music,” in Cobb, Away down South, 225.

45

34 Matthew J. Ferrence, All-American Redneck Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks (Knoxville, : The University of Tennessee Press, 2014), 42, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10909220.

35 Jack Temple Kirby, The Countercultural South, Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures, no. 38 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 59.

36 , “Attitude for Sale,” SI Vault, accessed January 20, 2020, https://www.si.com/vault/1995/02/06/133207/attitude-for-sale-dale-earnhardt--new-king- has-parlayed-his-bad-boy-image-on-the-track-into-a-gold-mine-off-it.

37 Ed Hinton, “Attitude for Sale,” Vault, accessed January 20, 2020, https://www.si.com/vault/1995/02/06/133207/attitude-for-sale-dale-earnhardt-nascars-new-king- has-parlayed-his-bad-boy-image-on-the-track-into-a-gold-mine-off-it.

38 Jay Busbee, “Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jr. Both Opposed Confederate Flag,” Yahoo Sports, June 23, 2015, http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nascar-from-the-marbles/dale-earnhardt--junior-both- criticized-confederate-flag-165220032.html.

39 Pew Research Center, “Religion in America. Pew Research Center. “Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics.” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), 2014. https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.

40 John Boles, “The Discovery of Southern Religious History,” in Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 510-548.

41 Beth Barton Schweiger, “Max Weber in Mount Airy, Or, Revivals and Social Theory in the Early South,” in Beth Barton Schweiger and Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 45.

42 Boles, “The Discovery of Southern Religious History,” in Interpreting Southern History.

43 C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 173.

44 Boles in Interpreting Southern History, 510–48.

45 Douglas Thompson, “Nascar’s Faith: The Rise of Cultural Christianity Through Sport,” Daytona Beach News-Journal Online, February 20, 2017, https://www.news- journalonline.com/news/20170220/nascars-faith-rise-of-cultural-christianity-through-sport.

46 Donald Mathews, Religion in the Old South (: University of Chicago Press, 1977), xv.

46

47 Mathews, xv.

48 Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (New York: A.A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1997), 280.

49 W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 80

50 Meaning, Mortality, and Choice: The Social Psychology of Existential Concerns (Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association, 2012), https://doi.org/10.1037/13748-000.

51 Edwin McNeill Poteat, “Religion in the South,” in Couch, William T. Culture in the South (Westport, Conn: Negro Universities Press, 1970), 248.

52 Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South. Paperback ed. The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1998), 28.

53 Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 28, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10279405.

54 Russell Phillips, The Woman Who Rang the Bell: The Story of Cornelia Phillips Spencer in Bertram Wyatt-Brown, 28.

55 Josephine Pinckney, “Bulwarks Against Change,” in Couch, William T. Culture in the South (Westport, Conn: Negro Universities Press, 1970), 44.

56 Robert Raymond Brown, “Southern Religion, Mid-Century,” in Louis Decimus Rubin, and James Jackson Kilpatrick, The Lasting South; Fourteen Southerners Look at Their Home (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1957), 138.

57 Poteat in Couch, William T., Culture in the South (Westport, Conn: Negro Universities Press, 1970), 264.

58 Cash, The Mind of the South, xlviii.

59 Howard Zinn in Cobb, Away Down South, 326.

60 Joshua Zeitz, “Dixie’s Victory,” American Heritage, Aug./Sept. 2002, 46–55.

61 Cobb, Away Down South, 324.

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62 Mary Douglas Vavrus, “The Politics of NASCAR Dads: Branded Media Paternity,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24, no. 3 (August 2007): 245–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180701520942.

63 Cobb, Away Down South, 325.

64 Robert Zaretsky, “Opinion | Trump and the ‘Society of the Spectacle,’” , February 20, 2017, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/trump-and-the- society-of-the-spectacle.html.

65Joshua Newman and Michael Giardina, “Neoliberalism’s Last Lap? NASCAR Nation and the Cultural Politics of Sport,” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 10 (2010): 1511–29 and Joshua I. Newman, and Michael D. Giardina, Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism, Education, Politics and Public Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

66 Douglas Thompson, “Nascar’s Faith: The Rise of Cultural Christianity Through Sport,” Daytona Beach News-Journal Online, February 20, 2017, https://www.news- journalonline.com/news/20170220/nascars-faith-rise-of-cultural-christianity-through-sport.

67 Hemant Mehta, “The President Watching Robert Jeffress’ Easter Sermon Should Be a Bigger Scandal,” Patheos (blog), April 12, 2020, https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/04/12/the- president-watching-robert-jeffress-easter-sermon-should-be-a-bigger-scandal/.

68 The Associated Press, “Rain Postpones NASCAR Playoff Race at ,” WVTM, October 14, 2019, https://www.wvtm13.com/article/rain-forces-playoff-postponement- at-talladega/29452808.

69 Jenna Fryer, “Pastor, Trump Ally Robert Jeffress to Give Talladega Prayer,” WBMA, October 13, 2019, https://abc3340.com/news/local/pastor-trump-ally-robert-jeffress-to-give-talladega- prayer.

70 Joshua I Newman, “Full-Throttle Jesus: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Stockcar Racing in Theocratic America,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 32, no. 3 (2010): 263–94, https://doi.org/10.1080/10714413.2010.495254.

71 Christopher Olmstead, “NASCAR News: Flyover Might Be the Last One We See for a While,” Bleacher Report, accessed January 22, 2020, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1564724-nascar-news-las-vegas-flyover-might-be-the-last- one-we-see-for-a-while.

72John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 174.

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73 Jason W Lee, Matthew J. Bernthal, Warren A. Whisenant, and Susan Mullane, “Nascar: Checkered Flags Are Not All That Are Being Waved,” Sport Marketing Quarterly, September 1, 2010, https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A323350018/AONE?sid=lms.

74 Mike Hembree, “NASCAR Fans: Confederate Flag Still Important Symbol,” USA TODAY, August 19, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2017/08/19/confederate-flag- still-important-symbol-nascar-fans/583320001/.

75 “‘North Carolina Senate Picks Racing as State Sport,’” http://hamptonroads.com/print/597767, n.d.

76 Tripp Mickle and John Ourand, “Weathering a Storm: Rain Dampens Nascar Ratings,” Sports Business Daily, June 29, 2014, accessed June 19, 2020, https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com:443/en/Journal/Issues/2014/06/09/Media/NASCAR ratings.aspx.

77 Scott Johnson, “How Nascar Silenced Its Most Accurate Critic,” theScore.com, March 26, 2014, https://www.thescore.com/nascar/news/463780.

78 Johnson.

79 “Presidential Election Results: Donald J. Trump Wins,” The New York Times, August 9, 2017, sec. U.S., https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president.

80 Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. ed (London; New York: Verso, 2006), 7.

81 Anderson, 6.

82 Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 7.

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CHAPTER 2

WHITE LIGHTNING, WHITE NASCAR: THE SOUTH, NASCAR, AND THE

PRACTICES OF EXCLUSION

“It is like the nation’s approach to racial integration: the terms are set by the majority and the burden of sacrifice and change and responsibility falls mostly on the minority.” John Egerton, The Americanization of Dixie1

“Winston Cup racing is the only top-level sport in the country that meets the standards of an Aryan nation. It’s white and it’s male.” , former NASCAR and IndyCar driver.2

Introduction

This chapter examines the methods of racism that have surrounded the sport of

NASCAR. Borrowing heavily from southern culture and White privilege, NASCAR has aligned or utilized several practices that discourage Black participation in the sport. From racist imagery to violence and class warfare, the systemic racism established by the White practitioners of the sport has preserved a culture that is hostile to minority and Black drivers. This chapter examines the ties between southern culture and NASCAR and how they melded together to deny opportunities for Black persons. While the imagery and attitudes may be one element, the sport's business model also preserves a barrier for entry into the sport. For those few African Americans who have been able to find a place in the sport, they have been met with malevolence and had their careers challenged. The sport is overwhelmingly White and has changed little since its creation in 1949.

NASCAR has often been cited as the whitest sport in the country when considering the ethnicity of its drivers, fans, and the people running the sport. In an article from 2003 exploring the sport’s rise in popularity, the author stated that “It is also—let's just come right out and say

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it—the whitest sport in America. The drivers are White, the pit crews are White, and it has become a cliché to note that at most races, Confederate flags outnumber African American fans.”3 The analysis excluded the sport’s followers, but an article a decade later showed that the audience was predominantly White. The Atlantic provided a comprehensive examination of

NASCAR fan demographics and declared that 94% of its fans in 2014 were White.4 That six percent of fans that are something other than White is split between Black and Hispanic fans, both listed at two percent, with the final two percent labeled as other. The overwhelming number of White drivers patterns itself after the fan analysis, but at an even higher percentage. When

Darrell “Bubba” Wallace started racing in NASCAR in 2012, five years had passed since an

African American driver had raced. preceded Wallace and started driving in 1999, coming after Willie T. Ribbs raced during the 1986 season. Before those three drivers, Wendell

Scott last drove in 1973 after a 13-year-long career that began in 1961. Aside from those four drivers, no other African Americans have driven in the sport. At a time when African Americans comprise much larger percentages of competitors, fans, and surrounding personnel in other sports, NASCAR has remained in a strange position, one that seems counterintuitive, or at least positioned against the norm when compared to other sports that garner national attention.

The lack of affiliation by people other than Whites, as shown in Figure 2.1, is startling.

It is no wonder that the sport is often the target of jokes about its whiteness. In his stand-up comedy routines, African American comic Alonzo Bodden has frequently satirized NASCAR, at one point joking that African Americans had infiltrated hockey, but they still had not been able to do so with NASCAR. The truth is that African American representation in the sport is fragmented and rare. Part of the reason is the culture surrounding the sport, with one example being the Confederate Flag.

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Figure 2.1 NASCAR demographic profile (Source: Thompson, The Atlantic, February 10, 2014).1

The Presence of the Confederate Flag

One aspect that should be mentioned but not dwelled on is that what is colloquially considered the Confederate Flag is named the Confederate Battle Flag, wholly different from the

Confederate States Flag. However, this clarification distinguishes how items change in the nation’s collective memory rather than be a sticking point. This kind of vague memory-making is an essential indicator of how the South modified their perceptions after losing the Civil War. In their defeat, they were able to shift the narrative from the bleakness of loss to fighting for a “Lost

Cause,” one they had fought honorably in trying to maintain the southern way of life but were unable against the aggressive and invasive forces of the North. This construct is echoed by seemingly every southern scholar, a recognition of the pride existing in the region and the

1 Derek Thompson, “Which Sports Have the Whitest/Richest/Oldest Fans?” The Atlantic, February 10, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/which-sports-have-the-whitest-richest-oldest-fans/283626/.

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harbinger for the rise in southern memorials that dotted the landscape in the first half of the twentieth century. As for the flag, the sport of NASCAR conscripted its history with the symbol early on.

According to some accounts, the Confederate Flag was once as integral to the NASCAR landscape as the green, yellow, and checkered flags governing a race.5 This statement is curious but not out of the realm of possibility. Early races lack the documentation to clarify this claim, meaning that the flag could have flown with regularity. That “Darlington was NASCAR’s only track to use a Confederate Flag, instead of a green flag, to start its races” may offer more evidence than other speculated appearances of the flag.6 Drivers also employed the flag in various ways, making its use a personal statement. Figures 2.2 – 2.4 illustrate drivers of the

1960s photographed with the flag. Edward “Fireball” Roberts pulled into victory lane with a man on his hood hoisting the Confederate Flag in 1963. In 1967, Richard Petty also drove to victory lane with a man adorning his hood raising the flag. LeeRoy Yarbrough made the flag a more personal statement and sported a Confederate Flag on the top of his helmet during the 1969 season. This utilization is an astonishing early use of the flag as a cultural marker and supports the notion of the flag becoming a mid-century pop symbol. Coski notes that the University of

Mississippi’s practices involving “southern traditions” are nothing but manufactured mid- twentieth century customs that work to encourage identity and community building.7 The flag has been a large part of the school’s constructed identity in the latter half of the twentieth century, and it stands to reason that if the university can adopt such a symbol, there is reason to believe that NASCAR can do the same.

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Figures 2.2 and 2.3 – Edward “Fireball” Roberts driving to victory lane as a man sits atop his car holding a Confederate Flag in 1963 (L); and LeeRoy Yarbrough and his Confederate Flag helmet in 1969 (R). (Source: Getty Images)

Figure 2.4 – Richard Petty pulling into victory lane with track mascot “Johnny Reb” sitting atop the hood after a win in 1967. (Source: Getty Images)

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The flag had been largely forgotten after the Civil War until it found a new use by the Ku

Klux Klan. Though the KKK embraced a second rising beginning in Georgia in 1915, they mainly continued using their white flag with a red circle and two intersecting white pillars inside the circle. The Birth of Nation (1915) used the Confederate Flag heavily in the film, but its appearance did not carry over to the KKK at that time. The union of the two came with the

KKK’s third revival accompanying a new wave of popularity in post-World War II America.8 To see that the flag flew for the Darlington race may be a surprise insofar as the fact that other tracks did not adopt the same practice. The difference may have come from a combination of the locale and the person in charge of the speedway. “The Klan was active around Darlington, …and the speedway’s president was a Confederacy buff and a resolute segregationist.”9 The environment surrounding Darlington proved to be the pinnacle of hostility toward outsiders, an attitude emanating from outside and inside the track. The flag draped over the race for more than a decade, as the track featured a flag-waving “Johnny Reb” who greeted the winner in victory lane, and until the early 1980s, the program for the races featured the battle flag prominently.10

The Darlington track enjoyed company with others and with one example being

International Raceway’s introduction of the Dixie 500 in 1960, where the flag was a de facto logo.11 After the Civil Rights efforts of the 1950s and 60s, these practices may have changed somewhat, but fans of the sport carried this troubling legacy forward with their continued commitment to the flag.

Of course, just what the fans and other Confederate Flag-waving people believe they are choosing to honor is questionable. Southern Partisans vehemently denied that Confederates fought for slavery, but they did not hesitate to boast that Confederates fought for “white supremacy.”12 The duality in play with such a statement is evident in that it ignores how one

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element relates to the other. In this respect, it appears that many people who use the flag can disregard the notion of cause and effect or the combined ideas of representation and reality. To ignore or deny that the South fought for slavery is a common refrain in the Lost Cause narrative, instead substituting slavery for the belief that the South fought for state rights—that the states should be able to govern themselves. This confused position eschews the fact that the right that the southern states were fighting for was the continuation of slavery. No matter the connection, the use of the flag flourished in the mid-twentieth-century South.

After World War II, the flag began to find its way into popular culture, becoming what many critics considered a fad. Its impact, however, showed the divisiveness that would later be evident during the Civil Rights movement over the next two decades. The reaction to the flag's increased appearances after the war offered an ominous feeling concerning its intent. The editor of Afro-American offered an early warning and a reason to fear the flag and to fight its revival:

The Confederate flag stands for slavery and human degradation. The Confederate flag stands for rebellion and treachery. The Confederate flag stands for bloodshed and segregation. The Confederate flag stands for oppression and disfranchisement. The Confederate flag stands for white supremacy and everything in which democracy and Christianity are opposed. These are no laughing matters.13

While the flag's depiction is portentous and disturbing, recognizing its ceaseless popularity proved more disconcerting. Rather than being an image that should have been relegated to the archives of US history, the flag found a new life and new meanings.

The universities in the Deep South were associated most closely with the Confederate

Battle Flag, and by 1948, the University of Mississippi adopted the flag as an all-but-official school symbol. However, they were not alone. Football fans at the University of Virginia in

Charlottesville began waving Confederate flags to cheer on their team when it played against

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northern schools.14 While in one way, the flag acts as a symbol of the South as a distinct region and permitting individual rebelliousness, it also stands for segregation and racism. That the flag found a home at prominent southern universities is troubling because, unlike NASCAR, school administrations should instill concepts of ethics and morals. Universities, however, began to act in popular interests long before NASCAR was even a sport. The College at

Columbia, now The University of South Carolina, had competed with Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton in the 1820s but jettisoned their progressive president, Thomas Cooper, to instill a more rigidly conservative mindset at the school in the desires of the people of the state.15 This shift marked the populist attitudes that pushed Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump to the White

House. So, to find the flag at racetracks is a different matter, but the flag’s presence found other homes outside of the South.

The use of the flag extended beyond the country’s borders, becoming evident by its appearance among the US troops during the Korean War, 1950–1953. Soldiers argued that using the symbol was appropriate because the US was fighting for South Korea.16 While the popular notion of using the flag to support another southern state intends to be a positive message, such usage is confused and wrong. That the South lost in the Civil War would portend an ominous element when engaging in battle. That the flag functions as a rebellious icon also appears paradoxical. The overriding issue is that troops opted to use a symbol tied to racism and enslavement. This choice works in conjunction with the flag representing a divided country and is not closely associated with the Koreans with whom they were fighting. The use of the flag might be a better signal of how the South had begun to influence the rest of the country, supporting arguments made by Egerton, Woodward, Cobb, and others. The blending of internal and international usage became a form of soft power shaping the country as southern cultural

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norms spread through the nation with encouragement by the Great Migration after World War II when many southerners moved North or West because of better job opportunities. The flag as a connective tie is surprising in the context of the Korean War, but such a traumatic setting hardly allows for close inspection of ideals when under duress.

The changing representation of the flag is vital because of how the implied identity symbolized NASCAR. The use of the flag at the Darlington, South Carolina race came as no surprise for a state that avidly fought to keep it as part of its representation and went further, defending the flag against those who might defame or deface it. In 1958, the state passed the

Desecration Law, making it illegal to mutilate publicly, deface, defile, defy, jeer at, trample upon, or cast contempt, either by word or act, upon the US, State, or Confederate Flag. The result of the law protected an injurious symbol that favored the many over the few and allowed for not only its continued use but that actions against it would be sanctionable by law.17 The law was enacted in 1962, but more problematic is that to make changes to any historical markers in the state requires a two-thirds vote from the state.

The Confederate Flag’s Modern Life

In 2000, legislators passed the South Carolina Heritage Act, which removed the

Confederate flag from the top of the Statehouse dome and put it at a soldier’s monument in front of the building in a move that was considered a compromise but ignored one side of the argument. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said it was still a prominent display of the state’s racist past, and though a boycott from entertainers and the filmmaking industry endeavored to bring notice to the issue, little changed.18 While the law opens the prospect of removal, the two-thirds vote is essentially a block to any chance of seeing

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change. The reaction in 1958 is just as poignant as it is now. “It is deplorable that this flag which symbolizes a cause that was basically opposed to the American democracy should be raised from the dead,” remarked NAACP State Field Secretary Robert Saunders. “It is worse that the state should move to punish a citizen who fails to respect it.”19 The African American population in

South Carolina was 27 percent in 2018, which means that any desire for change coming from the community will need the support of White citizens, and there has been no such sense of unity on the issue.

As the flag’s presence continued to flourish, it moved from being strictly southern to a more significant symbol, one that the rest of the nation found acceptable and useful. What makes the flag’s cultural influence challenging is how pervasive it is and how easy it is to overlook its presence. General Lee, in the TV show The Dukes of Hazard, offers a prime example of how the flag escapes critical reception with the focus instead being on the plots, actors, or Catherine Bach and her skimpy “Daisy Dukes,” or the drama surrounding the demise of the show. The message, however, became clear and adopted outside the confines of the southeastern region. “These images—including a continued association with stockcar racing—have become veritable clichés of Americana, immediately recognizable in cartoons, films, and other forms of popular culture; shorthand for ‘redneck’ or ‘good ol’ boy.’”20 The “good ol’ boy” represents a large swatch of males in the South but distinguishes itself from lower-class social groups, such as White trash or hillbillies, who accept their station in the world. Jay Busbee, a veteran NASCAR reporter, offers an assessment of the sport that regards the “good ol’ boys” as fundamental:

NASCAR’s good ol’ boys are indeed the foundation of NASCAR. The South’s blend of swagger, daredevil attitude, reckless talent and anti-authoritarianism — the very qualities that all the best NASCAR drivers from Richard Petty to Dale Earnhardt to Tony Stewart to have embodied — transformed the sport from a way to kill time between moonshine runs into a national phenomenon.21

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While these drivers may not directly adopt the Confederate Flag, their presence in the sport allows them to be conscripted into tacit support of the flag.

The flag somehow escaped national criticism until 2015. On June 18, 2015, a young

South Carolinian White supremacist joined the congregation at Emanuel African Methodist

Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine worshippers. The perpetrator admitted to the shooting and his desire for his actions to start a race war. While the murders served as one horrifying element, the murderer’s association with neo-Nazi groups and his use of the Confederate Flag also became flashpoints for discussion. His associations reach beyond the

South as both the flag and neo-Nazis have proliferated throughout the US before and after the incident. While there is no hope of mitigating such a disaster by switching to a discussion of sports, there is reason to see how the failed measures applied by NASCAR indicate the pardon given to White nationalists.

In response to the church shooting, NASCAR announced that they would prefer their fans not to fly the Confederate Flag but did not make banning it a policy, nor did they outline any implications for those who continued to hoist it at races. Rather than take an outright stance that might potentially anger a large percentage of their fan base, the organization made a gesture rather than a rule toward dismissing the Confederate Flag at races. Yet even this decision was met with criticism. Many saw flying the flag as part of their rights and failed to see that a symbol can be a sign of oppression that threatens other citizens of the region. When criticized for displaying the flag, one respondent felt that evoking southern history made his decisions more permissible. “It’s not a race thing at all. I’m not about that at all. But I am about First

Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights, the Constitution. I believe the flag is about heritage. I had family that fought in the Civil War. I was born in the South, so it’s my right to fly

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it. You can fly whatever flag you want except that one? That one represents history. When did history become unpopular?”22 That the individual asks, “When did history become unpopular?” smacks of irony because the person asking the question has omitted any acknowledgment of history. By invoking both the First and Second Amendments, this person is arguing for rights but confounds the matter with race, history, and cultural heritage, and fails to recognize his privilege regarding these matters. The sentiment was echoed once more by another fan, making sure to let his defiant stance deny inclusion, acceptance, or tolerance of people outside of his viewpoint.

“I’m still flying mine,” Chattanooga fan Brian Ellis told USA Today of his Confederate Flag. “It means something important to me — a part of my heritage because my relatives fought under it.

Nothing the president or anybody else does or doesn’t do is going to change that.”23 This kind of reaction is not surprising when in 2015, NASCAR was rife with Republican leanings.

The Republican Party and NASCAR

The sport has been openly hospitable to conservative southerners since the 1970s, as founder Bill France was known to be friends with governor George Wallace. Wallace , the ardent segregationist, proclaimed during his 1963 inaugural address, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” While Wallace, and many other southern political leaders had been Democrats, the region shifted its alliance to the Republicans throughout the

1970s. By the 1980s, the ties between the South, NASCAR, and the Republican party became prominent. The relationship between NASCAR and the GOP helps foster and works in concert to form an environment where the conservative viewpoints thrive. To offer an example of the close ties, in 1984, President Ronald Reagan gave the command for the drivers to start their engines from Air Force One for the July 4 Firecracker 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

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After landing at the airstrip next to the track, Reagan became the first sitting president to watch a

NASCAR race live. The race featured the last win of Richard Petty’s storied career, and after crossing the finish line, Petty skipped the traditional Victory Lane to visit the press box to meet

President Reagan, who remained long enough to have a picnic with the drivers and teams. Of course, the conspicuous detail accompanying the event was that Kentucky Fried Chicken was the main dish, in acknowledgment of the sport's roots.24 (Kentucky Fried Chicken continues to be an avid advertiser of the sport with their commercials frequently drawing online criticism during broadcasts for their ubiquitousness.) President Reagan passed the baton off to his Vice President, and George H.W. Bush used the fan base in much the same way.

Vice President Bush waved the green flag when Reagan commanded drivers to start their engines at the 1984 race. Then as President, Bush returned to the track in 1992 and stated:

I can think of no better place to wish our nation a happy Independence Day, a happy Fourth of July than standing right here with this patriotic, wonderful turnout of people. An All-American crowd. This is the day we celebrate our independence and count our blessings. The way I see it — yes, there are problems, but we are still the freest and fairest and greatest country on the face of the earth. I just met with the NASCAR drivers and it was a real thrill for a sports fan. They epitomize the best – the best in sportsmanship; the best in family; the best in patriotic values. So today, on the Fourth of July, this President comes not only to greet the American people and the fans here; this President comes to greet a king, Richard Petty, one of the great Americans.25

Honoring Richard Petty is not surprising as he holds all the significant records in the sport and exists as a central figure. Petty, however, conforms to conservative values and seems to support

Republican ideology. Moving beyond this significance, the speech that Bush gave offers insight into the talking points surrounding the presidential elections since the 1980s and the Republican

Party’s themes. The first element that stands out is the overt patriotism, as he mentioned

“patriot” or “American” five times. The mention of freedom and independence is tied to the idea of being an American and has also been a form of acknowledgment toward people who feel

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threatened by politicians that could take away their guns. The last element of importance is the reference to family, another fundamental value of the Republican Party; that family values are the way to guide the country forward. This myopic distillation of American-ness has surrounded the sport for decades and created easy talking points but limits thinking about the fans or the

South in ways outside of these dimensions. This natural association with the NASCAR crowd, coupled with a familiarity and comfort, was something that Bush passed down to his son, who used it frequently during his time in office.

Though Bill Clinton served two terms as president and was a southerner himself, he distanced himself from NASCAR, but President George W. Bush resumed the ties and gave the command to start engines for the 2004 Daytona 500. Clinton, in 1992, when running as a presidential candidate visited Darlington, tried to make headway with the NASCAR crowd but was rebuffed when Richard Petty ostensibly spoke for everyone in the sport and said, “People might get the wrong idea. I just don’t agree with the cat’s politics,” and snubbed being photographed with Clinton.26 The need for politicians to ingratiate themselves with NASCAR became vital because of the NASCAR Dad demographic that has gained importance in presidential elections. This group, constituted by a population of citizen-consumers representing the appropriation of patriotism, Christianity, and fatherhood, deployed in a politically conservative fashion, is a vital component of the White male voter bloc in the US.27 The White male voice is an important one that resonates through the sport and its imagery. Consider that when the sport travels to Fontana, California, 90 miles east of , people in the area change the name to Fontucky, or that the culture shift in Ypsilanti, has allowed for the similar renaming of Ypsitucky.28 With Whites comprising 87% and African Americans 8% of the state’s population, Kentucky works as a stand-in for southern and, through association,

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redneck.29 While Clinton may have been southern enough to make people in the region comfortable, he was too erudite and progressive for the NASCAR crowd. The president who followed became much more of a fit.

Bush, however, was welcome in the sport as he visited tracks at various times and hosted the championship-winning driver during each year of his time in office. His presence also ramped up nationalistic pride as he once attended, wearing a leather jacket made with a US flag design. The patriotism on display and inferred is one of the most telling in sports, as can be seen with an article that argues that “NASCAR Will Forever Be America’s Most Patriotic Sport,” as if a contest existed to determine such a thing.30 The article is correct in noting how patriotic imagery permeates the sport and how those involved use it. celebrates each race win by driving around with a US flag hanging out of his car window, and fans celebrate his patriotism while ignoring how he is breaking numerous rules of the flag. Alternatively, consider that during the country’s economic difficulties in February 2013, the military announced that they would be ending flyovers by their planes at sporting events. Rather than seeing the benefit of a cost-saving initiative, the fans blamed President Obama for not being patriotic or expressed general outrage and dismay regarding something that had become “tradition” and felt they were losing.31

Forgoing political party lines, President Obama offered invitations to the sport’s champions, as did President Trump. Trump found his home with the sport early in his presidential campaign when NASCAR welcomed his brash misogynistic bravado. To start, one of the Trucks drivers, , ran a race during the 2015 season with “Trump For

President” decals covering his vehicle. Trump’s presidential campaign did not pay for the signage; instead, the initiative came from the driver’s desire to show support for the future

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president. When interviewed, Forrister said, “I support Donald Trump, and I wanted to show it in this race, we didn’t have a paint scheme, and I figured it would be a cool race to do it. It is 100 percent me. I wanted to do it.” He further commented, “I like what he’s trying to do. I feel like he would do a great job running our country.”32 The driver touched upon a sentiment that grew within the sport.

Brian France, the CEO of NASCAR at the time, endorsed Trump in February 2016.

Though the support came from France’s position, it became associated with the entire sport.

Trump found comfort in the endorsement, which led him to proclaim that “if the people that like and watch NASCAR vote for Donald Trump, they can cancel the election right now. Nobody else can win. Nobody.”33 His boisterous assertion seemed like little more than campaign rhetoric when he made it, but it turned surprisingly prophetic. Trump also found support amongst some notable names, as active drivers and Ryan Newman and former drivers Mark

Martin, Richard Petty, and all endorsed him. The demographic representations surrounding NASCAR should not make the ties between the sport and Trump surprising, as a study of the Texas Motor Speedway discovered in November 2016.

Seeking to determine whether Hillary Clinton supporters existed in NASCAR, a reporter for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram spent time wandering the grounds of the Texas track and humorously noted that only one existed. The one in question made sure to acknowledge their peculiar position by saying, “Don’t get me killed,” before following with “the same reason I’m free to vote for Hillary, everybody has the same reason to vote for Trump. I can’t deny that right to anybody. I tend to not talk politics because they don’t want to hear anything I have to say. We were just in Talladega, and the people next to us had ‘Rednecks for Trump.’”34 The depiction of the respondent, Brooke Humphries, acknowledges her outsider status situated in the

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overwhelming hive mind surrounding the sport. While the rednecks detail provides one element of identity, one fan offers a more striking pronouncement of the latent racism that accompanies the conservatives. “There are no Hillary supporters in NASCAR. Maybe one in 70,000,” declared Danny Carter of Artesia, NM, wearing a T-shirt his daughter made and gifted him that stated on the back, “I don’t always talk to Hillary supporters, but when I do, I ask for large fries.”35 The comment on this shirt offers a few interpretations. The first may be that we are supposed to believe that Clinton voters are not smart enough to hold jobs outside of low-wage fast-food employment. The second allusion is to a widespread belief that African Americans populate the fast-food industry though the statistics indicate that Whites are between 60-66 percent of the employees, with African Americans being between 16-20 percent. That breakdown would posit that the industry is not too far away from the 12-13 percent that African

Americans populate in the US census, but the fact that most African Americans in the food industry do not hold college degrees limits the station in the company and positions them in food preparation, cashiers, and cleaning.36

While it may be an overstatement to assume that Danny Carter is racist, the argument whether he is or not is of little consequence. The unwelcome stance has created a hostile divide between Republicans and Democrats, Whites and persons of color, the religious right and the

LGBTQ community, and class divisions. If the flag were not enough of a deterrent to African

Americans to be able to find a home in the world of NASCAR, then the responses to National

Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel in protest during the national anthem beginning in August 2016 offered another disappointing reaction toward developing any kindness or equality regarding the ethnic divide.

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Confused Nationalism

Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the national anthem during what seemingly became his final year playing in the NFL generated a strong national media response. His decision to peacefully protest to bring attention to the treatment of people of color in the US did not seem revolutionary or overly dramatic. However, his gesture became a news item that stayed fresh in the sports and national headlines for the next year. Because of its widespread presence, eventually, NASCAR became involved in what developed into a biased debate rather than as an opportunity to examine the country’s race relations. Instead, the argument devolved into ones that argued about patriotism and the soldiers of the US military by extension. This simplification of the issue suited NASCAR’s own discourse and led to reactions that felt predictable.

The overt patriotism associated with the sport sometimes looks like William

Shakespeare’s “the lady doth protest too much,” giving way to an excessive and thus cartoonish sense of nationalism. In a reimagining of Matthew verse 5 from the Bible, which should find ties in the South, Zach Hunt rewrites one tenet to read that “Blessed are the proud and boastful, for they shall be called true patriots.”37 His stance means to critique the overly proud sense of nationalism in the US, but rather than seeing it as a criticism; people seem to have adopted it without irony, plastering the flag across their vehicles, homes, and persons. African Studies scholar Yannick Marshall sees the US patriotism states that “true patriotism” and “good patriotism” are half-hearted attempts to launder xenophobia and ethnocentrism.38 This critique on patriotism is more important than attempting to rationalize the need for patriotism and the posturing by those who push for its overt acknowledgment. For NASCAR fans, subtlety may be

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a lost art as their clothes imitate the bright and emblematic nature of the cars on the track, and for many, their stance on patriotism remains a racist ploy.

In Alison Durkee’s article that examined the relationship between NASCAR fans and their stance on kneeling for the national anthem and displaying a Confederate Flag, the author showed how many fans feel the First Amendment is a justification:

– “This is the United States of America. I have the right to do what I chose,” NASCAR fan John Wilson told USA Today. “And if you find it offensive, I am sorry.” – Vermont NASCAR fan Lise Gagner, too, said for her, the flag was “really just freedom of expression and freedom of speech.” – “We don’t fly it because we want to offend them, or we don’t fly it because our view is different from theirs. It’s just really our right to express ourselves in our way,” Gagner told WCVB5.39

However, these same people cannot recognize how hoisting a Confederate Flag as a symbol of free speech also allows for kneeling during the anthem. This discussion is not to reiterate flag analysis but to indicate how it continues to flourish even as the real issue is racism and equality.

For the NASCAR community, the focal point shifted from the Confederate Flag to the national anthem and the US flag because of Kaepernick. The argument became reductio ad absurdum, not only because of the problematic diversion from the original topic but because no one in the sport professed that they would kneel during the national anthem during pre-race ceremonies. That did not dissuade a number of NASCAR supporters from voicing their opinions.

“Anybody that don’t stand up for the anthem oughta be out of the country. Period. What got ’em where they’re at? The United States,” former driver and team owner Richard Petty said.40 That

Petty would make such a statement is in line with his thinking and the conservative ideology he has espoused. Fellow former driver and current team owner Richard Childress said protesting would “get you a ride on the Greyhound bus.”41 These attitudes are in conjunction with other owners in sports, as noted by the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, saying that anyone

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who “disrespects the flag” will not be allowed to play. That statement belies what the kneeling meant and whether it is disrespectful to kneel during the anthem. But Jones also stated that “we cannot in any way give the implication that we tolerate disrespecting the flag, we know that there is a serious debate in this country about those issues, but there is no question in my mind, that the

[NFL] and the Dallas Cowboys are going to stand up for the flag.”42 With such statements, Petty and Childress aligned themselves with billionaire businesspeople who place more focus on placating their White fan base than acknowledging a severe issue.

Because of the remarks made by people in NASCAR, President Trump saw an opportunity to soothe his followers to appeal to nationalism once again. His tweet offers another example of blind patriotism, stating, “So proud of NASCAR and its supporters and fans. They won’t put up with disrespecting our Country or our Flag – they said it loud and clear.” (Figure

2.2.) The President responded with overt patriotism, aligning the flag with the country. Trump’s reply wins him favor with his supporters but does not tend to extend beyond his base. This response comes shortly after his reaction to the Unite the Right rally that occurred in

Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017.

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Figure 2.5 – Tweet from President Donald Trump (source: )2

At that event, right-wing neo-Nazis protested the removal of the monument of General

Robert E. Lee and were confronted by a crowd protesting their presence. The groups began by shouting back and forth at one another, and the tension between the two later erupted into violence. The unfortunate and tragic result being that Heather Heyer, demonstrating against the neo-Nazis, lost her life when a right-wing supporter drove his car into a crowd and ran her over.

Two days after the incident, President Trump responded by stating that “racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as

Americans.” The next day, however, he retreated from his ardent stance and made a case for allowing the violence and behavior to happen. He said, “I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides, you had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.”43 Giving allowance to the Right's racist and violent behavior encourages its growth, and Trump offered a tacit position of permission.

With his NASCAR tweet coming a little over a month later, both NASCAR and Trump positioned themselves through association aligned with White right-wing beliefs and behaviors.

This stance does little to encourage outsiders to join, and instead, the trend to maintain a White conservative presence feels more ardent than ever. At one point, the influx of California drivers, such as and Jimmie Johnson, among many others, may have offered a reason to believe that a shift in attitudes might occur; but this idea has rescinded into what has been the

2 Source Twitter.

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normative mindset. This attitude has reflected onto a different driver who represents a different threat in Trump’s America.

Hospitable Xenophobia

Daniel Suarez, a Mexican-born driver who began driving in NASCAR in 2015, underscores the problematic attitudes that surround the sport. Suarez started his career in the

NASCAR Mexico series in 2010, and by 2012, at age 20, he divided his time between the

Mexican series and the K&N Pro Series East—the latter of which is considered a feeder series to the upper NASCAR divisions. In 2015, Suarez signed on for a full season of driving with Joe

Gibbs Racing in the Xfinity Series, the level below Cup. Though he failed to win a race, his results were good enough to place him fifth in the overall standings and earn him Rookie of

Year. He followed that year with an XFINITY Championship in 2016, which led to a transition to the Cup level when one of the JDR organization’s drivers unexpectedly retired. Being the only

Mexican driver in the field has made Suarez a target for some, again, in conjunction with the attitude demonstrated by President Trump.

At the onset of his campaign, Trump vilified Mexicans by calling them “drug dealers” and “rapists,” and since has focused on building a wall that will create a physical border between

Mexico and the US—a project financed in part by tariffs on Mexican imports.44 This initiative has showcased Trump’s rhetoric that focuses on crime and fear coming to full fruition, an overreaction to the fake news banter that emerged with President Trump in office. This climate has made people feel comfortable in their attempts to be comedic by basing jokes on racists constructs.

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When NASCAR broadcasting partner was humorously going through the field for a race, the comedienne on the show found no reason to soften their viewpoint. Sarah

Tiana on Race Hub cracked that Suarez is “least likely to hit the wall… or get close to any wall now that Trump is President.” She then followed with the line that “I’m just happy he’s driving with insurance.”45 The nature of these remarks invites further discussion. Conflating the wall bordering a track with the one being built at the US-Mexico border is confounding, compounded by the fact that as a driver, the last thing he wants to do is hit a wall. Similarly, the comic’s second remark about insurance seems to refer to issues pertaining to class rather than race. The

Yahoo article that mentioned Tiana’s inappropriate humor garnered over 3000 comments, with a significant number of readers either not seeing how the jokes may have been offensive, believing that the joke was funny, or countering with comments about how late-night talk shows disparage

Donald Trump and that attacking the president was worse. These reactions all indicate a closed community that is happy to protect their leader regardless of any racist pronouncements.

However, NASCAR fans often share a set mindset, especially when it comes to other races, as seen by the continued vitriol given to Toyota.

Toyota entered the US market in 1957 with the Crown and, in 1984, opened its first

American plant in Fremont, California, in a joint undertaking with .46 From then forward, Toyota built their plants in the South, with the exception being . The Kentucky plant opened in 1986 and has been building passenger vehicles ever since; however, the plant in

Texas led to a direct relationship with NASCAR.

In 2003, Toyota opened its truck manufacturing plant and entwined the move with a foray into the NASCAR Truck Series in 2004. That would win the

Trucks championship in 2006, driving a Toyota seemed like an insurrection to some, even if the

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manufacturer had followed NASCAR’s rules and had become part of the national manufacturing fabric. The fans might have allowed the foreign manufacturer to go on without much disdain if

Toyota had not kept winning and winning dominantly. From 2006 to 2019, they won 11 of the

14 championships, and to make things worse for the already antagonized fans, Toyota jumped into the upper levels of NASCAR in 2006 and 2007.

Toyota’s entrance into the NASCAR world may be smooth from a competitive viewpoint, but the company has endured frequent antagonism from the fans. The acrimony is a result of the manufacturer's success, and the continued “Japan Bashing” manifested since the

1970s. This new form of “yellow-peril” thinking stemmed from concerns over trade economics with Japan and the American jobs lost to importing Japanese products. While the ninety-seventh

Congress of 1981–82 introduced over thirty bills advocating trade barriers against Japan, much of the focus of “Japan Bashing” centered on blue-collar workers.47 The auto industry and its workers became the focal point of the “Japan Bashing” as the media published pictures of steel and auto workers smashing Japanese cars—often Toyotas—in retaliation for job losses and warned drivers of Japanese-made cars that their automobiles were in danger of being vandalized by angry workers.48 While these images had a lasting impact, the Japanese auto companies were still able to capture a sizeable percentage of the US market. In 2014, American auto companies held 43 percent of the US market, while Japanese firms managed 33 percent.49 Toyota’s move to

NASCAR was motivated by profits as they tethered their transition to the Trucks series with the opening of their Texas plant that produced trucks. On-track success came relatively quickly, the speed of which served as one of the reasons for the negative attitudes.

The company joined the Cup series, the highest level of competition, in 2007, and by

2008 they had earned their first win and finished that year with eight. The next year they scored

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ten wins. A Cup championship eluded them, but part of that problem was Jimmie Johnson’s dominance (seven titles in eleven years) and the overall performance and backing of .

The wins that Toyota began amassing at the Cup level and their dominance in the two lower levels—Trucks and Xfinity—were what incited the problematic comments.

Toyota won three of five championships from 2015-2019. The popular sports website

Bleacher Report ran an article with the headline “Toyota Ruins NASCAR: What Needs to

Change,” as early as 2008.50 Two discussion threads on reddit.com, which is home to a robust and active community of NASCAR fans, were titled “Why does everyone hate on Toyota?” and

“Why do people really hate Toyota in NASCAR?” in 2015.51 52 That a site like Frontstretch.com, which still allows user comments after many sites have stopped, still receives comments that refer to Toyota as a Jap manufacturer is disturbing. One article that paints Toyota’s winning ways in a negative light, as if they should not be allowed to dominate as Chevy, Ford, and have at other times, deliberately mentions that “it takes very little digging to find out that some stockcar fans, not all, are still upset that NASCAR ‘let in’ Toyota—as if NASCAR should have always been a pure American racing series.”53 What these comments seem to overlook is that

Toyota has been actively building in America, and in 2019, it employed 370,870 people in the

US, up from 325,905 in 2012.54 Besides, the American South has extended beyond the regional and national borders and features people from Latin America, Southeast Asia, Asia, and Africa, enriching the South and offering what Applebome posited as the “redeemable interracial

South.”55 Toyota’s investment proved crucial to a series that has struggled to keep its place in the

US sporting consciousness since its high point in the mid-2000s. Yet, the company receives frequent disparagement. Former driver even quipped, “they bombed Pearl

Harbor, don’t forget,” attacking the manufacturer because of its origins.56 Though the South may

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offer possibilities for a new image of acceptance, this idea still positions outsiders in lower positions and does not grant them the same privilege as White Southerners. These attitudes are interrelated to the open hostility and violence that permeates the South when White Americans have felt threatened or challenged, something instilled before the Civil War and continued in earnest once over.

History as the Present

In the postbellum South, African Americans have endured a myriad of restrictions meant to inhibit their rights, oppose their economic success, and keep them in a perpetual state of unrest. The Jim Crow laws enacted in various environments throughout the South served as a form of institutionalized racism, ensuring that Blacks were kept in lower-class positions through practices of denial. These laws maintained the hierarchy that privileged Whites during slavery while encouraging the notion that African Americans were thought of as less than human, mere goods to be done with as pleased. This situation ensured that African Americans faced fewer chances for education, challenges to voting, disappointing economic prospects, and general difficulty in navigating the land. If the laws failed to keep Blacks from upward mobility, then the southern violence would correct the error.

The troubling secondary component that complicated and threatened African Americans’ ability to gain access to opportunities was the emergence of the lynch mobs that flourished after the Civil War. Historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage notes how this type of “justice” became prevalent and a standard practice as African Americans were lynched for all manner of reasons from showing “insufficient subservience to racial protocol,” distributing propaganda, to more trivial offenses like speaking to a white girl, or frightening women, public indecency, and

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“writing a letter to a white girl.”57 This kind of terrorism finds acceptance with the mindset of the public-at-large; Brundage cites Ayers on this matter by stating that rural southerners had “no notion of cultural pluralism or moral relativism--only right and wrong.”58 Historian Manfred

Berg interpreted this concept as indicating how a community sees things in a binary relationship, failing or choosing not to see race relations as something other than dividing people by their skin color.59 This othering practice continued even as skin color became a less obvious measure for division as African Americans and Whites comingled. When the eyes could not be trusted to ensure a difference between the two races, racism then used the other senses to justify the distinctions between Whites and African Americans. The result of these practices and the lynching that frequently accompanied them came from early elements of the southern mindset.

While lynching later flourished in the West as a method of frontier justice, it began in the

South with the ideology of its early settlers and the brutal treatment of slaves. Though some

English situated themselves in the region, the Scots-Irish became the dominant group of immigrants. The fact that the South was settled later and that it became a region based on agriculture in comparison encouraged a decidedly different mentality. This idea is what Bertram

Brown described as how the society developed a split in its mindset between what can be considered an aristocratic honor and one that is clan or tribal.60 Here, lynching grew out of tribal honor both in frustration with the emerging justice system and in the protection of White rights, focusing on the security and sanctity of White women. This concept of honor found legitimacy through the statutes enacted to maintain control of African Americans in the region.

The combined efforts of the Jim Crow laws and lynching created such a hostile environment that African Americans found few opportunities in the South. As they struggled to earn a living, they faced difficulty enjoying modern conveniences, except as part of their work as

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hired help. In William Faulkner’s The Reivers, the African American character, Ned, is able to enjoy the first car in fictional Yoknapatawpha county only by stowing away in the Winton Flyer, and then, rather than seeing it as something of importance or worthy of maintaining, he proceeds to scoot off and trade it for a racehorse.61 The connection between African American citizens and automobility is a tenuous one constructed upon a foundation of servitude. For Ned, the car represents a burden, but the car for many meant esteem. Because of the lack of employment opportunities, those who could find work and afford a car in the early 1900s often cherished it and, to some extent, feared or fought for.

Paul Gilroy’s examination of the relationship between the African American community and the automobile is highlighted by a Ralph Ellison short story. Gilroy argues that the car exists as a modern cage that keeps African Americans from ostensibly spending their money in better ways.62 It imprisons them, making them slaves to new mechanical masters, attending to the machine’s ownership and upkeep, both bodily and economically. In addition, the auto evolved into a status symbol meant to be treasured and displayed while at the same time creating division within the Black community. The car creates a distance between African Americans with money and access to the road's alleged freedom and those who are poor and stationary. The differences between these two groups work in another way for their White counterparts.

Whites in the South found the automobile to mean something different: permitted to travel freely, unlike their African American counterparts who often saw the road as threatening,

Whites saw the car as something that allowed them to travel, to do business, and to develop and maintain contact. From a middle-class perspective, they embraced a utilitarian slant. While owning an expensive car may have been one thing, the use of a car tended to have more

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importance as it acted as a vital tool of connection between towns in the South, something that allowed them the opportunity to take advantage of different markets.

Moonshining: White Lightning, White Business

One of the links between White privilege and African American enmity in the South developed with the business of moonshining. Its history stretches back to the antebellum South when moonshine was something of an accepted business. Bruce Stewart notes the prominence with which moonshining flourished in parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the tolerance by the public owing much to the fact that the alcohol consumption of US citizens at the time stood at a higher rate per capita than today.63 Basically, the business was tolerated as part of the southern environment. The switch from horses as the engine of delivery to automobiles came naturally and was helped by the lost cost of these petrol-powered machines.

The creation of fast cars that could handle the anfractuous dirt roads of the Blue Ridge

Mountain foothills was an integral part of both the delivery process and the development of early

NASCAR drivers. Neal Thompson’s examination of the convergence between moonshining and auto racing details the lengths that mechanics would go to in upgrading 1940s cars. Every piece that could be tinkered with, from the engine to the brakes to the shocks, became a target for improved performance. Clever moonshiners crafted hidden compartments to conceal the moonshine and outfitted the car to resemble those of the police. While stories surround many

NASCAR drivers, focusing on their ability to outdrive treasury agents and police, deliveries were tame transactions much of the time. By the time the car became the main method in the moonshine delivery system, the story had become less of a focal point than might be expected.64

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The notion that moonshine was brought to points of sale only by employing a fast car is a misconception.

“Remember, though, that the average person who made or hauled moonshine was a poor farmer locked in a desperate struggle to survive; their cars were as serviceable as their income levels, but they generally weren’t hot rods. In places such as the Land Between the Lakes, in Kentucky, their cars were likely to be personal vehicles with as many homemade modifications as they could afford.”65

The archives at the University of North Carolina housing the Southern Folklife Collection,

Southern Historical Collection, and the Southern Oral History Program Interview Database provide the archive to echo this concept. Left out of this history are African American moonshiners, who could not use the same privileges as their White counterparts to the same effect.

Black Moonshiners

The lack of information on African American moonshining centers on participants' willingness to discuss an illegal activity that might bring imprisonment, embarrassment, ostracism, or attacks. From the little information available, figures such as Leon Nixon, Clara

“Dee” Thompson, Horton Cooper, Ire Adams, and Marie Cobb were African Americans who acknowledged that moonshine was a part of their lives. Nevertheless, none of them mention anything about running illegal alcohol. They discuss family members distilling and drinking it but little else. Bertha Mae George offers one of the more insightful recollections by stating that

“people sold moonshine in their houses. They had stills in the woods. White people would come in to buy whiskey. That was dangerous, but they made good money.”66 Such a statement reveals that moonshine production was not solely a White enterprise and that, as was more common than one might expect, Whites and African Americans frequently worked together. The power in the

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relationship may have rested with the Whites, but just as with music in the region, the two groups could often be found together.67

For Black moonshiner Cleveland Brown, his accounts of his father’s moonshine output seem limited to the liquor's production. The two delivery methods he discusses are modified trucks and using horses and a cart.68 Neither of these two modes of transport matches the mythmaking attributed to the moonshine runners and their Fords who tore through the Blue

Ridge Mountains. In Ray’s account of moonshine production just outside of Oxford, Mississippi, the focal point regarding race is that Orlando Lester, an African American, was a co-conspirator to Will Mathis in the production of moonshine and the murder of two revenue agents in 1901.

Lester was not part of delivering the liquor and remained inconspicuous for the most part.69 One of the other key elements played out as the justice system made sure to hang Lester long before his associate exhausted his appeals process. The justice against African Americans has always been questionable and slanted, which may be why so few of them made moonshine runs compared to their White counterparts.

What makes moonshining more confounding is that for all its prevalence, African

Americans did not have more presence. Leon Johnson notes that Wilkes County, North Carolina was the capital of moonshining, which is also the claim that Cleveland Brown makes about the moonshining in Northern Georgia, but neither are as bold as Franklin County, Virginia, which also freely advertises itself as the “moonshine capital of the world.”70 The Blue Ridge Institute and Museum, located in the town of Ferrum in Franklin County, pays particular homage to this idea. Pat Carter, an employee of the center, has spent much of her life in the town and she is seemingly either related to or friends with all the famous NASCAR drivers and infamous moonshine haulers with roots in the region. Her belief as to why African Americans did not

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occupy a broader presence came down to economics and demographics. She stated that there were not many African Americans in Franklin County, and those who did live there did not have the money to own or turn a car into a hot rod.71 This lack of presence and opportunity only contributed to an exacerbation of difficult race relations, ensuring that African American ties to moonshine running were meager at best. Most likely, runners sold it at home or transported it small distances rather than the more extravagant deliveries performed by some of their White counterparts.

The Violence of the South

In 1960, C. Vann Woodward, the esteemed Southern scholar, remarked, “It would take a blind sentimentalist to mourn their passing.”72 The passing Woodward addresses comprises all manner of southern customs, from the statues that dot the region to poll taxes to the lynching bee. The lynching bee may be one of the foremost southern forms of violence, by treating murder as a public display. While lynching may have drawn crowds, the victim’s abduction was frequently carried out with a smaller crowd, whereas the lynching bee crafted an open spectacle of murder. The lynching bee celebrated and normalized the murder of Black men in the South.

The pervasive desire to see Black persons as targets is something that W.J. Cash discusses in The Mind of the South. Cash recognized that a society that openly allowed the killing of one group of people had turned many White people into hunters and killers, seeing

Black people as prey and barely more than an animal.73 The leftover mindset from slavery refuses to envision African Americans as equal beings, continually thinking of them as something to be controlled, corralled, and killed.

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Left out of the discussion thus far is the force that significantly curtailed African

American moonshine interests, simply known as the Klan. The Ku Klux Klan gained power in the South during the Reconstruction Era, fighting against the “dual evils” of African Americans and outside interests, otherwise labeled as Catholics and Jews. By the 1870s, the fight against the revenuers united Conservatives and Republicans, and many Republican moonshiners joined the

Ku Klux Klan.74 With their hyper-violent and hyper-vigilant sense of justice, the Klan posed enough of a threat to drive most people away from the business or keep it as hushed as possible.

However, in a peculiar twist, African Americans may have initially threatened the Klan by stealing their business, working as challengers in the market, but by the 1920s, the fear Black moonshiners felt came from the organization for a different reason.

In a dramatic change of position, the Ku Klux Klan became ardent supporters of the temperance movement of the 1910s-20s. In a political rebirth in 1915, staged on Stone Mountain, a large rock hill that features 150-foot tall etchings of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and

Jefferson Davis just outside of Atlanta, the Klan began its new ascension with a cross-burning ceremony. This time, the organization sought to do more than terrorize; they hoped to infiltrate and control the systems of governance. Historian Katherine Blee noted that “as the temperance and moral reform movements of the early twentieth century did, the Klan saw women’s inherently moral natures as key to campaigns for clean government and control of vice since women would vote for candidates promising to rid the country of liquor, prostitution, and gambling.”75 African Americans once feared the Klan because they might intrude on their business, but now they feared the Klan because of the swift and horrible reprisals they might face for corrupting the nation. That African Americans never operated in the same economy or market. This was partly due to the fact that other moonshiners forced them to face a multitude of

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challenges to earn the same livelihood as their White fellow moonshiners. The change that many did not see coming was the country’s reaction to temperance. “Women’s suffrage was six years old, but the expected political transformation had not come about. Many women did not vote at all; those who did often voted as their husbands did.”76 Temperance turned out to be a failed experiment, and the country broke against Prohibition in 1933 when the 18th Amendment was repealed. For Black moonshiners, the difficulties to stay solvent were arduous, but for Whites, a slightly looser climate in the 1940s allowed for much of the White hero mythmaking that exists today. Even with the limitations preventing them, some African Americans continued to be moonshiners.

Wendell Scott stands as a notable Black moonshiner and NASCAR driver. Scott grew up in Danville, Virginia, not far from Franklin County, home of the moonshine museum. He bought his first car before age 15, a broken-down Model T for $15, which fostered his love affair with the automobile and was his main reason for dropping out of high school.77 He soon became a moonshine runner who picked up carloads of illegal whiskey in the mountainous backroads of

Franklin County and drove them to market, usually at night, in Danville and other cities. He began living a dual life, operating a repair garage during the day and running moonshine at night.

The moonshine trade offered equal opportunity employment, “if a black man had the savvy, nerve, and driving skill to run moonshine, he didn’t have to worry about the racial barriers that separated him from a good education or a well-paid job on the right side of the law.”78 As he faced increasing difficulties running moonshine, Scott sought and found a new opportunity in racing.

Scott found his chance when the racing promoters at the Danville Fairgrounds, in 1952, sought a “negro driver” to pit against the “good ol’ boys” to attract more fans.79 His foray was

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unremarkable as his car fell apart around him, but the significance was monumental even if no one noticed. Racing had been a White sport until that moment, and Scott had ushered in change much as Jackie Robinson had done seven years prior. While the race had its challenges, it did not dissuade Scott from finding other places to race, and as he continued, he earned better results; his win at Lynchburg’s Shrader Field proved that, though that does not mean Scott earned acceptance at every event he tried to enter. Even though the Dixie Circuit had accepted him as a driver, not every track found the need to let him race.

In what may come as a surprise, NASCAR admitted Scott without much objection. The president of the series, Bill France, not only was sympathetic to Scott’s plight but defended the driver by sending a letter to other drivers warning that anyone who deliberately wrecked Scott would be suspended.80 France's benevolence may have brought some peace of mind to Scott but did not mean that other drivers made his life more comfortable because proving what is deliberate in something as chaotic as auto racing can be a frustrating exercise. Even though Scott stated that “I spent more time duckin’ wrecks than I did racing,” he moved from regional races to the Grand National Series, with no opposition.81 His challenges on the track were also his challenges at the track as his family frequently experienced animosity when they came to support him. Though Scott also faced the hostility of fans, he also found drivers who supported him.

Driver bought Scott a full set of Firestones for a Jacksonville race. However, the support meant little when he won his first and only race in the Grand National Series on

December 1, 1963, crossing the line two laps ahead of second-place finisher . Rather than award Scott the race win, it went to Baker, a decision that NASCAR did not correct until two years later—and finally awarding Scott the trophy in 2010, long after he died in 1990. The reason for not declaring Scott the winner two hours after the race had ended when officials

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discovered their error was because the track promoter did not want Scott kissing a White trophy girl in the victory celebration for fear of the fans’ reaction.82 This decision and mismanagement highlight the racial divisions and tension that existed in the sport and the South. While Scott never amassed the statistics ever to be considered a top-tier driver, he managed to sustain a living that won him enough prize money to send his children to college and keep his family together.

The economic aspect of racing is just as important as the racial element, and this provides a different barrier to modern-day NASCAR.

The NASCAR Color Line Is Green?

In a private email exchange, African American sportswriter Drew Lawrence wrote, “but once I realized just how much driver success in NASCAR comes down to who your daddy is or what kind of money you’re bringing to the table, the program’s seams gleamed bright red.”83 The program he mentions is , NASCAR’s attempt in 2004 to provide access to identities not readily seen in the sport. His mention of both the Drive for Diversity and the aspect of connections came unsolicited in emails that were part of an open-ended conversation. That

Lawrence focused on nepotism and money highlights an incestuous and distinct obstacle to breaking into NASCAR. The challenges of racial identity, family name or connections, and monetary support combine to instill a profound disadvantage to African American and minority drivers. This concept is not new and has fermented in the sport since Scott’s driving days. For some, trying to beat the system was not even worth the attempt, as Leonard Miller recognized.

Born in 1934, Leonard Miller grew up outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and took an early interest in cars. By the time he had reached high school, he was already tinkering with his family’s sedan and using it in street races. Miller attended college in the area and then served in

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the Army during the Korean War. He returned home and took a teaching job, but his love of automobiles and his desire to race remained. His early attempts at stockcar racing in Virginia had been fraught with the anxiety of the racial divide as he recounted the derision he faced both outside and on the track, from the stares and comments to the fenders that pushed him around.84

As he sought new opportunities, he focused his attention away from NASCAR and onto open- wheel racing. Miller dismissed NASCAR and thought that a move to open-wheel racing was suitable because he had a proper educational background and the experience to fit in with either the “sporty car” or the “Indy” racing crowd.85 Miller’s comment stands as a paradoxical reflection on NASCAR—he is remarking that because of his college education, he fits in better in open-wheel racing and, therefore, cannot be a part of the NASCAR. His stance ignores the influence of race and how it factors into any decision regarding where to compete. In fact, at the close of his book, Miller, this time as a team owner, relays how his team had returned to a lower

NASCAR series and won.

With driver Morty Buckles behind the wheel, Miller Racing Group earned a victory at

Coastal Plains Speedway in Jacksonville, North Carolina, on July 7, 2001. While the track is a small one, the reaction it garnered was not.

As Morty and the team stood alone in the winner’s circle, competitors in the pits waved rebel flags at us in defiance. While the sheriff and track officials gave us protection and genuine support, a boy about seven years old, his nose pressed against the catch-fence in front of the grandstands, yelled repeatedly, “You people go home!86

This conflicted and confusing scene is chilling, especially because of the youthful voice at the front. Miller tells the story in a way to show progress. Unlike what happened with , he and his team were awarded the trophy on the spot rather than waiting years to be acknowledged. Nevertheless, the change he hoped would continue does not appear in the continued accounts.

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That positive spin may be an attempt at hope, but little changed from 2001 until Bill

Lester’s arrival in the first decade of 2000. Lester, an African American who earned a degree in computer science from The University of California at Berkeley, felt that the combination of his education and roots added yet another layer to the difficulty of finding a home in NASCAR. “I came from the West Coast in northern California. I have a technical background with a degree in engineering. I came from a completely different type of racing, which is sports car as opposed to NASCAR racing. And when I came over (to NASCAR), believe me, I was not really embraced.”87 That Lester failed to be welcomed is not a big surprise, but how much his education and where he came from matters less than his identity. California drivers have flocked to NASCAR since the 1990s, though at one point, coming from the Golden State held a stigma.

Once again, it is not education or where a driver calls hometown that is the issue, but his skin color.

I have been booed, and it was surprising to me because I think that I did a great job behind the wheel. I think that I respected the sport, but for no reason that I can foresee, I was booed. So that happened mostly at tracks where it’s very non-progressive. And I’ll just call it out – Talladega, Alabama. I have never been so uncomfortable in a racing environment as Talladega (Superspeedway) or Martinsville, Virginia, which specifically was one of the places where I was booed very heavily. And I just couldn’t understand why. I’ve never made disparaging remarks or offended anybody to my knowledge, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t really embraced.88

What makes Lester’s comments humorous is that he ends by saying he wasn’t really embraced, which downplays the harsh reactions he received at two specific tracks. Lester’s closing comment indicates a person who finds assimilation and peace a preferred method compared to confrontation. However, this commendable trait still allows continued behaviors by the masses by those who run the sport. The most recent African American driver is facing many of the same challenges.

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Black Bubba

Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr. was born in Mobile, Alabama, on October 8, 1993, and grew up in the nexus of the NASCAR world, Concord, North Carolina. He started racing by age nine, and before he was 15, he became the youngest winner at Franklin County Speedway. Wallace continued to earn success and climb the stockcar ladder by winning in the K&N Series East program, which was part of the Drive for Diversity program, then winning as a Trucks driver at

Martinsville (Virginia) on October 26, 2013, becoming the first African American driver to secure a victory in NASCAR’s top leagues since Wendell Scott in 1963. Though Wallace had yet to earn a win in the Xfinity Series, the level below Cup, he still moved to the big leagues and began driving for Richard Petty Motorsports in 2017 as a fill-in for an injured driver and then full time in 2018. “Behind the wheel of Petty’s famed #43, Wallace achieved the highest finish ever in the Daytona 500 by a Black driver, and the highest finish in a Monster Energy Cup race in 47 years – a pair of mile markers left by the great Wendell Scott, who was infamously denied an opportunity to celebrate his seminal Grand National victory in 1963.”89 The Scott story remains, but Wallace has been able to navigate the track as though he might be carrying the race narrative forward.

Despite the reactions of many, Wallace has found support amongst the fan base, if only in modest amounts. His results have been worse than middling, finishing 28th in the standings in both 2018 and 2019. His limited success may be because Petty lacks the budget to compete with the top teams. In a way, this makes Wallace a modern-day test-case subject. Journalist Drew

Lawrence notes that Wallace is “the one who serves as the Rorschach test for how those efforts will ultimately play with NASCAR’s MAGA hat-wearing, Confederate-flag-waving loyalists.”90

This last element is something of importance to Lawrence as he remembered standing in the

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infield, “gazing upon the 250,000-some people gathered on a Friday morning for Cup practice in their MAGA swag and thinking, this is what the election prognosticators on the coasts missed: the other America.”91 Lawrence looks back at the NASCAR crowd and sees the America that

Trump rode to election victory; the America that many had forgotten about in 2016, seemingly believing that the drop in NASCAR’s popularity meant that the NASCAR Dad demographic had disappeared, a fascinating oversight as elections have become more predictable by analytics. So even as Wallace has tried to find his way in the sport, and received support from the other drivers, much as Wendell Scott had found, he still challenges a demographic that has shown to be obstinately racist and unwilling to change.

In 2014, journalist Nate Ryan noted that only 15 years ago, NASCAR fired two crew members for intimidating a Black crewmember by wearing white hoods as a “joke.”92 In a frustrating nod to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s statement, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” Wallace encounters frequent moments of difficulty with the NASCAR fan base. The

Guardian, one of the few websites still allowing comments, in 2019, still had this fan’s comment regarding Wallace: “The hard part now for NASCAR is to get the Wonder Bread-White audience that attends races to be equally accepting and respectful of Wallace. Easier said than done as, by my own personal experience at racetracks, they aren’t too keen to see their sporting enclave become diverse in the seats around them.”93 This comment relates to one of the incidents mentioned in the article where a 42-year-old Wisconsin man coded his messages in White supremacist dog whistles and insulted Wallace’s dead grandmother.94 This type of attack is not only possible in the digital world but is rather intricate and malevolent and ensures that other

White supremacists find comfort. What helps buffer some of Wallace’s negative interactions

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with fans is that he was driving for the legend Petty, though even that is not without its complications.

Driving for Richard Petty, who voiced his stance against kneeling for the US flag during the national anthem, or who has avowed that women do not belong in NASCAR, seems like a paradox. The lack of ability to allow for varying viewpoints or elements in the sport is strange, and yet Wallace made no remarks against the NASCAR legend, possibly so as not to upset his employer or his legion of fans. When discussing the flag issue that arose with Colin

Kaepernick’s kneeling during the anthem at the beginning of NFL games, Wallace stated,

“Richard is probably the most American icon in our sport and in a lot of people’s lives, he’s coming from the patriotic side of it. That’s the way I took it. We hadn’t really discussed it, and there’s no need. I’ve always stood for the national anthem, and I will continue to do that. That was just a hiccup or whatever you wanna call it.”95 This reaction feels contradictory. That

Wallace calls it a “hiccup” implies that something about what Petty said is problematic, yet

Wallace himself is making no overt statement that differs from Petty. Again, of all the issues that

Wallace faces in the sport, his fate is likely tied to the same problem his predecessors encountered as sponsorship continues to be Wallace’s most significant challenge, as was the case for Scott, Miller, and Lester.

But in the summer of 2020, with the Coronavirus pandemic silencing much of the

American sports world, Wallace confronted something his predecessors had not. A maelstrom of someone else’s making, one of Wallace’s pit crew members noticed that the garage pull-down rope had been tied into a noose and “it seemed absolutely logical that someone associated with

NASCAR would stoop to the lowest, most cowardly, most despicable act possible short of actual violence.”96 The teammate told NASCAR officials rather than speaking to Wallace, and from

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there, the situation became a hotly contested, highly publicized fiasco. What should have been a discussion about the noose as a threatening symbol turned into one about the noose’s authenticity, whether it was a hoax perpetrated by Wallace, or many other deflections to avoid discussing the violent symbol’s significance.

When detailing the incident for Frontstretch, I wrote that “The person who found the noose did not just stumble on to a sad and pathetic item, the person ran right into a lasting tribute of the racism that is foundational in this country.”97 But that statement lacks the strength to carry the weight of the issue. Ida B. Wells reminds us that it is crucial that we search for meaning in historical treasures and that we articulate that the noose, a sign of White supremacy and terror, should not be viewed lightly by any American committed to justice.98 But justice is not what traditional or social media wanted to discuss.

The need for interrogation and discussion on this matter is apparent, but the reaction shows an unwillingness to do so. Many people claimed that the rope was not a noose but rather just a garage door pull-down. They were partially right as the rope did work to pull the garage door down, but it was still fashioned into a noose. Others felt that Wallace had executed the noose saga to get attention. The stories ran so wildly that one reported felt the need to clarify the situation by stating: “One member of the No. 43 team found the noose, reported it to NASCAR security, and then took it to NASCAR president Steve Phelps and his executive team. This was widely reported Sunday night and Monday, despite what ‘Bubba Was In On It’ conspiracy theorists might tell you.”99

As a potential federal hate crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigations investigated the matter. In their report, written with US Attorney Jay E. Town, the investigator used the word

"noose" four times and never disputed that it was a noose, saying only that the timing of its

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hanging in garage No. 4, at least as early as October 2019, meant it was not directed at Wallace and was thus not a federal crime.100 With Wallace removed as the target, the story moved in a positive direction. The Cup drivers came together to show solidarity with Wallace and stand against racism before their race at Talladega. The touching display, somewhat unexpected from the sport, lost its sentiment when the President attacked Wallace.

The President felt the need to go after Wallace under the pretense that Wallace had something to do with the noose. President Trump tweeted: “Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another

HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!”101 Wallace avoided getting into a Twitter spat with the President but still felt the social media sting of trolls and racists flooding his mentions. The reaction to Wallace and the noose shows how little has changed and how change is feared. The Civil Rights movement and Black Lives Matters have voiced and protested for change.

Mauricia Grant

One African American who never followed in the footsteps of other drivers nor faced sponsorship issues in NASCAR but who had her life forever changed by the racism in the sport was Mauricia Grant. For a brief period, she represented the hope of the New South, that there could be a push against the deep-rooted racism that entwines itself around everything in the region. She looked to be a person who could help move the narrative toward better ideas so that

White southerners might avoid their new stance of victimhood. In Tony Horwitz’s examination of the South's continued struggles (and its frustration as the losing side in the country’s domestic

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war against itself), he found a different take on racism that allowed Whites a new reason for violence. “Any given black person is about seventeen times more likely to kill a white person than the other way around…are we to remain silent?”102 This attitude encourages and justifies any kind of violence against African Americans based on the belief that they can be perceived as a threat. Even in such a climate, Mauricia Grant thought she could hold her position in the industry.

Grant became the first African American female NASCAR official in 2005 when she began working as a technical inspector. She had worked as an intern at Irwindale Speedway in

2004 to help her learn the trade. After joining NASCAR that January, she lasted until October

2007, nearly marking three years in the sport. Even though NASCAR fired her for what they claimed as poor work performance, Grant spoke highly of the sport, including how it connected her with fans from Ghana. When she turned critical, however, she followed by bringing a lawsuit against NASCAR.

Grant alleged that, while riding in the backseat of her carpool at Talladega

Superspeedway, co-workers told her to duck as they passed race fans because “I don’t want to start a riot when these fans see a black woman in my car.”103 While such a comment is distressing and traumatic, perhaps none of her claims sting quite like this one: “There was one time in Bristol where a crew member came up to my ear, and he said, ‘You’re going to love getting kidnapped.’”104 Such a remark is about as horrifying as one can make to another person but seemingly made worse when spoken to a woman of color. Dave Zirin, the sports editor for

The Nation, placed a piece with The Huffington Post on Grant where she claims she was called

“Nappy Headed Mo” and “Queen Sheba,” and that one White official named, oddly enough,

David Duke, sent her a text message that read, “I love all ya’ll mofos I am that nigga.

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HAHAHAHolla. PIMPALICIOUS.”105 It is no wonder then that Grant sued NASCAR for $225 million. The boldness of the number made a statement that would go beyond just awarding Grant money. The punitive damages could provide enough money so that she could support minorities who want to participate in the sport. The amount also to draw intense media scrutiny.

Grant wanted to see change in the sport and saw ways to make improvements. “They need to stop hiring their ignorant brothers, cousins, and uncles of theirs, and start hiring qualified, educated people to start running their multibillion-dollar business. Stop giving ‘Uncle

Frank’ a hookup knowing that he’s ignorant.”106 Of course, the sport responded by getting one of their own to combat Grant’s claims in an attempted public relations counter-move. Former

NASCAR official Mike Wilford said he was present for many of the incidents Grant lists in her suit and that she was a willing participant in much of the behavior and had “twisted” the versions to her benefit.107 This retaliation is no surprise as big corporations rarely accept blame and prefer to wear down their opponent, and NASCAR, in this regard, sought to do the same.

Tom Bowles, who handled the sole in-depth interview with Mauricia Grant, discussed the interview and offered several insights about the lawsuit. The first thing that Bowles mentioned was that he felt that the Grant interview was the best work of his career, that Bowles felt like he was doing something real; and the second aspect was that he felt a pressure that he had never felt before not to make a mistake, that he understood the meaningfulness of the situation. When asked about his position as a White cisgender male interviewing Grant, he said that he felt they did well together, that he was aware of his position, but it was never an issue.108 While Bowles still vividly recalls the interview, the Grant case was never assigned to a judge.

Grant settled her lawsuit with NASCAR out of court and then seemingly vanished. The assumption is that the lawsuit worked as a deterrent, ensuring that if she speaks about the case,

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she will lose the money awarded her. As to how much money, Bowles said he thought it was likely in the $10-12 million range. For a sport like NASCAR, the money was a bargain to eliminate the potential headache should Grant go to trial with her accusations. Paying her to drop the charges not only looked easy, but it allowed NASCAR to continue to operate with impunity.

What may have been the most compelling facet to come from the interview is how NASCAR sought to silence Bowles’s interview altogether. The organization first wanted to have their lawyers look over and approve the interview questions. When Bowles and Sports Illustrated ignored this demand, NASCAR began pressuring the sponsors that worked with NASCAR to leave Sports Illustrated. Randy Poston, a spokesperson with NASCAR, also directly rebuked

Bowles at one point. Bowles, for his part, sounded earnest and would have more reason to restrain himself than offer any fascinating information because of his continued ties to the sport.

He runs Frontstretch.com, and its livelihood is based on access in the NASCAR world.3 What transpired from the interview is that Bowles felt that he was doing something “good” when he interviewed Grant, but that her hopes and his for the interview evaporated.

The sport is rife with attitudes belonging to White privilege and all forms of racism. The violence perpetrated against African Americans involved in the sport is physical, emotional, and psychological. At times, it seems as if one method does not push minority presence out, then another will. While this intrinsic racism appears obvious, the lack of accountability and change testifies to the willingness to adhere to these practices—maybe that is to be expected from the

“whitest sport on earth.”

3 Disclosure – I am a writer with Frontstretch and have worked with Tom Bowles since 2014.

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CHAPTER 2 ENDNOTES

1 John Egerton, The Americanization of Dixie: The Southernization of America, 1st ed. (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974), 21.

2 Mark Yost, The 200-Mph Billboard: The Inside Story of How Big Money Changed Nascar (St. Paul: MBI Pub. Company LLC, 2007), 143.

3 C.W. Nevius, “Nascar Rising / Why Are Sports’ Newest Superstars Paunchy White Men? And How Did They Take Over Your Tv? - Sfgate,” SF Gate, March 9, 2003, https://www.sfgate.com/magazine/article/NASCAR-RISING-Why-are-sports-newest-superstars- 2629687.php.

4 Derek Thompson, “Which Sports Have the Whitest/Richest/Oldest Fans?,” The Atlantic, February 10, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/which-sports-have-the- whitest-richest-oldest-fans/283626/.

5 Mike Hembree, “NASCAR Fans: Confederate Flag Still Important Symbol,” USA TODAY, August 19, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2017/08/19/confederate-flag- still-important-symbol-nascar-fans/583320001/.

6 Brian Donovan, Hard Driving: The Wendell Scott Story: The American Odyssey of NASCAR’s First Black Driver, 1st ed. (Hanover, N.H: Steerforth Press, 2008), 100.

7 Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag, x.

8 Coski, 49.

9 Donovan, Hard Driving, 100.

10 Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag, 127.

11 Coski, 126.

12 Coski, 61.

13 “Awake America!,” Richmond Afro-American, April 19, 1952 in Coski, 122.

14 Coski, 95.

15 Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 54.

16 Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag, 117.

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17 Justia Law, “2012 South Carolina Code of Laws: Title 16 - Crimes and Offenses: Chapter 17 - Offenses Against Public Policy: Section 16-17-220 - Desecration or Mutilation of United States, Confederate or State Flags,” https://law.justia.com/codes/south-carolina/2012/title-16/chapter- 17/section-16-17-220/, accessed February 4, 2019.

18 Associated Press, “South Carolina Law Makes It Tough to Lower Confederate Flags,” , February 26, 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-carolina-law-makes-it-tough- to-lower-confederate-flags.

19 “Flag Defiling Ban Is Passed,” Florida Times-Union, May 23, 1959, in Coski, 169.

20 Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag, 123.

21 Jay Busbee, “Day of Reckoning Has Arrived for NASCAR and Its Fans,” Yahoo Sports, June 22, 2020, https://sports.yahoo.com/day-of-reckoning-has-arrived-for-nascar-and-its-fans- 112847929.html.

22 Davison, Drew, “Fans at Speedway Ignore NASCAR Requests Not to Fly Confederate Flags,” Charlotte Observer, November 9, 2015, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto- racing/thatsracin/article43725435.html.

23 Mike Hembree, “NASCAR Fans: Confederate Flag Still Important Symbol,” USA Today, August 19, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2017/08/19/confederate-flag- still-important-symbol-nascar-fans/583320001/.

24 “Throwback Thursday: Richard Petty Wins 200th Race in Front of Ronald Reagan,” FOX Sports, June 30, 2016, http://www.foxsports.com/nascar/story/nascar-sprint-cup-series- throwback-thursday-richard-petty-ronald-reagan-063016.

25 Kelly Godwin, “George H.W. Bush Visited NASCAR Three Times at Daytona Speedway,” recordonline.com, https://www.recordonline.com/ZZ/sports/20181203/george-hw-bush-visited- nascar-three-times-at-daytona-speedway, accessed February 8, 2020.

26 John Henry, “Two-Hour Search of NASCAR Grounds Unearths One Hillary Supporter,” The Star Telegram, November 5, 2016, https://www.star- telegram.com/news/local/article112809778.html.

27 Mary Douglas Vavrus, “The Politics of NASCAR Dads: Branded Media Paternity,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24, no. 3 (August 2007): 245–61, https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180701520942.

28 Fontucky reference, author notes; Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture (New York: Times Books, 1996), 7.

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29 Bureau, U. S. Census, “American FactFinder - Results - Kentucky, 2017,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF, accessed February 8, 2020.

30 Dustin Parks, “NASCAR Will Forever Be America’s Most Patriotic Sport,” Bleacher Report, December 26, 2009, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/314607-nascar-will-forever-be-americas- most-patriotic-sport.

31 Reddit, “R/NASCAR - Why Doesn’t NASCAR Have Military Flyovers Anymore?,” November 24, 2014, https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/2n38z1/why_doesnt_nascar_have_military_flyov ers_anymore/.

32 , “Trucks Driver Korbin Forrister to Run Unsponsored Donald Trump Scheme for Eldora Race,” ESPN.com, July 22, 2015, https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/truck/story/_/id/13302019/trucks-driver-korbin-forrister- run-unsponsored-donald-trump-scheme-eldora-race.

33 Hembree.

34 John Henry, “Two-Hour Search of NASCAR Grounds Unearths One Hillary Supporter,” The Star Telegram, November 5, 2016, https://www.star- telegram.com/news/local/article112809778.html.

35 John Henry, “Two-Hour Search of NASCAR Grounds Unearths One Hillary Supporter,” The Star Telegram, November 5, 2016, https://www.star- telegram.com/news/local/article112809778.html.

36 “Food Preparation Workers | Data USA,” 2019, https://datausa.io/profile/soc/food-preparation- workers.

37 Zach Hunt, “The American Beatitudes,” Zack Hunt (blog), February 1, 2016, http://zackhunt.net/2016/02/01/the-american-beatitudes/.

38 Yannick Giovanni Marshall, “Patriotism Is Racist,” Al Jazeera, February 6, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/patriotism-racist-200205133653479.html.

39 Alison Durkee, “NASCAR Officials Say They’ll Fire Anthem Protesters — but They Let Fans Fly the Confederate Flag,” Mic, September 25, 2017, https://www.mic.com/articles/184705/nascar-officials-say-theyll-fire-anthem-protesters-but- they-let-fans-fly-the-confederate-flag.

40 Alison Durkee, “NASCAR Officials Say They’ll Fire Anthem Protesters — but They Let Fans Fly the Confederate Flag,” Mic, September 25, 2017,

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https://www.mic.com/articles/184705/nascar-officials-say-theyll-fire-anthem-protesters-but- they-let-fans-fly-the-confederate-flag.

41 Alison Durkee, “NASCAR Officials Say They’ll Fire Anthem Protesters — but They Let Fans Fly the Confederate Flag,” Mic, September 25, 2017, https://www.mic.com/articles/184705/nascar-officials-say-theyll-fire-anthem-protesters-but- they-let-fans-fly-the-confederate-flag.

42 Rob Goldberg, “Jerry Jones Says Any Cowboys Player Who ‘Disrespects’ the Flag Won’t Play,” Bleacher Report, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2737631-jerry-jones-says-a-cowboys- player-who-disrespects-the-flag-wont-play, accessed February 11, 2020.

43 Meghan Keneally, “What to Know About the Violent Charlottesville Protests and Anniversary Rallies,” ABC News, August 8, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/US/happen-charlottesville-protest- anniversary-weekend/story?id=57107500.

44 Andrew Lawrence, “Meet the Pro-Racer from Mexico Who Is Taking the NASCAR World by Storm,” Time, February 20, 2017, https://time.com/collection/american-voices- 2017/4667220/danny-suarez-american-voices/.

45 Nick Bromberg, “Fox’s ‘Racehub’ Segment Includes Tasteless Jokes About Daniel Suarez,” Yahoo Sports, March 16, 2018, https://sports.yahoo.com/foxs-racehub-segment-includes- tasteless-jokes-daniel-suarez-182610349.html.

46 “A Toyota History,” The New York Times, February 10, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/business/worldbusiness/10iht- 10chronology.9900084.html.

47 Robert Merry, “Congressional Anger on Free Trade Could Lead to Some Major Changes. (Includes Information on Duty-Free Imports, Domestic Content Legislation),” The Wall Street Journal Western Edition, 1983.

48 Narelle Morris, Japan-Bashing: Anti-Japanism Since the 1980s. Routledge Contemporary Japan Series 30. (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), 97.

49 Timothy Cain, “U.S. Auto Market Share - August 2014,” The Truth About Cars (blog), September 6, 2014, https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/09/u-s-auto-market-share-august- 2014/.

50 Court, “Toyota Ruins NASCAR: What Needs to Change,” Bleacher Report, July 6, 2008, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/35382-toyota-ruins-nascar-what-needs-to-change.

51 Reddit, “R/NASCAR - Why Does Everyone Hate on Toyota?,” January 15, 2016, https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/5o5zmu/why_does_everyone_hate_on_toyota/.

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52 Reddit, “R/NASCAR - Why Do People Really Hate Toyota in NASCAR?,” August 8, 2016, https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/4wszzu/why_do_people_really_hate_toyota_in_n ascar/.

53 Dave Caldwell, “Toyota: The ‘Hogs’ Of NASCAR,” Forbes, April 15, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davecaldwell/2019/04/15/how-toyota-became-the-hogs-of- nascar/#267802081434.

54 “Toyota Number of Employees 2019,” Statista, July 4, 2019, https://www.statista.com/statistics/294192/number-of-toyota-employees/.

55 James C. Cobb and William Stueck, “Introduction,” in Globalization and the American South (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2005), xi. Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture (New York: Times Books, 1996), 343.

56 ESPN.com. “Spencer: They Bombed Pearl Harbor,” February 1, 2004. https://www.espn.com/racing/news/story?id=1725029.

57 W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930, Blacks in the New World (Urbana: University of Press, 1993), 55–56.

58 Brundage, 90.

59 Manfred Berg, Popular Justice: A History of Lynching in America, The American Ways Series (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2011), 21.

60 Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), http://site.ebrary.com/id/10279405.

61 William Faulkner, The Reivers, (Vantage, 1992).

62 Paul Gilroy, Darker Than Blue: On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture, W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010), 19.

63 Bruce E. Stewart, Moonshiners and Prohibitionists: The Battle Over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia, New Directions in Southern History (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), 10.

64 Thompson, Driving with the Devil.

65 Mark Spivak, Moonshine Nation: The Art of Creating Cornbread in a Bottle, 2014, 85, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10923889.

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66 Interview number K-0121 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC- Chapel Hill.

67 Karl Hagstrom Miller, Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010).

68 Cleveland Brown, Moonshine and Living in the Deep South, 2015.

69 T. J. Ray, Side by Side: Moonshine and Murder in Mississippi (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., 2016).

70 Interview number K-0713 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC- Chapel Hill.

71 Author notes, Pat Carter; Blue Ridge Institute and Museum. July 17, 2016.

72 Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, 5.

73 W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 257.

74 Stewart, Moonshiners and Prohibitionists, 104.

75 Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 85.

76 Blee, 90.

77 Donovan, Hard Driving, 14.

78 Donovan, 23.

79 Donovan, 36.

80 Donovan, 62.

81 Donovan, 67.

82 Nate Ryan, “Ryan: A Feel-Good Story for Wendell Scott but Not for NASCAR,” USA TODAY / For the Win, May 21, 2014, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2014/05/21/nascar- hall-of-fame-column-wendell-scott-african-american-2015-inductee/9394843/.

83 Andrew Lawrence, “NASCAR - Email Correspondence to Ava Ladner,” February 13, 2020.

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84 Leonard W. Miller, Silent Thunder: Breaking Through Cultural, Racial, and Class Barriers in Motor Sports (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2004), 21–23.

85 Miller, 47.

86 Miller, 186.

87 Michelle Martinelli, “Retired Black NASCAR Driver Bill Lester Remembers Being Booed: ‘I Wasn’t Really Embraced,’” USA Today / For The Win, September 27, 2017, https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/09/nascar-national-anthem-protest-fired-bill-lester-african- american-drivers-not-embraced--donald-trump.

88 Michelle Martinelli, “Retired Black NASCAR Driver Bill Lester Remembers Being Booed: ‘I Wasn’t Really Embraced,’” USA Today / For The Win, September 27, 2017, https://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/09/nascar-national-anthem-protest-fired-bill-lester-african- american-drivers-not-embraced-cnn-donald-trump.

89 Andrew Lawrence, “, NASCAR’s African American Star, Takes on Tracks and the Trolls,” The Guardian, February 23, 2018, sec. Sport, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/23/bubba-wallace-nascar-daytona-500.

90 Andrew Lawrence, “Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s African American Star, Takes on Tracks and the Trolls,” The Guardian, February 23, 2018, sec. Sport, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/23/bubba-wallace-nascar-daytona-500.

91 Lawrence, “NASCAR - Email Correspondence to Ava Ladner,” February 13, 2020.

92 Nate Ryan, “Ryan: A Feel-Good Story for Wendell Scott but Not for NASCAR,” USA TODAY / For the Win, May 21, 2014, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2014/05/21/nascar- hall-of-fame-column-wendell-scott-african-american-2015-inductee/9394843/.

93 Comment from Norfsider on Andrew Lawrence, “Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s African American Star, Takes on Tracks and the Trolls,” The Guardian, February 23, 2018, sec. Sport, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/23/bubba-wallace-nascar-daytona-500.

94 Andrew Lawrence, “Bubba Wallace, NASCAR’s African American Star, Takes on Tracks and the Trolls,” The Guardian, February 23, 2018, sec. Sport, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/feb/23/bubba-wallace-nascar-daytona-500.

95 Andrew Lawrence and Tom Bowles, “Tom Bowles: Plaintiff Speaks Out Against NASCAR’s ‘Ignorant’ Culture,” Sports Illustrated, June 18, 2018, https://www.si.com/more- sports/2008/06/18/grant.

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96 Busbee, “Day of Reckoning Has Arrived for NASCAR and Its Fans.”

97 Ladner, Ava. “NASCAR, Bubba Wallace Confronting Unsettling Symbols From the Past.” Frontstretch (blog), June 23, 2020. https://www.frontstretch.com/2020/06/22/nascar-bubba- wallace-confronting-unsettling-symbols-from-past/.

98 Angela D. Sims, Ethical Complications of Lynching: Ida B. Wells’s Interrogation of American Terror, 1st ed, Black Religion, Womanist Thought, Social Justice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 133.

99 Ryan McGee, “Bubba Wallace, Nascar and Investigating a Hate Crime - What We Know and Don’t Know After the Fbi’s Findings,” ESPN.com, June 24, 2020, https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/29357584/bubba-wallace-nascar-investigating- hate-crime-know-know-fbi-findings.

100 McGee.

101 Haberman, Maggie. “Trump Adds to Playbook of Stoking White Fear and Resentment.” The New York Times, June 6, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/politics/trump-bubba- wallace-nascar.html.

102 Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. 1. Vintage Departures ed. Vintage Departures (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).

103 Geoff Bennett, “NASCAR Hit with $225m Discrimination Lawsuit,” NPR.org, June 12, 2008, https://www.npr.org/sections/newsandviews/2008/06/nascar_hit_with_225m_discrimin.html.

104 Tom Bowles, “Tom Bowles: Plaintiff Speaks out against NASCAR’s ‘ignorant’ Culture,” Sports Illustrated, accessed November 26, 2019, https://www.si.com/more- sports/2008/06/18/grant.

105 Dave Zirin, “Who Is Mauricia Grant? NASCAR Knows,” HuffPost, July 11, 2008, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/who-is-mauricia-grant-nas_b_111913.

106 Tom Bowles, “Tom Bowles: Plaintiff Speaks Out Against NASCAR’s ‘Ignorant’ Culture,” Sports Illustrated, June 18, 2018, https://www.si.com/more-sports/2008/06/18/grant.

107 Bowles, “Tom Bowles.”

108 Tom Bowles, Tom Bowles Interview with Ava Ladner; Mauricia Grant Story in 2008, phone, November 26, 2019.

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CHAPTER 3

PANIC AND DISRUPTION: NASCAR’S FEAR OF QUEERNESS AND THE

TROUBLING PRESENCE OF WOMEN

“I just don’t think it’s a sport for women. And so far, it’s proved out. It’s really not. It’s good for them to come in. It gives us a lot of publicity, it gives them publicity. But as far as being a real true racer, making a living out of it, it’s kind of tough.” - Richard Petty, seven-time NASCAR champion, May 25, 2006.1

“I don’t want my president to cry,” NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick’s criticism of 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton after she got emotional before the New Hampshire primary.2

Introduction

To say that the sport of NASCAR is a male-dominated world may seem an obvious statement. Even though women have raced automobiles since their invention, the sport has been co-opted by men and constructed as a world unto their own. Ernest Hemingway averred that

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” Hemingway, an epitome of boastful masculinity, found auto racing to be one exemplar of his constructs of homogenized rugged maleness. Considerations for Hemingway aside, his perception of the sport was astute, and the perception echoed through all aspects.

Though women have and continue to race in NASCAR and other racing series, men have always constituted the sport’s hub. The focus is usually on the driver and the exercise of hero mythmaking. Simultaneously, the pit-crew is another element that galvanizes the culture into one run and populated by males, with the group acting metaphorically equivalent to the prizefighter’s cornermen and earning their commendations alongside the driver.3

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In this view, as the driver’s support system, the pit crew operates as a miniature version of homosocialness. In his analysis of masculinity in NASCAR, Ben Shackleford noted that the fraternal pit crew’s four distinguishing features were masculine constituency, proprietary knowledge, solidarity, and operating as a group within a group, much as a sports team does within a league.4 The four elements work seamlessly in conjunction as the pit crew essentially barricades itself from outside influence. Once cordoned off, the information it has becomes protected secrets that are a backbone for solidarity and forming a team. Even as female members have invaded pit crews, the group preserves itself and its practices. Disruptions to this construct create a sense of anxiety and moments that challenge the sport’s foundations.

This chapter provides an examination of the aforementioned disruptions. Tim

Richmond’s foray into NASCAR is one that resembled the coming of a superstar who would transcend the sport and go as far as Madison Avenue or Hollywood. But it was not his driving ability that brought uneasiness to the sport, but rather the fact that he contracted and died from

AIDS and how the reactions highlighted masculine fear of queerness. In tandem, female racers have also challenged the sport’s manly culture, with most women run off after short careers.

Danica Patrick’s time in NASCAR provides an opportunity to examine the challenges they confronted and the relative success they have enjoyed. The coupling of Richmond with female racers makes it possible to comment on the sport’s prevailing masculine identities and attitudes.

Historical Southern Masculinity

“There are Gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.”5 Joshilyn Jackson opens her novel Gods in Alabama (2005) by denoting how hyper-masculine culture pervades the region while at the same time calling out its uniformity and

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problematizing this construct. Since its defeat and General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at

Appomattox, the South has felt attacked, believing that they are continually losing something tied to tradition. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s manifested itself as a second major challenge to the South. Brownfeld called this era a crisis, writing that “underneath it all, of all sections of the country, the South has persisted longest in believing old myths which others in more advanced areas have long ago abandoned.”6 Brownfeld’s assertion illustrates a feeling of difference between the South and the nation iterated by “the South has taken one path, the nation another.”7 The sentiment surrounding NASCAR matched Brownfeld’s belief, as in the 1970s, the sport was perceived as moving away from its Southern roots. “Pillsbury (1974) assessed that stock car racing was slowly ‘losing its Southern regional identity with the onslaught of national attention and interest.’”8 The change in driver hometowns had much to do with this perception as the percentage of southern drivers dropped noticeably. In the 1960s, 72 percent of drivers were

Southern, but this distinction dropped to 47 percent in the 1970s and then sat at 46 percent in the

1990s.9 Yet, even with the influx of talent from other states and even other countries, most drivers still move to the Charlotte area to be around their race teams. In doing so, they become inculcated into the culture of the region sport.

Masculinity is the driving force of the NASCAR identity as man and machine conjoin in a cyborg-like relationship, testing the limits of both.10 This relationship is a testament to competitive desire, the use and advancement of technology, and an ode to individualism. Tom

Wolfe’s description of Junior Johnson addresses these ideas by describing Johnson as “a coon hunter, a rich man, an ex-whiskey runner, a good old boy who hard-charges stock cars 175 m.p.h. Mother dog! He is the lead-footed chicken farmer from Ronda, the true vision of the New

South.”11

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Everything about Wolfe’s depiction of Johnson aligned with southern ideology and masculinity. The use of “good old boy” portrays Johnson as a man-child, one who exhibits both playfulness and maturity. His status as a farmer situates Johnson as a commoner, one that is of the people and a product of the agrarian South. That the description also includes terms such as

“coon hunter” and “ex-whiskey runner” adds to his image as an “all-around man’s man.” Oddly enough, Wolfe’s depiction of Johnson is the “true vision of the New South,” which is problematic. There is little in what Johnson represents that espouses a sense of progress; instead,

Johnson sits as the archetype of the very concept of being both Old and New South. Johnson sits as a common man who became wealthy and successful. Wolfe may have intoned that representing the New South is to be a man who has climbed from a working-class world to be wildly successful. This description seems to miss the point of claiming the New South’s changing dynamic or the White privilege that Johnson enjoys. In comparison, embodied none of these traits other than his skill at piloting a stockcar. His position as an outsider and his death from AIDS marked him as an unsettling, even if appreciated, force.

The Crisis

Richmond crafted a complicated presence in NASCAR. He was, in essence, New

NASCAR, one that opposes some of the traditions of Old NASCAR, a superstar that came of age in the dawn of cable TV. His premature death challenged the sport’s established constructs, not because anyone may have thought that Richmond was gay but because his acquisition of AIDS rubbed too closely against the prevailing narrative that AIDS was a gay disease. Queer persons threaten fundamentalist Christian ideology and normative notions of masculinity in the South,

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making Richmond a bizarre figure in this matter as his heterosexuality was never really in question. However, the backlash he faced brought a schism with the sport.

Tim Richmond was born in Ashland, Ohio in 1955, and rose to racing prominence in

IndyCar. In the 1980 500, he started nineteenth, led a lap, and finished in ninth, earning the Rookie of the Year. He moved to NASCAR in that same year and was predominantly perceived as an outsider. Richmond’s career trajectory and carefree attitude did not immediately appeal to the sport’s fan base. It did not help that his success was limited because he struggled to transition to the heavier cars with fenders.

By mid-1982, he had grown into a formidable NASCAR driver and earned his first victory. He finished the year with a second win and reached victory lane the following year. In

1984, Esquire magazine named Richmond one of the best drivers of the new generation.12 That year, he earned another victory and finished twelfth in points. The following year was like the previous with a finish of eleventh in points. Though he had shown talent, driving for teams limited his chances of garnering better results.

His change to proved to be what he needed. In 1986, he amassed seven wins, finished third in points, and was named co- with the legendary Dale

Earnhardt. He had been able to show his enormous talent and was poised to challenge for championships.

For all the promise that his career had, it came to a sudden halt after the driver’s banquet following the 1986 season. He fell ill, was diagnosed with pneumonia, and missed the season- opening Daytona 500 in 1987. While he raced in 1987 and even grabbed two wins, his career ended abruptly. He resigned from Hendrick that year, and though he tried to race the following year for another team, it was all for naught. The reason for his career collapse: Acquired Immune

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Deficiency Syndrome—AIDS. It is important to note that Richmond never publicly stated that he had AIDS. It was the rumors of him having the disease that brought hysteria to the NASCAR world.

The mere mention of AIDS was a problematic one in 1987. The nation was engaged in what some scholars refer to as AIDS panic.13 This panic proved to be too much for Richmond to endure as NASCAR banished him with falsified drug tests. This kind of behavior, this “panic, as

Cohen stresses, is social reaction operating as social control and is therefore ideological and political” (Irvine). Thus Richmond’s de facto banishment was the ideological South reacting to a so-called “AIDS panic” that it could not yet comprehend. At the time, AIDS was considered a homosexual disease, and when the rumors circulated that Richmond tested positive, it created a rift between the driver and the sport.

It is essential to see this fracture as one that is not just between Richmond and the governing body of NASCAR or sponsors but the sport as a whole, including the fans. There was a sense, almost of betrayal, that equated with Richmond. NASCAR opted to banish him. Janice

Irvin notes that public sentiment can override logic. “Because of its cultural authority, public emotion can pressure politicians, police, media, and other regulatory agents to respond to fierce community battles. As a result, laws, and policies that restrict sexual rights may be hastily enacted yet exert a pernicious influence for decades.”14 This statement directly represents how

NASCAR reacted to this case, and there are several elements to consider.

One of the first aspects to remember is that Richmond was a NASCAR outsider. He demonstrated part of his positionality in turning what was a staid culture into a playground. He evinced an aura around him that aroused the nickname “Hollywood.” By many accounts, he was also prone to enjoy any female company that was willing and able. It is interesting to see that the

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NASCAR Nation swiftly turned their collective back on the talented driver even with this knowledge. This behavior demonstrates the very nature of sex panics, in that the irrationality of the populace will dictate policy towards any person/group outside the norm.

Richmond passed away on August 13, 1989, and while NASCAR paid tacit attention to his death, the organization seemed relieved to no longer have to address it.

The Richmond case’s surprising outcome is that it does not follow the script of a hastily enacted policy exerting a pernicious influence for decades. Richmond, instead, had an almost opposite effect.

Moving Forward

The relationship between AIDS and anti-gay sentiment flourished in the 1980s. Dowsett suggests the concept of AIDS as representing a transgressive man. He states that the homosexual is “the original sexual deviant in the modern history of sexuality” while acknowledging that the

“United States placed gay men at the center of the epidemic there.” He further notes that the reason that the AIDS/homosexual panic emerged in America is that “the suspicion of the homosexual even lurks behind the notion of heterosexual HIV transmission.” 15 Dowsett’s assertions help to further clarify the beliefs that many in the NASCAR culture might embrace.

His research indicates that these behaviors have a universal appeal. The panic comes from the confrontation with what one does not know or understand.

Another adage is apt for this discussion: “This too shall pass”—the progression of moral panics. Moral panics follow the pattern of a wave with first an outrage towards something, then there is simmering contempt, and then as time passes, there is an approbation of the change, which is to say that the concept becomes tolerated. Dowsett offers an example of how

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Australians adapted to the AIDS epidemic and began to accept gays in their country, and stressed points that pertain to politics and social beliefs that permit a better lifestyle for that group.16

Nevertheless, how does this tie to NASCAR?

Tim Richmond had flamboyance that hitherto had yet to exist in NASCAR. With his behavior, he brought people who would be typically considered outsiders into the fold. This expanded attention brought new eyes to NASCAR, as evidenced by the growth in the viewership numbers. One set of eyes was that of Hollywood. In 1990, Days of Thunder enjoyed its cinematic release starring and . This film’s significance should not be underestimated, though, like many aspects of NASCAR and the culture surrounding the sport, it has received scant attention. Tom Cruise filmed this movie when his career was at a high point, coming off blockbuster successes like , Cocktail, and Rain Man. His decision to focus on NASCAR and take on a driver’s role was a surprising choice in and of itself, especially as to the deeper level of the subject material.

There are distinct aspects of the movie based upon the life of Tim Richmond—save for the fact that the Richmond stand-in, Cole Trickle (played by Cruise), never gets AIDS. He is a young, handsome man with a lot of talent from an open-wheel racing background. The fact that both Richmond’s and Trickle’s crew chiefs (the man overseeing the racecar and driver from the pits) are named Harry gives further credence to the open parallels. Much like his real-life inspiration, Trickle needs the tutelage that comes from a stable organization but also displays unmistakable masculinity by bedding women and running ragged on the track.

Just because Hollywood uses NASCAR in its productions does not mean that it is keen to align itself with the southern region. Though the film centers itself on a driver who competes in a southern sport and the country masculine ethos it entails, the film places Trickle as a California

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outsider from the start. That Days of Thunder succeeded is as much a testament to Cruise’s star- power as it is to the sport of NASCAR and the spirit of Tim Richmond. The fact that a studio made a film that focused on NASCAR shows the sport’s appeal and ability to sell outside the

South.

At this juncture, NASCAR moved into what could be considered a new space, or the beginning of New NASCAR. This concept is ideological as much as it is spatial, and one that is conflicted. The film Days of Thunder acted as a way for the sport to leave some of its southern roots, mirrored by the scheduling changes during the 1990s when Las Vegas, Chicago, New

Hampshire, and Los Angeles all joined the racing schedule. This relocation out of the South created a distinct sense of panic in itself.

Old and New at Once

The sport’s popularity forced it to adopt new sensibilities towards sponsorship. “Major team sponsors spend between $3 and $20 million annually to be associated with a particular team.”17 The value derived from these relationships is difficult to determine. Before NASCAR’s exponential growth, most of the sponsors involved were tobacco, automobile-related products, and alcohol. This arrangement changed with the growing popularity. One need look no further than Jeff Gordon’s inaugural DuPont sponsorship in 1992 to see an altered perception of

NASCAR. Something to consider: one can go out and buy a , but how does one go out and buy a DuPont? DuPont existed as a company that manufactures various products ranging from housing insulation to Kevlar vests for police officers. At the time, this subtle shift was a pronounced break from the southern tradition of NASCAR, as also shown by Gordon’s radical rainbow paint-scheme on his car. This scheme is vital as “each team’s paint scheme is the

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equivalent of a jersey in other sports” (Gill, 2008). This idea is to say that fans identify with the colors and sponsors of their chosen driver. The appearance of new sponsors also indicates the company’s willingness to see NASCAR as another avenue to reach consumers.

The variance of sponsors and the affiliation of drivers with them has created intriguing dynamics. “In 2008, more than 40 sponsors of the Spring Cup Series supported various teams.

The variety of sponsors ranged from M&M to the US Army and from Kellogg to Target.”18 This study shows that NASCAR has moved away from the masculine and domestic themed sponsors to ones that attract universal support.

This change also shows new ways that sponsors use the drivers they employ. One of these examples is the Gillette Young Guns advertisements that began in 2004. One of the concepts that these commercials show is a willingness to assert that “male camaraderie is something that is very interesting to consumers today.”19 In this regard, consumer practices act as voyeurs into the world of male bonding and, with it, a glance into the behind-the-scenes world of

NASCAR.

The discussion centers on an advertisement where a disheveled young man arrives at a party with a worn car, and five “young guns” of NASCAR help him by shaving him clean, dressing him up, and fixing his car. This rehabilitated young man can then go out and secure the company of an attractive female that otherwise he would not have attracted. There are mixed messages delivered through this ad. One member of the roundtable remarked that “the Mach3 ad is remarkable because it tackles the paradox of how to sell appearance and vanity to your scruffy-faced, slacker, manly-man who has been conditioned by tradition to not give a damn about his appearance.”20 This cleansing of the young man is a direct assault on the common sense of individualism associated with NASCAR and the old southern mindset.

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The progression here is elevated to a different level, however. “At one point, one of the

Young Guns holds up the man’s Hawaiian shirt and says, ‘this should be illegal’ (taking a page right out of a scene from Bravo’s ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’).”21 This switch in ideology is in direct contrast to traditional masculinity and adopts the metrosexual concept. The appropriation of metrosexuality links to Tim Richmond, Cole Trickle, and even Jeff Gordon. Jeff

Gordon became the face of New NASCAR as he is the second-coming of Richmond in that he was an outsider, coming from California, and also had matinee-idol looks. That he would appear on Wheaties boxes and on “Saturday Night Live” (the first, and in 2020, the only NASCAR driver to appear on the show) helped push the boundaries of drivers’ identities.

The roundtable speakers even mention that the metrosexual concept might as well be a substitute for gayness. One commenter stated that “when I showed this ad to a female friend who knows nothing about NASCAR, she said, ‘Oh, those guys are gay, right?’”22 What this intones is that there is a level of acceptance of this homosexual/metrosexual identity under New NASCAR.

The demographics substantiate the change that the Young Guns and Gordon evinced.

“With the increasing popularity of NASCAR, the stereotype that NASCAR fans are only southern, good-ol’ boys is quickly dispelled when attending any NASCAR race, even in the traditional home of NASCAR in the South.”23 There has been a shift from the assumed blue- collar Southern fan to more widespread appeal. “Fans are now urbanites, well-educated, middle- class professionals.”24 This fandom’s change indeed provides a broader culture of acceptance, recognizing the concept earlier noted regarding sexual panics, that tolerance will prevail in time.

The recognition of the female fan further emphasizes this concept. Inc. sponsored ’s car in 2014 with its Underalls brand of hosiery indicating the potential to exploit female NASCAR fans.25 In 2005, signed a contract to

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drive a car for Vassarette, a brand of VF Intimates Inc. There are two things to consider here.

The first is that a female racecar driver could secure sponsorship in the hyper-competitive world of NASCAR. The second is that all parties involved, Vassarette, Robinson, and her team owner, were confident enough to emblematize her and put her on the track against the other drivers. The

CEO, Art DeCesaro, stated, “She is sexy, fun, and fashionable woman of great determination who has already accomplished a great deal in the world of motorsports.”26 The fact that she was

40 years old and had yet to win any NASCAR race is never mentioned. In this regard, she is given the benefit of the doubt that even some male drivers might not because she can appeal to a fan segment they cannot.

However, as much as the culture surrounding NASCAR has evolved, there are many ways in which it has stayed the same. In 2002, noted the lack of Blacks involved in NASCAR and wondered whether there should be a recruitment of persons from that group. One response illustrates how, for some fans, little has changed. “For the Observer to even ask the question is absurd. It’s just another example of a bunch of bull dykes, women, feminized politically correct men trying to go out and seek more welfare for black folks.”27 Working in conjunction with the overt racism is the vitriol directed at groups outside of the normative masculinity in the South. Goldfield notes that “southern working-class whites have also seen women advance, enjoy better economic opportunities and become unimpressed with the macho image of the southern male.”28 Here, the perspective shifts to seeing the women of the South fight against the southern ideal of masculinity, preferring one of the New South. The fact that they are fighting it displays a sense that this masculinity is still very present.

Cara Ivey, a longtime NASCAR fan, stated, “it’s very disappointing [that NASCAR discourages it] because it’s Southern heritage and NASCAR is Southern. We have pride, and we

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want to fly our flag just like the gay pride wants to fly their flag. We’re not griping when they’re flying theirs. … They need to leave us alone.”29 Ivey’s peculiar comparison of flying a

Confederate Flag to the LGBTQIA community flying theirs demonstrates the lazy thinking surrounding the sport’s attitudes about the queer community. By this fan’s logic, the flags are equal, as they both are symbols of oppressed people. This is invalid because LGBTQIA supporters continue to have their rights questioned and stripped, especially in the South. Ivey feels persecuted by the queer flag, thinking it oppresses straight, White southerners, hence saying that “they need to leave us alone.” This attitude is prevalent in the region, stalling progress while defending what is perceived as heritage and way of life. In this view, the South is constantly under siege as “the NAACP, the Queer Nation and others have been fomenting hatred against the honorable culture of the South.”30 Queer persons threaten fundamentalist Christian ideology and normative notions of masculinity in the South, making driver Tim Richmond an unusual figure in this matter.

Culture Change?

Tim Richmond exemplifies a new attitude in NASCAR and with it, the South. His arrival and participation in NASCAR helped to change some aspects of the culture. While he exhibited many of the Southern ideals of masculinity, he also pushed against them. His untimely death, however, was what makes his presence in the sport even more considerable, as it forced those tied to NASCAR to address their feelings towards a disease through societal panic to homosexuality. The result has been one where there has been an acceptance of the metrosexual and a growing, incremental tolerance towards “the other.”

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To believe that NASCAR sits in a happy place of tolerance ignores the dichotomy of thinking in and around the sport. While a driver like Jamie McMurray drove a car with Fructis shampoo as its sponsor, very much a New NASCAR relationship, and it may seem metrosexual, it is still selling a sense of maleness. The goal is to clean up the male to get the attention of the other sex. In recognition of that idea, the hope is that there is some lasting change. NASCAR is still a place where fans defiantly fly the Confederate Flag and where an African American female and former NASCAR official sued the governing body for mistreatment due to her co- worker’s inability to handle the changing dynamics.

Old NASCAR and New NASCAR often sit in the same stands and watch the same races.

While these divisions allow for continual debate, they do come to see things in similar ways from time to time. In 1998, Richmond was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers, which was quite the honor for one who raced for only eight years. He is now accepted as one of the greats, yet his illness and death may have had the most significant impact.

The Danica Patrick Experiment

In 2013, Danica Patrick began racing full time in the NASCAR Cup Series, the premier level, with races attracting up to 80,000 fans and four million television viewers. What made

Patrick unique is that no female driver had ever secured the kind of lucrative funding to drive a full season that she had—a cost that pundits placed between eight and twelve million dollars per year.1 That she had become a known commodity made her bankable to her sponsors and gave her

1 NASCAR teams are private enterprises and do not disclose the cost of actual annual sponsorship. This number is derived from reading estimates from those who cover the sport through ESPN.com, SI.com, SBnation.com, and others.

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better support than even most male drivers benefit from. However, complicating the situation is the fact that Patrick had grown up driving open-wheel cars and had little experience behind the wheel of a stockcar.

For those drivers seeking to succeed in NASCAR, there has been an unwritten but widely acknowledged path to obtaining a Cup ride. That path begins by driving sprint or legends cars at local tracks that are commonly less than a mile in length. As a driver shows promise and attracts financial support, they move on to racing in regional series, such as the K&N East or West. The next move towards Cup is racing in the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) series, a national presence but not one that attracts much national attention even though ARCA races on many of the same tracks as Cup. The final step in making it to Cup is showing success in either the Camping World Truck or Nationwide Series, which fall under the NASCAR umbrella.

Patrick’s route to Cup evaded this formula, as she instead came from open-wheel racing, those racecars with no fenders covering their wheels. At age 16, she began racing in England, driving in a feeder series for Formula 1. With modest success but no financial support, she moved back to America and tried to find a home in IndyCar at 20. In IndyCar, she demonstrated that she was an above-average driver, finishing fourth in the , becoming the first female to lead laps in the race and earning overall rookie of the year honors. In 2008, she became the first woman to win a race in IndyCar, doing so at Motegi, Japan. Patrick had already garnered a massive amount of media attention, but the victory legitimized her career and helped to solidify her place as a household name and marketing commodity.31

After the Motegi win, Patrick frequently showed her frustration on the track, which converged with her disappointing results. By 2009, she started to consider switching from

IndyCar to NASCAR. In 2010, Patrick raced a full-time schedule in IndyCar while running a

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part-time program in NASCAR’s Nationwide series (XFINITY series beginning in 2015). This partial schedule foreshadowed her eventual move to stockcar racing in 2012, where she ran the full Nationwide schedule and ten races in Cup. The question that accompanied her foray into

NASCAR is whether she held the potential to become a driver who could contend for victories or was merely a marketing ploy for her sponsor GoDaddy.com.

What accompanied Patrick is a predicament that has existed for years, whether women have a place in NASCAR. With its regional ties to the South and a decidedly distinct set of gender roles in place, any woman who seeks out an opportunity in the sport comes from a marginalized position. Thus, it is crucial to investigate the history that surrounds women drivers.

The “Second Sex” Behind the Wheel

The dearth of information that exists makes discussion about women drivers a challenging topic. They hold a similar position of being overlooked in much the same way that

African Americans in NASCAR’s history do—something sensed and acknowledged but not known. The context for this limited presence is one based on southern culture, gender exclusion, and a shift in the sport’s economics. Increased female participation, where the car mitigates physical and perhaps gendered differences among drivers, would bring an exciting and fascinating dynamic to the sport.

As of 2020, the Cup Series, founded in 1948, has featured only sixteen women drivers. In this hyper-masculine sport, the number is not surprising. In “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity, Let’s

Go Racing…Girls? Female NASCAR Drivers,” Norma Jones provides a brief overview of early women drivers in NASCAR and models the title after the phrase that former driver and announcer Darrell Waltrip commonly started races with: “Boogity, boogity, boogity—Let’s go

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racing boys.” As men have dominated discussions surrounding the sport, there is a glaring need to focus elsewhere. Women were part of the sport from the beginning as during the first year of

NASCAR competition, a wife and husband duo, and Frank Christian, competed against each other.32 In 1949, Sara Christian set the best-finish by a woman mark by finishing fifth at Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, an achievement that stood until Patrick bested her by one place in 2011.

Louise Smith’s story is the most notable. Smith was a known racer, so much so that Brian

France, NASCAR’s founder, paid her appearance fees to use her to help promote the sport.33 Of course, marketing is part of any business, but this relationship indicated that Smith brought a celebrity cache with her as she was sold as a spectacle. Smith details her problematic existence at the track by stating that “female fans were jealous of me, because they thought I was after their men. And the men weren’t fond of me being on the racetrack, so I had trouble both ways.”34 That

Smith also recalls being harassed on the track, both verbally and through racing incidents, shows the intolerance male drivers felt toward her presence. However, Buddy Shuman and NASCAR

Hall of Fame driver helped teach Smith to defend herself. The disappointing aspect of Smith’s career is that it lasted but eleven races, setting an ominous example of how women could be excluded and marginalized in the sport. The late Vicki Wood encountered this same atmosphere when she began racing in 1954. “She kept winning competitions against men, but by

1963 she had realized that the men didn’t want her around.” Wood recalled, “The boys said that if I kept on racing with them, they’d go on strike, they were sick of being teased when they lost to a woman.” She said she understood their attitude, “so that’s when I quit.”35

The obeisance shown by the female drivers to their male peers is one that followed the dutiful housewife role that many women were supposed to follow, especially in post-World War

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II America. However, both Smith and Wood held reputations as racers and earned respect, but their presence troubled the male domain. Wood cut a more dangerous presence by showcasing her femininity by wearing a signature scarf knotted at the neck to the track and sometimes driving in heels and a skirt. When asked why she dressed the way she did, Wood allegedly responded, “I knew I’d probably win and you’d want to interview me, and I wanted to look good,” according to her grandson Neil Wood.36 The feeling of being unwelcome eventually drove women from the driver’s seats and is one explanation for the low number of women Cup drivers.

A statistical oddity sums up the disappointing presence of women drivers. During the

1950s, eight women drove in the Cup series; yet in the 2000s, there were none. Several factors account for the disappearance of women drivers, such as how access to tracks, family support, and sponsorship, can all help or hinder a young career. In that regard, success is gender blind, as male drivers face the same situations, but women must fight to succeed in a culture that would rather they did not.

From a broader perspective, the focus should be placed on what happened after the 1950s that denied female drivers entry to the sport. The answer is somewhat ambiguous. The few

NASCAR histories that exist, like From Moonshine to Madison Avenue or Driving with the

Devil, fail to cover the topic. Historian Pete Daniel mentions the matter in passing, noting that the sport’s rules changed to ban women drivers citing “unspecified safety concerns,” but no definitive date was stated.37 Daniel asserts, however, that the exclusion of women helped to give

NASCAR more respectability in the eyes of some men. From one perspective, the sport gained popularity by kicking female drivers out, an effective way to keep the money and power of the

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sport in the hands of men, while also essentially pushing women back outside of the track and at least into the stands if not potentially closer to home.

While eight women drove in the 1950s, the role that women played in the series evolved into being tokens and trophies. This recognition stresses how the sponsorship involved with

NASCAR and the accompanying advertising focused on selling to a male audience. Companies associated with the automobile have long used women as marketing tools. Advertisements in the

1950s featuring smiling, swimsuit-clad women posing with cars bring the convergence between sex appeal and the automobile. This combination made its way early to NASCAR, as best identified with the Purolator Pit Girls and Union 76 “Racestoppers.”

Purolator’s notable product was, and is, the oil filter, packaged in white with red and blue pinstripes. These advertisements, placed predominantly in places like Hot Rod Magazine and promotional materials, display women clad in short white dresses or white swimsuits that prominently display the company’s logo. These commercials position the models so that they are fawning over a car, a driver, or presenting the oil filter product. This transition removed women from the position of power behind the wheel of a car and placed them as accessories to the sport.

Another role that women have taken is that of the trophy girl, or as Daniel opts for, race queens.38 Since NASCAR’s inception, women have been photographed in the winner’s circle, standing by the triumphant driver and the trophy, serving, in a sense, as spoils for the victor in the celebration ceremony. Photographs from the winner’s circle back this claim, showing drivers receiving kisses, and in some cases, the driver receiving kisses on each cheek simultaneously from two young women. This idea is furthered and reified in the film The Last American Hero

(1973), ensuring that the practice would continue.

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The film, based upon the life of driver Junior Johnson and the essays of Tom Wolfe, focuses on Johnson’s successful attempt to become a NASCAR driver. One subplot focuses on the romantic affair between Jackson (renamed in the film), played by , and Marge, played by Valerie Perrone. Marge plays a supplementary part, placed in a supportive position as a “track girl.” A track girl in contemporary society equates to a groupie, but in the era depicted, she is a woman associated with the racing circuit, akin to a traveling secretary. Her position is never fully defined, and the viewer is left to believe that she works possibly in public relations.

When Marge first appears, she seems to be with another driver, Kyle Kingman, yet she soon is receptive to Jackson’s advances. That she becomes romantically involved with Jackson, with little wooing, is telling. The viewer is left to debate whether Marge sees something special in Jackson and changes her allegiances or is willing to do so with any driver. While J.J.

Halberstam might espouse that she is free to do as she chooses, that a woman should make her choices because it gives her control of her narrative, a different reading may be that the male- controlled sphere limits her potential options.39 An accurate measure of Marge’s agency could be reconciled by having her leave the racing environment altogether. Instead, she retreats to

Kingman, which may appear to offer her a sense of autonomy by choosing which man she likes but ostensibly situates her in the role of plaything for these drivers. The last scenes of the movie confirm this notion.

In the film’s conclusion, after Jackson has won the race that serves as the climax, he encounters Marge with Kingman. What changes the tenor of the situation is the arrival of

Kingman’s wife, unseen until this point, and contradicts the sense that Kingman is a bachelor.

Kingman’s wife pulls Marge aside and, to paraphrase, lets her know that she is not unique and that there will be another woman to come along to be Kingman’s “girl” at another track. This

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scene shows that the wife, though holding authority over Marge, is powerless in her marriage and at her husband’s mercy. That she has accepted her position with Kingman demonstrates how women in NASCAR are accessories to the men. To wit, after Marge endures the conversation with Kingman’s wife, she is later spotted leaving with a different driver. This image either confirms her sense of autonomy or substantiates her role as a plaything for the sport’s men to use, like their cars on the track. Marge finds herself trapped in an illusion of choice, where men determine the options.

Something to be acknowledged is that the film was a hybrid of 1950s and early 1970s culture, blending a story from one era with the production of a different one. While Wolfe’s work came in 1954, the contemporary context of 1973 provides the setting. The portrayal of women in the film seems to offer little advancement in their roles over the eighteen years. That minimal change had occurred within the ideological world of NASCAR, and the filmmaking that accompanied it provides insight into the patriarchal constructs surrounding both the filmmaking and the sport.

Pedestal to Gas Pedal

Southern women have frequently played to conventions of expectation, adopting roles based on their status and age. The balancing of the matriarch, Southern Belle, moral conscience, and woman of the earth form the dominant trope. Young women face a cultural construction that encourages them to conform to roles traditionally associated with beauty and being idolized in a section of the country lush with beauty pageants and one that still features debuts and debutante balls. Therefore, the link between pageant queen and trophy girl is omnipresent in a culture that encourages beauty above other elements and continually subjugates women to the male gaze.

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The concept of the Southern Belle, while ostensibly antiquated, persisted even as the women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s sought change. Instead, contemporary society has appropriated the role. One need only read journalist Allison Glock’s testament to continuing traditional roles to realize that there is a sense that many in the South feel the need to maintain.40

The assertion is that women should follow the conventional patterns laid out before them, that there is goodness in these roles and behaviors. In a way, this practice is a direct antagonism towards the rest of the country’s progressive attitudes, and specifically the North.

One of Glock’s tenets is that maintaining a feminized beauty (one would assume in deference to the male gaze) is that Southern women are, at their core, to be cherished while also being loving caretakers. While it may be difficult to take an article from Garden & Gun seriously, it should not be ignored. The powerful combination of the two things, garden and gun, signifies the specific gender roles crafted in Southern culture, one tending, one prowling. As a caretaker, the southern woman must take care of the home and children and her man and herself, while southern men take on the traditional hunter role. This ideological construction is one of the ways that the South continues to separate itself from the rest of the nation, and it is also the locus for the sport of NASCAR.

Historian Anne Firor Scott also tackles this topic in The Southern Lady by examining women’s roles in southern society. In a basic sense, and from a White-dominated perspective, women have played two significant functions: as a lady and matron and as a yeoman caretaker.41

The concept of the lady rests with aristocratic beliefs that accompanied the White settlers of the regions, especially those of the elite class. The caretaker sits with the lower classes and posits the woman as the caretaker of the home and farms. These notions are both frustrated by the changing roles of women. Glinda Fountain Hall uses Firor’s perspective and expands upon the bifurcated

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roles by arguing that southern society “continues to perpetuate binary categories for women, especially in terms of female sexuality: the Madonna versus the whore, wife/mother versus working woman, promiscuity versus sexual expression, choice versus control.”42 Hence the contemporary position of women is an either/or construction rather than envisioning that they can move through different roles. Historian Eleanor Flexner depicts how women’s roles changed during the Civil War and again during World War II, as women moved away from the home to management, decision-making, and the industrial workforce.43 That southern women took on such varied responsibilities makes their inability to foster a presence in NASCAR all the more frustrating. The ideology of both the South and NASCAR inhibits southern women from doing something trivial, such as driving a car, as it disrupts their more defined roles.

Racing may have failed to inspire southern women because of its association with what

Daniel calls “lowdown culture” that many “reputable” women would disregard stooping so low to engage in the sport. 44 Early NASCAR held little cultural prominence or national importance, marking it as a sport not fit for a lady of the South. That construct would imply that these early female participants came from backgrounds more associated with the yeoman class. The lasting history of women drivers becomes less statistically significant when placed in the first seasons.

In the 1950s, some NASCAR schedules had over 50 races, compared to 36 that have comprised the schedule since 2002. The lack of historical female NASCAR drivers in this era ensures that their contributions were minuscule. The eight women who raced in the 1950s combined to compete in 28 races total, with one driver, , amassing 11 of those entries. Women drivers may have interloped but did not seem to seriously interfere or challenge the male-dominated world as they rarely became threats on the track. The rest of the drivers

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competed in just one or two races and were never seen in Cup again. One of the reasons for their lack of presence is that these drivers were outcasts even to other women.

From the feminine southern gaze, any woman who drove a stockcar placed herself against society’s normative values, being neither a lady nor a caretaker. That seven female drivers participated in so few events could reflect them living with an ostracized status. That is to declare that these women would likely be denied admission to southern sisterhood. In contrast, male counterparts would find it difficult to welcome them onto the track. With a lack of acceptance from either party, this challenging environment discouraged women from participating more and may be part of why there were no female drivers in the 1960s.

Another reason that prevented female drivers, as detailed in Todd McCarthy’s Fast

Women, is that the business model for racing pushed women drivers out as it required success early rather than a continued sense of improvement.45 While McCarthy’s work focuses on early women drivers and concludes at the end of the 1950s, the final chapter discusses the business of racing. Drivers are independent contractors, meaning that the driver and supporters were responsible for bringing a car to the track and ensuring it had the speed to compete. Hence, early female drivers could bring a vehicle decent enough to compete and enjoy moderate success.

However, as racing became more expensive and increasingly backed by outside sources, these women could not sustain their involvement. Or they got caught in a downward cycle —they failed to get the needed finishes to earn the sponsorship money to buy better equipment, and because they could not drive better equipment, they could not get the necessary finishes, and so on.

That cycle indicates two things. The first is that it is possible that racing was a secondary career for these women, much as early on it was for men, and that they moved on as they failed

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to find success. The second possibility is that the women in the cars themselves appeared as a novelty item; yes, they might be able to drive well, but other drivers might have seen their appearances in racing as trivial or insignificant. Without a substantial effort behind them, these women were free to be cast aside.

The Civil Rights movements taking place in the 1960s presents a further discussion point for excluding women from NASCAR. It may seem confusing to associate the idea of granting rights to underprivileged persons with denying women the possibility of driving, but the culture of the South confuses the situation. As the Civil Rights movement began taking form in Georgia,

South Carolina, and Alabama, Southerners condemned what they perceived to be the federal government imposing its will. Historian C. Vann Woodward, in The Burden of Southern History, reflects that the South as a region, having been the only part of the US to lose a war, became more defiant after the Civil War.46

Slow Changes in Fast Cars

The defiance seen in the region’s violent reaction to the Civil Rights initiatives indicates a mindset of protecting southern culture. Historian James Cobb contends that southern identity is framed in direct and opposite response to the ways of the North and, conjunctively, the West.47

Therefore, the attitudes shown by the North and West shape southern attitudes in a converse reaction, even if misunderstood. Where those areas of the country may have been beginning to develop better conditions for some groups, the South reacted by building walls against change.

The jump from civil rights to NASCAR may seem specious, but the decision to remove women from racing reflects the male hegemonic desires to protect their domain and keep women in their expected roles.

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The 1960s passed with little change for women in NASCAR, but in the 1970s, a formidable woman arrived to challenge the sport. In 1976, Janet Guthrie raced in the NASCAR’s

World 600, becoming the first woman in 11 years to confront the gender division. The following year, she became the first female driver to compete in the prestigious Daytona 500. Her story is worth noting not only for being a female driver but also because of her relative success and background. Born in City, Iowa, in 1938, Guthrie came to NASCAR after having first graduated from the University of Michigan and then working in the aerospace industry.

Robinson had intended to race in the IndyCar series but initially found it difficult to attract funding.

Lynda Ferreri, another woman who worked in the “man’s field” of upper-echelon banking, pushed for Guthrie’s move to NASCAR.48 Part of the reason Ferreri established a team for Guthrie was to assist the driver in her career, but the second reason, tackling a challenge, holds more significance. Ferreri later confided to Guthrie that “so many people were saying you were a hoax, that it was impossible for a woman to compete in Winston Cup. And I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be fun to be part of disproving that?”49 Ferreri also forecast that having

Guthrie race would be a good move for Charlotte’s economy as the event would be sure to draw attention from both fans and the media. Charlotte Motor Speedways’ promoter, , also saw the benefit of putting Guthrie on the track and assisted in putting together a group of people to build and crew a car for her. Wheeler may be conservative NASCAR, but he also recognized the potential profit from Guthrie’s appearance.

The reception, as could be expected, was less than favorable. Guthrie recalls being greeted from the stands and garage with shouts of “no tits in the pits” and “get the tits out of the pits.”50 , later a three-time champion, assisted Guthrie but with an aloof attitude.

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Perhaps Richard Petty, a vanguard of the sport, with 200 wins and seven championships, offered the most salient example of the issue. He stated that “she’s no lady. If she was, she’d be at home.

There’s a lot of difference in being a lady and being a woman.”51 The distinction Petty makes is a baffling one.

Though Petty may be giving a perplexing take, it is meaningful for a few different reasons. First, Petty’s use of the term lady brings attention to the Southern construct of how a woman should represent herself and aligns his views with the objectified and domestic version of women. There is no distinction between the lady and the stereotypical Southern Belle, the one that Glinda Fountain Hall refers to as shouldering the “weight of the Southerner’s mythologized symbols of virtue, honor, patriarchy, and whiteness.”52 This idea is one that historian David

Goldfield references in evaluating Southern literature, marveling at the permanence of the ideological southern lady. Citing Anne Rivers Siddons’s 1976 novel Heartbreak Hotel, Goldfield uses the following passage to indicate the position and expectations that accompanied being a woman in the South:

In the cities of the South—in Atlanta and Birmingham and Charlotte and Mobile and Charleston—there were… girls planted, tended and grown like prize roses, to be cut and massed and shown at debutante balls and cotillions in their eighteenth year. Unlike roses, they did not die after the sowing; instead, they moved gently into colleges and universities and Junior League chapters and were then pressed between the leaves of substantial marriages to be dried and preserved.53

Goldfield follows by asserting that while there were undoubtedly bright women in the South, the ideology created a “trap” where these women found it difficult to move beyond “reaffirming the basic ideals of southern society.”54 The use of the term lady also positions Guthrie as the other in deference to Petty’s masculine identity and as someone who should not be given entrance to the track. That he comments that she should be at home alludes to the stereotype that a woman’s place is in the kitchen.

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Petty is acting as the mouthpiece of misogynist beliefs and denying access to the institution of NASCAR. Petty is belittling Guthrie through what historian Richard Cullen Rath calls the “hegelect,” or “the terms and vocabulary of the hegemonic sociolect.”55 That Guthrie was college-educated and grew up outside of the South suggests that she lacked the lexicon of

NASCAR culture, making her entrance that much more difficult. Thus, her being well-spoken limited Guthrie’s ability to work within NASCAR’s culture and further positioned her as an outsider.

As opposed to the fraternity of the garage, the fan reaction was mixed with both detractors and supporters scrutinizing Guthrie’s entry into NASCAR. This aspect supports

Goldfield’s claim of change in the 1970s, sometimes covertly and sometimes publicly.56

Guthrie’s place in the sport is somewhat inconclusive. She competed in thirty-three races over four years, showing that she had driving talent, and amassed five top-tens during that span, demonstrating that women drivers could compete. Still, part of the problem with assessing

Guthrie beyond her inroads is that she continued to focus on IndyCar, the top American racing series at the time, where she made eleven starts, with three being the Indianapolis 500.

Six years after Guthrie retired from racing, became the next woman driver to enter NASCAR. There is scant information detailing Moise’s career as both academic and popular searches yield few results, indicating her limited impact. However, what information does exist is telling for a few reasons. To begin, Moise grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, providing her with more of a southern background than Guthrie and indoctrinating her in the hegelect needed to join the NASCAR culture.57 Besides, Moise’s father was also a racecar driver, and though he might not have found widespread success, his involvement in racing

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helped his daughter enter into the sport. Her father’s knowledge and connections served as influences that assisted her as she endeavored to fit in without standing out.

A few factors may cause Moise to be ignored. Similar to Guthrie’s and Patrick’s, her racing background does not follow the NASCAR formula, as she began racing on American road courses rather than ovals. Not until she started racing in NASCAR’s minor league Grand

National series did she develop her oval-racing prowess—a critical facet as ovals comprise a majority of the NASCAR schedule. Due to her stagnated education in NASCAR racing, Moise’s results were nothing more than unspectacular. She competed in the Grand National series from

1986-1998, in 133 races, but amassed just four top-tens and zero victories, indicating that while she might have maintained a career in the sport, she was unable to compile the results needed to move to Cup. Of course, one other element eliminated the possibility of her crafting a Cup career.

Moise’s personal life also factored into making her career something of a NASCAR afterthought. In 1990, she married fellow driver . On the surface, this marriage may not seem like much of an issue. The importance of the union is that it followed southern ideals by creating a circumstance where Moise now held the second position to her husband—with a twofold result that brought her more acceptance in the garage through her husband’s social capital but lessened her status as a driver. By 1991, her participation in the sport had dropped to one race that year, which she followed with several seasons where her presence amounted to little more than a footnote.

That Moise accumulated uninspiring results in NASCAR is not the focal point of her career. Her presence alone fought the norm of the male-dominated environment, and it appears she enjoyed a modicum of acceptance. Because so little information exists on Moise, one can

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argue that the lack of recorded problems with her presence amounts to a pseudo-tolerance.

Female drivers before and after endured vitriol, but nothing of note occurred regarding Moise.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Moise’s NASCAR career is the issue of sponsorship.

Traditional sponsorship for drivers tended to center on the automotive industry, tobacco, or alcohol. Richard Petty’s STP sponsorship serves as an iconic image of this concept. By the mid-

1980s, a subtle shift took place as Folger’s and Country Time lemonade began sponsoring cars.

One of the more prominent designs came in 1989 when Tide detergent sponsored Darrell

Waltrip, a three-time champion, with the laundry detergent’s bright orange circular logo adorning the hood. Sports journalist Mark Yost asserts that two tendencies were observed in the

1980s: corporate sponsors discovered that NASCAR fans were incredibly brand loyal, and nearly half were women.58 Fans of the sport bought Tide even though it cost more than other detergents because of sponsor appreciation and driver support. The transition into the domestic realm was also tied to the sport’s growing popularity, mostly due to the 1979 Daytona 500 and its wild finish featuring Petty eking out a victory and Cale Yarborough and the Allison brothers fighting in the infield, all shown live.59 Tim Richmond sporting Folger’s coffee further demonstrated how the sport could sell various products using distinct personalities.

For Moise, the increased attention brought a whole different kind of sponsor: Pure Silk, a shaving cream marketed to women. Crisco, the shortening product, sponsored Moise early in her career, making a tie between the woman behind the wheel and the kitchen. However, the sponsorship with Pure Silk displays the link between a feminized product and the targeted gender. Her sponsorship also demonstrates a company recognizing the potential of focusing specifically on female NASCAR fans, which other sponsors had ignored. One of the comments from the YouTube clip of the Pure Silk advertisement with Moise states that the advertisement

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was shown during commercial breaks for daytime soap operas, programs targeting women. If true, such a decision indicates that NASCAR and its associated companies were reaching beyond its established fan base to find new revenue.

What confounds the sponsorship is the actual commercial itself, as Moise jumps between two worlds. In the first part, she is a racecar driver, displaying what would align with masculine traits. The scene then cuts to Moise using Pure Silk as she shaves her legs, before the next scene when she appears in a short dress like a model of hyper-feminized beauty. Moise, in the commercial, is catering to Judith Butler’s notions of performing gender by at first establishing herself as masculine, an entity that allows her to fit in on the track, and then adopting feminine traits that make her attractive off of it.60 In addition, the dichotomy of roles that Moise portrays allows her to jump from being a competitor to being, as Petty would say, a lady, thus adhering to southern tropes.

Moise never found success at the Cup level but did race for 12 years in the second level, though in 1992 and 1997, she raced in just one event each. Her statistics are those of an average driver, but the numbers are mitigated by the fact that Moise never secured sponsorship with one of the better-funded and established racing organizations. That she was able to enjoy a career as long as she did is paramount, as it would appear that a sense of acceptance with regard to female drivers—or at least one token driver—had come over the sport. Or so it seemed.

Inhospitable Welcoming

For a sport that had made it difficult for anyone other than White males to gain entry, the

1991 season brought about an anomaly—two female drivers in the field at the same time. From one point of view, NASCAR looked as though it was reverting to its form of the 1960s with an

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open garage policy. That attitude is optimistic as Shawna Robinson’s move into the sport met with the kind of reaction associated with moral panic.61 The resistance Robinson endured is likely because she was a better driver than Moise and challenged male drivers. No better example of this issue exists than the 1994 race in Atlanta in the minor league, Nationwide

(XFINITY as of 2015) series.

Robinson had done something that no female driver had previously—earn the for a NASCAR race. Robinson’s qualifying success is worth analyzing. Her result indicated that a woman driver in proper equipment could equal and best the men that comprised the field. As a reward, fellow driver, and noted Christian, presented Robinson with a rose.62 Instead, the gesture served to reinforce her femininity and lessen her status because there are no other mentions of a driver being given a rose for such a feat. Additionally,

Nemechek reinforces southern White gender norms, playing southern gentlemen with the gift, a gesture seemingly out of place at a racetrack.

Robinson’s memorable race at Atlanta grew even more so when the race began. She led the field to the green flag with the field close behind. As she raced into Turn 3, Mike Wallace, brother to Cup champion , slid to her inside, taking air off her spoiler (the rear of the car), causing her to wiggle and then wreck, taking out Nemechek in the process. Jill Lieber detailed the incident and mentioned that there had been rumblings in the garage that Wallace planned to take out Robinson, a claim Wallace later denied.63 Nemechek, however, grabbed a microphone shortly after exiting his car and said, “I’d heard from people before the race that he was going to take some air off her spoiler and get her loose.” Nemechek, the 1992 Grand

National champion, alleged, “I figured he was running his mouth, but he did exactly that. Going three across on the first lap is a big risk. People could have gotten hurt. You don’t pull a stunt

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like that.”64 For drivers to disagree is a familiar ritual, but Nemechek’s place in the sport gave his words credence even if no one else came to support him.

This episode offers a point of ingress to examine NASCAR garage culture. One of the first things to mention is that the NASCAR garage acts as an informal fraternity, where stories and rumors circulate with alacrity. Ben Shackleford argues that the ritualized nature of the

NASCAR season keeps men teamed together and in frequent contact with other male-exclusive groups and breeds a closed masculine community.65 If Wallace had been “running his mouth,” then Nemechek surely would have heard about it, but for Nemechek to say something publicly is surprising. When asked why Wallace would want to risk such a move to take out Robinson,

Nemechek responded by saying that it “wouldn’t be politically correct to answer that.”66 The obvious implication is that Wallace was protecting the sport from being further invaded by women, defending old ideals and practices from change. Lieber acknowledges this aspect by opening her article with “after a decade of trying to make it in the macho world of motorsports,” showing how much NASCAR still sat as an enclave for maleness.67 Robinson’s unfavorable treatment parallels that faced by Katie Hnida and her attempt to play college football.

Unwelcomed Advances

Few male-dominated sports have faced any challenges to their protected realms. Women have stayed away from both the National Basketball Association and . In contrast, the National Hockey League and the Professional Golfers’ Association have seen

Manon Rhéaume and Michelle Wie, respectively, make abbreviated forays into their circles.

Those challenges met with more hype than resistance, and both women soon found themselves

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back in their anticipated worlds. But Hnida also challenged expectations and was greeted with personal violence, further showcasing the difficulties in crossing the gender line.

In 1999, Katie Hnida joined the University of Colorado football team as a placekicker.

Her coach, Gary Barnett, established a culture that treated her as unwelcome, backed by his assertion that “none of the players wanted her on the team.”68 With Barnett offering little public support, there is no surprise that the players adopted his attitude and treated Hnida with derision.

During practices, the players often groped her, while some rubbed themselves on her while calling her names.69

A summer night before the 2000 season, Hnida visited one of her teammates. She tells how the player began kissing her, failed to stop when she pleaded him to, and then raped her.

Hnida avoided discussing the matter for fear of reprisal from her rapist and the other players and because of the fear of a media circus that might develop.70 Barnett claims that he would have taken care of the matter, saying, “not one time did I ever see or hear about anybody treating her wrong. I don’t believe she was sexually harassed. I don’t believe our players would do that.

They’d be in too much trouble with me.”71 Hnida later left the University of Colorado, suffered from depression, but transferred to the University of New Mexico, where she made the football team and became the third woman to in collegiate football. Hnida’s story is a reminder of the triumph of the human spirit and the viciousness of masculine worlds.

Hnida’s ordeal illustrates how a masculine system can mistreat women to preserve the male domain. That the coach failed to show her better treatment or understand how the situation needed more active management indicates both a fundamental ignorance, if not complicit acceptance, and the problems with institutional power. While Hnida never pressed charges, she finally expressed her trauma with her comments, causing not only Barnett’s expulsion but also

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the school’s president and an overhaul of the football program. The justice that ensued is light compared to what Hnida faced though the episode brought needed attention to reform the institutional structures.

In comparison, NASCAR found no reason for any kind of disciplinary action after

Wallace wrecked Robinson, which at speeds of nearly 180 mph was a life-threatening maneuver.

The governing body stated that it “looked into” the situation but found no reason to do anything about it. That Robinson survived and continued racing is a testament to her own will, but the incident did not catalyze immediate change.

Both of these incidents illustrate the difficulty for a woman to break into these domains of maleness. In Crashing the Old Boys’ Network, David Salter discusses these issues, noting the limitations for women in college athletics, even with the passage of Title IX, and their difficulties in professional sports and media. Plainly stated, “men, money, and the media control modern-day sports,” which puts women at a disadvantage to opportunities and success, and more so in masculine worlds, such as football or auto racing.72 In NASCAR, a subculture based in the

South that had for so long complicated women’s ability to race, Robinson’s success brought a moral panic, finding a pinnacle with Wallace attempting to censor any kind of change. Southern ideology is at the root. When preserving culture, historian Stephen A. Smith purports that the comments of John Bell Williams, a former governor of Mississippi, establish a belief system that runs through what once were the confederate states. Williams stated that “pride in the past remains an important aspect of our lives,” and that the South’s image must be “a faithful one, in keeping with the traditions, heritage, achievements, history, and customs, ancient and modern.”73

That ideology is a fluid one but based upon a White patriarchal perspective and can be taken to imply that Wallace had the right to wreck Robinson to prevent her advancement.

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The overlooked aspect of Robinson’s participation is how it signaled an evolving target audience. As sociologist M. Graham Spann noted in his examination of NASCAR fan demographics, nearly forty percent were women, and that number purportedly reached about fifty percent at one time.74 The business model for NASCAR relies upon direct sponsorship between corporations and teams/drivers, making the driver a pseudo-spokesperson for their sponsor. Robinson found success with a decidedly feminine sponsor, much as Moise had done.

The company Vassarette teamed up with her, plastering their logo on a pink car (though unfortunately, no commercials exist on YouTube portraying the relationship).

That the union between Robinson and Vassarette lasted just one year due to several factors, such as her lack of success, the company not hitting their target market, or just a wrong business decision. However, the initial idea to have the two join indicated an exploration and exploitation of a market segment that had yet to be capitalized. That notion works in conjunction with Kathy Sheldon’s curiously titled piece, “Why Chicks Dig NASCAR,” which investigates the reasons why female fans find interest in the sport. Sheldon recognizes that forty percent of the fans are female while extolling the reasons that they follow the sport range from the allure of the vehicles to enjoying “bad boys,” to conversely enjoying that the drivers also act like they were “raised right” by thanking their sponsors and being seemingly polite.75

Detours

Women constitute a large segment of the fan base, making the lack of success by women drivers increasingly perplexing. With the same background in racing as her counterparts, once a woman driver reached the Cup level and garnered financial and professional support, she should

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be able to find some modicum of success. This mindset is what accompanied into the sport.

When Danica Patrick splashed into IndyCar, a clamor began in NASCAR to find someone who could fill the same role. With Robinson out of the sport and focused on motherhood, there was no woman to parallel the celebrity attention that Patrick had brought to the far less popular open-wheel racing. Lee Spencer’s article “Who is NASCAR’s Danica?” looked at the potential drivers to fill this role, with Erin Crocker situated as the lead prospect.76

Crocker began racing when she was seven and became the first woman to win a World of

Outlaws sprint-car race. Her success led to sign her to his organization in the hopes that he could sign her as a Cup driver. Something never clicked. In Crocker’s first two races in the minor league Busch Series, she wrecked. She then moved down to the Trucks and

ARCA series for further development. While she showed some promise in ARCA, she never attained success against the better talent in the Trucks. She raced a Trucks season in 2005, 25 races, but never manage a top-ten finish. Her starting position average of 24.4 was followed by an average finishing position of 26.2, providing the statistical summation that she was not a quality driver.

Crocker’s lack of success was only one issue. One of the team’s drivers, Jeremy

Mayfield, alleged that Evernham was allocating too much of the team’s resources to helping

Crocker and not enough attention elsewhere. Though that assertion may come from Mayfield’s disappointment at his on-track struggles, another possibility appeared. During the 2006 season, rumors swirled in the garage that Evernham and Crocker were dating, seemingly confirmed when Evernham divorced his wife of nineteen years. This relationship brought questions about

Crocker’s merits as a driver.

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That the two wed in 2009 is one thing, but at the time, the relationship mitigated the support that Crocker received and her popularity. Once again, the masculine sport had subsumed a woman driver and positioned her in a place of minuscule regard, placing her back in the familiar construct of wife. The frustration with the inability to shape Crocker into a Cup-level talent came as a setback for women in NASCAR. Perhaps there are other ways of looking at how women have positioned themselves in the sport.

When Dale Earnhardt Sr. began building his race team, he leaned on his wife Teresa for help. Lars Anderson profiled Teresa and how, when her husband died at Daytona in 2001, she took over the lead role.77 The article analyzes how she managed the company—though some might argue that she was detrimental to the company, failing to keep her stepson and popular driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. to another team and watching the organization lose revenue after she sold it. The relationship with Jr. was at the heart of the matter, as he had hoped to take over the organization. Later, however, when Jr. started building his Busch/Nationwide team, he stayed in the family and put his sister, , in charge. The Earnhardts indicate that women have a place in NASCAR and hold leadership roles and other positions in the sport.

Women have found other roles in NASCAR as well. Kathy Sheldon offered a profile of

Nicole Addison, who became the first female pit crew member in the modern age.78 That

Addison could find a spot on a pit crew is remarkable as the crew is where the informal fraternity mentioned earlier becomes established. Her inclusion in a team demonstrates that women can succeed in various roles in the NASCAR world. Similarly, John Varrasi profiled Tiffany Daniels, who worked as a support engineer for Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing.79 Though Daniels hoped to race in NASCAR one day, she never did, instead focusing on developing “a robust front-end system that can withstand the extreme condition on the racetrack and, at the same time, provide

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optimum driver comfort and safety behind the wheel.”80 Her place in the workforce demonstrates that NASCAR has evolved to allow a woman to assist in the technical aspects of racing.

Still, other women have found roles as race officials, from those on the pit road to those who have held a flag-stand position. Additionally, television coverage has also moved to include female pit reporters. and have been two of the familiar faces associated with this coverage. Salter remarked that women covering sports on TV and gaining the trust of the viewers was one of the more difficult aspects of their inclusion in the sporting world.81 Media journalist Richard Dietsch, of Sports Illustrated and The Athletic, follows this topic and has frequently commented on the difficulties of women having to balance being attractive, knowledgeable, and maintaining their careers as sports journalists.

A more striking aspect in NASCAR is that has, since 2009, held the position of CEO for International Speedway Corporation, the organization that owns most of the tracks on the NASCAR schedule. She also sits on the board of directors for NASCAR, though these positions for Kennedy are not surprising as she is the granddaughter of the sport’s founder. Her relationship to the sport is, therefore, similar to , Erin Crocker, and

Patty Moise, who used relationships with men to gain acceptance in the sport. The crude depiction is not meant to denounce their abilities but instead exemplify the patriarchy in

NASCAR runs. The argument here is that NASCAR’s culture provides an inherent difficulty in permitting, accepting, and encouraging women to flourish.

Danica Patrick

In 2010, Patrick began testing the possibility of switching to NASCAR by competing in

13 Nationwide races. Her statistics suggested that her chances of success were minimal as she

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finished only ten of the races and had an average starting position of 26.9 with a finishing position of 28.0. One thing holding Patrick back was the difficulty for an open-wheel racer, which enjoys better control of the car due to massive aerodynamic downforce and lighter weight, to make a move to the 3,200-pound car used in NASCAR. That three-time IndyCar champion

Dario Franchitti had moved to NASCAR and failed was cited as the contemporary example of this problem.

Patrick again raced in the Nationwide series in 2011, this time twelve events but with marked improvement, notching one top-five, three top-tens, and improving her starting position to 18.2 and her finishing position to 17.4. Those results are modest but show an increased acclimation to the sport. Seemingly, that was all the reinforcement needed. Patrick’s longtime sponsor in IndyCar, GoDaddy.com, invested the millions required to assist her transition to

NASCAR. Patrick thus became the first woman driver to benefit from the requisite financial backing to put her in upper-echelon equipment. In the process, she ostensibly became the sport’s modern-day guinea pig, one who could establish or deny the legitimacy of women drivers.

Her move to NASCAR full time in 2012 brought her detractors to the fore. Richard Petty had stated that he did not feel the sport was for women when asked in 2006. That comment, in and of itself, however, is not the sole reason for her mixed reception. Some felt that her results in

IndyCar, consisting of 115 races over seven years with just one win and seven podium finishes meant that she had failed to prove that she was a good racer. This second criticism lobbed toward

Patrick was stealing a sponsor who might have backed a better driver.

The sponsor relationship for Patrick has been a point of emphasis. The GoDaddy company had frequently sold itself through sex appeal, with scantily clad women emblazoned with the GoDaddy logo. As part of her sponsorship duties, Patrick has appeared in GoDaddy

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commercials, though she did not appear in a or anything similar. However, Patrick did embrace her sex appeal by appearing in a spread for FHM in 2003 and then in Sports

Illustrated’s 2009 swimsuit issue. The sentiment expressed by many is that she was just a novelty item, a piece of eye candy, but still not a hardened driver. The truth is that Patrick bargained her body for capital, knowing that she needed financial backing to race.

The aspect of sex appeal is a complex one to diffuse. Social scientist Toby Miller notes how the female athlete changed from being an Avon lady to one empowered by a company like

Nike in the 1990s.82 This remark notes the shift in the portrayal of female athletes, allowing for an embrace of the female form while also realizing the marketing potential. This idea follows

Miller’s overall assertion that the athletically toned Sportsex body is meant to be looked at and at the forefront of contemporary capitalism.83 Sex appeal becomes a significant concern for athletes, more so for women, as they work under the male gaze. This construct can be related to what Marc O’Day calls “action babe cinema.” O’Day notes how the rise of “action babes,” attractive women in action films who control the narrative, have supplanted men by becoming a figure that is active and passive at the same time.84 These women are to be appreciated for their ability to perform an action hero’s role while also being beautiful. Female athletes have assumed a similar position.

Calling women drivers athletes, or any driver an athlete has been an argument that has circulated in the popular press. Former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb started the debate on this issue in 2013. When asked about NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson on “Fox Sports Live,”

McNabb stated that Johnson was “absolutely” not an athlete. He backed up his claim by saying,

“He sits in a car, and he drives, that doesn’t make you athletic… what athletically is he doing?”85

The sport’s drivers flooded McNabb with comments detailing the work and skill involved in

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piloting a 3,200-pound car with the speed and finesse required to succeed. Much of the debate relies on the difficulty in seeing the effort required to race and instead seeing a driver in a car doing something that resembles the quotidian for so many people. But to handle the G-forces and handle a car requires skills, strength, and agility. Just because drivers are encased in a fire- retardant uniform does not mean they are any less of an athlete than someone who shows more skin or a sculpted body.

For a sport like NASCAR, where the driver is directly associated with the sponsor, rather than a team or in the arena as a solo competitor, Patrick’s situation mirrors how her body is integral to what is sold to the public. While each driver markets their looks as part of their public image, Patrick did something other drivers have not. Sports, such as tennis, gymnastics, golf, swimming, and figure skating, for example, work as showcases for the body, with women commonly displaying more skin than men. However, Patrick, shielded first by an automobile and again by a fire-retardant suit, does not have the same forum for flesh. But in 2003, she posed for the magazine FHM for a series of photos that were meant to showcase her body. The aptly named site BroBible offered one perspective about the shoot by stating that “way back in 2003 before anyone had ever heard of her, she did a very racy photoshoot for FHM in which they introduced her to the world as arguably the sexiest race car driver on the planet.”86 Thus, the public attention surrounding Patrick allowed her to court the public and made her a household name but did not reveal anything about her driving prowess. Figure 3.1 offers a glimpse of the photoshoot while noting that this image also appeared in Patrick’s 2006 autobiography Crossing the Line.

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Figure 3.1 – Patrick used one of the photographs that appeared in the magazine FHM in her autobiography, Crossing the Line (2006). Sitting to the left of the picture is the caption: A picture is worth a thousand words… or more. (Credit: George Holz / Contour Photos)

The problem that seeped into this relationship was that she did ingratiate herself with the other drivers by appearing in a bikini as some saw her as less than a driver. Furthermore, southern ideology might question whether she is portraying the notion of being a lady. There is a difference between the Victorian ideal of a lady, the one to which Richard Petty likely ascribes, and a modernized version based on independence, femininity, and womanhood. Hence, Patrick, in embracing her woman-ness, may be showing off a fit, strong figure more closely associated with empowerment, rather than one confined to house and hearth.

Patrick found herself in a difficult place. Her gender, background, and appeal collectively made her the focus of public attention while singling her out from the other drivers. What has occurred has been an interesting divide. Petty leads the one side by stating in February of 2014

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that Patrick would win “if everybody else stayed home,” and “if she’d have been a male, nobody would ever know if she’d showed up at a racetrack.”87 Petty is making remarks about two aspects regarding Patrick: first, questioning her talent, and second, criticizing the attention that she received while accomplishing little. This kind of slight is something that continues to follow

Patrick.

While in IndyCar, SpeedTV personality nicknamed Patrick, Princess

Sparkle Pony. His remark became a common way to refer to her, finding its way in comments and Reddit. In one way, the name is a combination of the Hasbro toys, My Little Pony and

Princess Twilight Sparkle. The toys are commonly associated with young girls and serve as a marker or femininity. A second way of analyzing the nickname is to use Sparkle Pony Princess as defined on UrbanDictionary.com, a Christine—a deity, or someone who is both smart and gorgeous. 88 These terms would intone a somewhat favorable impression, but fans have taken to using it derisively. Articles on ESPN.com, FOXSports.com, or racing site Frontstretch.com featuring Patrick generate continual references to Princess Sparkle Pony and question her ability.

But other nicknames emerged, as in one ESPN.com chat, a fan called her Danica Patwreck, while another referred to her as Danicrash.89 These remarks indicate that many fans have yet to adjust to a woman driver, being hyper-critical of her driving while also showing a combined practice of protecting a southern sport and a male domain. These critical comments and jeering nicknames are the product of a small hive mind in the sport as Patrick has been one of

NASCAR’s most popular drivers. With all eyes on her, she experiences different challenges.

That Patrick faced a problematic reception belies a couple of other conceits. The first is the aspect of business. As the face and spokesperson for GoDaddy, her sponsor commitments were robust. She also used what helped her to get an IndyCar ride in the first place, her feminine

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beauty. Patrick acknowledged this necessity by stating, “I’m a girl and to say that I can’t use being a girl doesn’t make any sense. In this world, there is so much competition out there, that you have to use what you have to make sponsors happy.” 90 Being in a prominent position also brought the pressure of representing women in general. Many young girls and women, along with a small number of male fans, wore Patrick regalia at the track. Patrick served as a role model to young girls and a point of entry for their interest in the sport while also creating commonality for father-daughter bonding. Thus, Patrick held the complicated position of inspiring young women while also trying to connect with “NASCAR Dads.”

These aspects resonate with the business practices that the South has employed to its advantage in a neoliberal capitalist economy. Cobb outlines how the South lured businesses in the post-WWII South with cheap labor and land, with the inclusion of government subsidies, but also under the guise that these enterprises run without the hurdle of unionized workers.91 He argues that the regional South will do what is best for itself but within its framework. Though

Cobb pushes for a more global NASCAR in his essay, believing that the sport could become a worldwide export, the sport has instead maintained a status quo toward acceptance.

Perhaps a better parallel to Patrick’s emergence in NASCAR is historian Marko

Maunalu’s examination of BMW’s move into Spartanburg, South Carolina. Manualu posits that

South Carolina lured the German company into building a factory to keep the town solvent after the textile industry had been damaged by companies moving production to cheaper locales.92

That Spartanburg actively pursued the German company was a sign of the desire to have outside investment, going beyond US borders to sustain its existence. In this instance, Patrick represents a comparable way of bringing in new money through her sponsorship and the added media attention that entices fans to a sport that had undergone a hiatus and could benefit from added

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intrigue. In a way, Patrick helps keep NASCAR solvent and provides a way to market itself to women while still working within the established framework of how the sport continues to do business.

That an audible cheer sounded over the roar of forty-three 900-horsepower cars when

Patrick led laps demonstrates some acceptance by the fans, though every athlete has detractors.

Her career cannot be defined by her on-track results but by her reach beyond those numbers. In

2013, her first full year racing in Cup, she earned just one top-ten and posted an average starting position of 30.1 and finishing position of 26.1, hardly statistics that make her stand out. She attempted to transition from one form of racing to another, and she was never able to flourish even while driving some of the best equipment in the garage. Her second season showed some improvement, as she earned three top-tens and improved both her starting position, to 22.3, and her finishing position, to 23.7, but these kinds of results, are where she hovered for her entire career in the sport, which lasted until the end of the 2017 season. She never could get over the hump and showcase her talent, but the garage always knew of her presence.

One aspect that drew attention was her relationship with fellow driver Ricky Stenhouse,

Jr. When the two publicly announced they were dating before the 2014 Daytona 500, the relationship became tabloid fodder, both for the NASCAR press and for those who do not regularly cover the sport, such as the website TMZ.com. Their pairing became more of a story than their racing, bringing melodramatic interpretations when the two drivers wrecked each other twice during the 2014 season. Besides, speculation arose as to whether Patrick might be pregnant or whether it was in her plans. While driving in NASCAR, she refrained from marrying and never became pregnant, eschewing the southern ideals of marriage and motherhood in the normative construction of femininity traditionalized in the South.

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For female athletes, a discussion regarding pregnancy adds complications to their careers and heightened media scrutiny. Victorian values provide hurdles that have complicated the lives of women from the mid-1800s into the 21st century. Ellen Gerber proclaimed that Victorian women were once encouraged to remain indoors and avoid strenuous activity so that “full attention could be devoted to that most womanly of all behaviors, motherhood.”93 The New

South, in many ways, has based their cultural ethos on aristocratic principles such as those of the

Victorian age and made it difficult for women to break from confined expectations. Women athletes still find themselves in the awkward position of trying to succeed versus adhering to the goals of “marriage and motherhood.”94 This familiar southern expectation avoids the darker side of motherhood and how it has denied women opportunities and constrained them socially, politically, and personally.95 In concert, attempts to avoid motherhood or frequent pregnancy created a situation where avoiding sex, like feigning illness, only reinforced notions of women’s delicate nature.96

Because of the expectation of motherhood, teams, sponsors, and fans may express concern about the social contract. Male athletes, barring injury, enjoy a privilege that fans and backers develop a sense of loyalty because of the promise of following a career. In contrast, when a female athlete conforms to societal expectations and becomes pregnant, her career endures an interruption that leaves her vulnerable. This circumstance brings a lack of trust and a question of motives, as some fans may see drivers, such as Moise or Crocker, as using their minor success to find a husband and move to their prescribed role.

Patrick’s move to NASCAR had led to speculation that more women drivers might find a home in the sport, but few have followed. Though other racing series, such as IndyCar and the

National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), continue to field women, NASCAR shows little in the

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way of change. That and Chrissie Wallace (ironically, the daughter of the aforementioned Mike Wallace) struggled to find sponsorship shows poor results, and them not having made their way to the Cup level suggests that Patrick is an anomaly. became the latest in 2019, but she had yet to show if she would last, even with strong backing from Ford. Change regarding gender and NASCAR will come only when a future driver earns results that make it impossible to ignore her, and the sport welcomes a paradigm shift that does not treat women as a sideshow. NASCAR and the South can be slow to change, as evidenced since Janet Guthrie’s attempts in the sport in the 1970s. These attitudes do not just permeate the gender roles that surround the sport; they address their sense of sexuality as well.

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CHAPTER 3 – ENDNOTES

1 Richard Petty in an Associated Press article following up on Danica Patrick’s second star in the Indianapolis 500, “Sport for Kings Only: Petty Not a Fan of Women Drivers,” ESPN.com, http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/news/story?seriesId=2&id=2458323.

2 Terry Blount, “Blount’s Blitz: Junior vs. Kyle Busch Just What NASCAR Needs,” ESPN.com, May 6, 2008, https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/cup/columns/story?columnist=blount_terry&id=3383555.

3 Elizabeth C. Hirschman, “Men, Dogs, Guns, and Cars: The Semiotics of Rugged Individualism,” Journal of Advertising 32, no. 1 (April 1, 2003): 9–22.

4 Shackleford, “Masculinity, Hierarchy, and the Auto Racing Fraternity,” 180–96.

5 Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama (Warner Books, 2006), 6.

6 Allan C. Brownfeld, “The Crisis of Southern Identity,” The North American Review 252, no. 6 (November 1, 1967): 23–26.

7 Brownfeld.

8 Douglas A., Hurt, “Dialed In? Geographic Expansion and Regional Identity in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series,” Southeastern Geographer 45, no. 1 (2005): 120–37, https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2005.0010.

9 Douglas A., Hurt, “Dialed In? Geographic Expansion and Regional Identity in NASCAR’s Nextel Cup Series,” Southeastern Geographer 45, no. 1 (2005): 120–37, https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2005.0010.

10 Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder, “Something Less than a Driver: Toward an Understanding of Gendered Bodies in Motorsport,” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 33, no. 4 (November 1, 2009): 411–26, https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723509350611.

11 Tom Wolfe, “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson - Tom Wolfe Story,” Esquire, March 1965, http://www.esquire.com/features/life-of-junior-johnson-tom-wolfe-0365?src=soc_fcbk.

12 Gary Drebelbis, and Diana White, “Class of 1996 - Tim Richmond,” ND, http://www.ashlandcosportshof.org/Tim_Richmond.html.

13 Janice M. Irvine, “Transient Feelings: Sex Panics and the Politics of Emotion,” in Herdt, Gilbert, ed. Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 235.

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14 Janice M. Irvine, “Transient Feelings: Sex Panics and the Politics of Emotion,” in Herdt, Gilbert, ed. Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 246.

15 Gary W. Dowsett, “Dangerous Desires and Post-Queer Hiv Prevention: Rethinking Community, Incitement and Intervention,” Social Theory & Health 7, no. 3 (August 1, 2009): 218–40, https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2009.1.

16 Gary W. Dowsett, “Dangerous Desires and Post-Queer Hiv Prevention: Rethinking Community, Incitement and Intervention,” Social Theory & Health 7, no. 3 (August 1, 2009): 218–40, https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2009.1.

17 Lee Sanghak and Paul M. Pedersen, “Commercialization and Automobile Racing in the United States: A Case Study of the Rise of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR),” International Journal of Applied Sports Sciences 21, no. 2 (December 2009): 76– 92.

18 Lee Sanghak and Paul M. Pedersen, “Commercialization and Automobile Racing in the United States: A Case Study of the Rise of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR),” International Journal of Applied Sports Sciences 21, no. 2 (December 2009): 76– 92.

19 William M. Willia O’Barr, Doug Cameron, Michael Paxton, Peter Geary, Sherry Nemmers, Michael Wilke, Michael S. Kimmel, Tyson Smith, and Simon Bowden, “Roundtable on Advertising and the New Masculinities,” Advertising & Society Review 5, no. 4 (2004). http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/advertising_and_society_review/v005/5.4roundtable.html.

20 O’Barr et al.

21 O’Barr et al.

22 O’Barr et al., “Roundtable on Advertising and the New Masculinities.”

23 Lawrence Hugenberg and Barbara Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’: Nascar, American Values, and Fandom,” The Journal of Popular Culture 41 (July 15, 2008): 635–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00540.x.

24 Lawrence Hugenberg and Barbara Hugenberg, “If It Ain’t Rubbin’, It Ain’t Racin’: Nascar, American Values, and Fandom,” The Journal of Popular Culture 41 (July 15, 2008): 635–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00540.x.

25 . “A Trend Athletes Strongly Endorse,” August 30, 1987. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-08-30-sp-4917-story.html.

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26 Arthur Friedman, “Vassarette Goes Vroom,” WWD, 2005, 8.

27 Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War, 289.

28 Goldfield, 288.

29 Drew Davison, “Fans at Speedway Ignore Nascar Requests Not to Fly Confederate Flags.” charlotteobserver, November 9, 2015, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto- racing/thatsracin/article43725435.html.

30 Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 112.

31 Danica Patrick and Laura Morton, Danica: Crossing the Line (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).

32 Norma Jones, “Boogity, Boogity, Boogity, Let’s Go Racing…Girls? Female NASCAR Drivers,” in Coombs, Danielle Sarver, and Bob Batchelor, eds. American History Through American Sports: From Colonial Lacrosse to Extreme Sports 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger, 2013), 282.

33 Peter Golenbock, Nascar Confidential: Stories of the Men and Women Who Made Stock Car Racing Great (St. Paul, MN: Motorbooks International, 2004), 11.

34 Golenbock, 16.

35 Katharine Q. Seelye, “Vicki Wood, Who Broke Car-Racing Gender Barriers, Dies at 101,” The New York Times, June 12, 2020, sec. Sports, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/sports/autoracing/vicki-wood-dead.html.

36 Seelye.

37 Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C., 2000), 104.

38 Daniel, 104.

39 Judith Halberstam, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (: Beacon Press, 2012), preface.

40 Allison Glock, “Redefining the Southern Belle,” Garden & Gun, September 2011, http://gardenandgun.com/article/southern-women.

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41 Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 15.

42 Glinda Fountain Hall, “Inverting the Southern Belle: Romance Writers Redefine Gender Myths,” Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 1 (February 2008): 37–55.

43 Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States, Enl. ed (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

44 Daniel, Lost Revolutions, 91.

45 Todd McCarthy, Fast Women: The Legendary Ladies of Racing, 1st ed (New York: Miramax Books/Hyperion, 2007), 15.

46 C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 19.

47 James C. Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2.

48 Janet Guthrie, Janet Guthrie: A Life at Full Throttle (Wilmington, Del: Sport Media Pub, 2005), 215.

49 Guthrie, 197.

50 Guthrie, 200.

51 “Sport for Kings Only: Petty Not a Fan of Women Drivers,” ESPN.com, accessed January 6, 2015, http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/news/story?seriesId=2&id=2458323.

52 Hall, “Inverting the Southern Belle.”

53 Anne Rivers Siddons, Heartbreak Hotel, 1st Pocket Books trade pbk. ed. (New York: Pocket Books, 2007), quoted in Goldfield, David R. Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 178.

54 Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War, 2002, 178.

55 Richard Cullen Rath, “Echo and Narcissus: The Afrocentric Pragmatism of W. E. B. Du Bois,” The Journal of American History 84, no. 2 (September 1, 1997): 461–95, https://doi.org/10.2307/2952567.

56 Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War, 2002, 7.

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57 Carol Fitzgerald, “Women of Nascar: Patty Moise, from Speeding Tickets to Victory Lane,” Yahoo Sports, accessed December 24, 2014, http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/blog/from_the_marbles/post/Women-of-NASCAR-Patty-Moise- from-speeding-tick?urn=nascar,232390.

58 Yost, The 200-Mph Billboard, 33.

59 Mark Bechtel, He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back: The True Story of the Year the King, Jaws, Earnhardt, and the Rest of NASCAR’s Feudin’, Fightin’ Good Ol’ Boys Put Stock Car Racing on the Map (New York: Back Bay Books, 2011).

60 Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York ; London: Routledge, 2004), 10.

61 Gilbert Herdt, “Introduction: Moral Panics, Sexual Rights, and Cultural Anger,” in Gilbert Herdt, ed., Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1.

62 Jill Lieber, “Shawna Robinson,” SI.com, March 21, 1994, http://www.si.com/vault/1994/03/21/130681/shawna-robinson.

63 Lieber.

64 Lieber.

65 Ben Shackleford, “Masculinity, the Auto Racing Fraternity, and the Technological Sublime: The Pit Stop as a Celebration of Social Roles,” in Roger Horowitz, Boys and Their Toys?: Masculinity, Technology, and Class in America (New York: Routledge, 2001).

66 Lieber, “Shawna Robinson.”

67 Lieber.

68 Rick Reilly, “Another Victim at Colorado.” SI.com, December 31, 2014. http://www.si.com/more-sports/2010/01/01/hnida.

69 Rick Reilly, “Another Victim at Colorado,” SI.com, December 31, 2014, http://www.si.com/more-sports/2010/01/01/hnida.

70 Reilly.

71 Reilly.

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72 David F. Salter, Crashing the Old Boys’ Network: The Tragedies and Triumphs of Girls and Women in Sports (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1996), 10.

73 Stephen A. Smith, “The Old South Myth as a Contemporary Southern Commodity,” The Journal of Popular Culture 16, no. 3 (1982): 22–29, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022- 3840.1982.1603_22.x.

74 M. Graham Spann, “Nascar Racing Fans: Cranking up an Empirical Approach,” The Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 2 (2002): 352–60, https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5931.00010.

75 Kathy Sheldon, “Why Chicks Dig Nascar,” Sporting News 225, no. 30 (July 23, 2001): 52.

76 Lee Spencer, “Who Is Nascar’s Danica?,” Sporting News 229, no. 26 (2005): 14–15.

77 Lars Anderson, “The Woman in the Driver's Seat (Cover Story),” Sports Illustrated 100 (Earnhardt’s Tribute 2004): 56–57.

78 Kathy Kathy Sheldon, “Girl Power,” Sporting News 230, no. 26 (June 30, 2006): 32–33.“Girl Power.” Sporting News 230, no. 26 (June 30, 2006): 32–33.

79 John Varrasi, “Input Output,” Mechanical Engineering 132, no. 3 (March 2010): 64–64.

80 Varrasi.

81 Salter, Crashing the Old Boys’ Network, 127.

82 Miller, Toby, Sportsex (Temple University Press, 2001), 11.

83 Miller, Toby, 14.

84 Marc O’Day, “Beauty in Motion: Gender, Spectacle and action babe cinema,” in Yvonne Tasker, ed., Action and Adventure Cinema (London ; New York: Routledge, 2004), 204.

85 Jordan Bianchi, “Donovan Mcnabb: Nascar Drivers Aren’t Athletes,” SBNation.com, November 16, 2013, https://www.sbnation.com/nascar/2013/11/16/5111200/donovan-mcnabb- nascar-drivers-athletes-jimmie-johnson.

86 Douglas BroBible, “Throwback Thursday: Danica Patrick, Before She Was Famous, Did A Very Racy Photo Shoot For ‘FHM,’” BroBible (blog), accessed July 20, 2020, https://brobible.com/girls/article/danica-patrick-fhm-photo-shoot-april-2003/.

87 “Petty: Danica Will Win If Everybody Stays Home,” ESPN.com, accessed January 6, 2015, http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/10431626/nascar-hall-famer-richard-petty-says- danica-patrick-never-win-sprint-cup-race.

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88 “Sparkle Pony Princess,” Urban Dictionary, accessed January 7, 2015, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sparkle+pony+princess&defid=4648111.

89 “Chat with David Newton,” ESPN.com, accessed January 7, 2015, http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/chat/_/id/45922/nascar-with-newton.

90 Sandra MacWatters, “Junior Nation: Is It Threatened by Danica Patrick’s Popularity? | Bleacher Report | Latest News, Videos and Highlights,” Bleacher Report, March 27, 2012, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1118228-junior-nation-is-it-threatened-by-danica-patricks- popularity.

91 James Cobb, “Beyond the “Y’all Wall”: The American South Goes Global,” in Globalization and the American South (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 1-18.

92 Marko Maunula, "Another Southern Paradox: The Arrival of Foreign Corporations - Change and Continuity in Spartanburg, South Carolina," in Guten Tag, Y’all: Globalization and the South Carolina Piedmont, 1950-2000 (Athens: Univ Of Georgia Press, 2010), 164-184.

93 Ellen Gerber, “Chronicle of Participation,” in Ellen W. Gerber et al., The American Woman in Sport, Addison-Wesley Series in the Social Significance of Sport (Reading, Mass: Addison- Wesley Pub. Co, 1974), 10.

94 Jan Felshin, “The Dialectics of Woman and Sport,” in Ellen W. Gerber et al., 204.

95 Scott, The Southern Lady, 38-9.

96 Ellen Gerber, “Chronicle of Participation,” in Ellen W. Gerber et al., The American Woman in Sport, 10.

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CHAPTER 4

MEDIA AND NASCAR: FILM AND MUSIC AS ACCOMPANIMENT

Introduction

This chapter examines the relationship between media representations surrounding

NASCAR and how they conclusively indicate “southernness.” There is a confluence of factors demonstrating these concepts, combining the land of the agrarian South, traditional gender roles, and the ties with moonshining and racing. The focus is limited to films and music associated with NASCAR, either intimately or casually. These media highlight and reinforce cultural norms that accompany the sport and the South, sometimes in celebration, sometimes satirically, but always showcasing the culture. As part of the mass-media spectacle, these messages have been consumed and regurgitated by southerners and the nation alike. While the blending of messages between the South and the rest of the country may appear to show little in the way of differences, the examples illustrate that southerners continue to indulge in outrageous self-caricature and what Freud called the “narcissism of small differences.”1 This behavior enforces certain tropes as specifically Southern, and for that, NASCAR is a huge part.

The difference in culture between the North and South materialized while the US was in its early formative state, then reified through the distinctions between the industrial North and the agrarian South. This statement offers nothing new to any kind of argument. Because of this difference, the cultures took on their own lives, with Southern literature arising as a discrete form. William Byrd II, a Virginia planter, who founded Richmond, gained posthumous success when his diaries were published in the 1940s, but much of the output in the 18th and early 19th centuries came from clergy or lawyers. William Gilmore Simms became the antebellum South’s

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prominent voice but failed to become one of national standing. His work, especially The Sword and the Distaff, offered an idyllic construction of plantation life, echoed by John Pendleton

Kennedy, with happy slaves and a far-reaching romanticism. As Jack Kirby notes, Southern literature began to gain popularity after the Civil War, with Thomas Nelson Page and John Fox

Jr. becoming two of the prominent authors.2

These two authors feature dividedly different perspectives. Page, with his aristocratic background, chose to use his voice to argue against the reforms of the Reconstruction era. Fox, himself no stranger to the erudite lifestyle after attaining a Harvard degree, instead focused on nature and family life in the Appalachian Mountains. That the two diverged in their approach to the South did not leave them squabbling in their views, as can be seen when Fox wrote to Page in

1891 that they needed to “bring the old South back.”3 This stance countered the ones pushed by

Frederick Douglass and his Narrative (1845), Harriet Beecher Stowe with Uncle Tom’s Cabin

(1852), and Mark Twain with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). These authors became national voices for abolition and the racism of the South. Both Douglass and Twain were born on the South's periphery, in Maryland and Missouri, respectively, but lived the latter parts of their lives in the North. For Douglass, the move was one of necessity, but for Twain, the notion of Southern hospitality no longer served as a comfort, and his conflict with the region drove him away.4 These voices endearing themselves to the rest of the nation competed with those pushing a different view of the South.

Page and Fox fronted reshaping the southern defeat in the Civil War, converting the

South as losers to fighting for the Lost Cause. This Lost Cause mythology permeates much of southern ideology from the Reconstruction era forward, as it sees the South as fighters against an invasive and overbearing federal government, a Confederate union fighting for state rights in the

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losing effort in the War of Northern Aggression. This construct relies on an idealization of slave plantations while overlooking the harsh realities of chattel slavery and the South’s reliance on this cheap labor system. It is into this world that Southern filmmaking was born, brought forth with an allegiance to the remnants of the planter-elites, beholden to Lost Cause ideology, and a view that Blacks are unfit for citizenship.5

No film epitomizes these notions better than D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915).

The film became the nation’s first blockbuster while heralding Southern identity and the bravery of those who had fought for the Confederacy but failed to sustain the southern way of life. While the film’s racism is overt and troubling, some key elements are worthy of mention. Griffith urges viewers to see southerners as heroic—that they will prevail. Featuring the land reinforces the rustic element that romantically surrounds the South. The film’s big budget served as a harbinger for Gone With the Wind, producer David O. Selznick’s adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s best- selling book of the same name.

Reviews for the film noted a yearning to return to how things were, the beauty of an era before the war’s destruction of southern culture and land. John Finn, reviewing the film for

Variety in 1939, wrote that “Fleming has caught a series of memorable views of plantation life and scenes, and builds a strong case for a civilization of chivalry.”6 The review notes how Victor

Fleming, the director, offers loving images of the South of both the plantation and chivalry, that in the film’s telling, there is nostalgia and yearning for a return to this former lifestyle. Frank

Nugent mirrors this sentiment in his review in the New York Times where he states that “through stunning design, costume and peopling, his film has skillfully and absorbingly recreated Miss

Mitchell’s mural of the South in that bitter decade when secession, civil war, and reconstruction

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ripped wide the graceful fabric of the plantation age.”7 Nugent adds a touch of whimsy to his review by extolling the elegance and refinement of an era later torched.

Though both Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind were, ironically, filmed in

California, they assiduously featured the land in their productions. Nevertheless, that peculiarity works not to detract from the argument but rather reinforces it because both productions needed to use the land, even that of a different locale, for their storytelling. This backdrop is an element that appears in many Southern films afterward, with the rustic South, a character unto itself.

The notion of the southern hero may not emerge from these two films, but it, too, becomes an integral part of both storytelling and mythmaking. As David Goldfield notes, these stories enveloped young White southerners, for whom the war and Redemption seemed more immediate than ever, preservation more important than before.8 This assertion maintains that traditions carry significant weight in southern culture and places the onus on a generation without direct ties to the Civil War or antebellum life. Thus, the romanticized version they appropriate refashions the historical narrative and positions southerners as defenders and heroic.

Regardless of class, the southern persona promotes the idea of fighting for something akin to a holy crusade. This idea is something that becomes prominent as films about the South grow in popularity.

Southern films became, much like their literary counterpart, their own sub-genre.

Locating films in the South became more prominent and can be found in all genres, including the military, Civil Rights and racism, romantic and familial relationships, horror, comedy, and any other genre. Part of the boon was owed to filmmakers using the material of writers, such as

Tennessee Williams or William Faulkner, or later John Grisham. Of course, Hollywood’s capitalistic drive influences the direction of films, and without success, there would be no reason

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to film in the South. A fascinating aspect has been the number of films that depict elements of moonshining or bootlegging. Though they may not have created an impact that lasts into contemporary society, the topic has been a familiar and popular one. Anthony Harkins noted that

“Jerry Williamson, the leading scholar on southern mountain films, has tallied more than 400 movies made between 1904 and 1920 set in the mountains.”9 Harkins’s examination of hillbilly culture notes that:

Biograph’s 1904 short The Moonshiner, proved to be such a success that the company was still advertising it four years later as its biggest money maker — the most widely known and most popular film ever made. The success of The Moonshiner led to such a steady increase in the number of mountaineer-themed films that film studios released seventy such films in 1914, averaging more than one new movie a week.10

These films featured similar storylines, but their action and violence made them lucrative entertainment until the end of the First World War. Though there were still hillbilly moonshine films made during the 1920s, the public had grown tired of the trite storylines, and the portrayals failed to still convey late-Victorian values and behaviors. The shift away from this formulaic filmmaking brought an updated hillbilly, one of comedic representation, frequently in overalls and with a jug, similar to the characters popularized by Disney or the show The Beverly

Hillbillies. Because of the change, moonshining films experienced scant attention until the

1950s.

Moonshine, Racing, and the South

In 1958, Robert Mitchum starred and co-wrote what became the memorable southern moonshine film Thunder Road. In the film, Mitchum stars as Korean War veteran Luke Doolin, who returns home and resumes working in the family’s moonshine business. While depictions of

Doolin with his moonshine stills litter the movie, the driving sequences are the highlight. The

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combination of the topography—Thunder Road was filmed in Asheville, North Carolina—and the driving created important local and nationalist values. Reviewer Craig Caron notes that:

While the antebellum South has always been a troublingly popular backdrop for Hollywood movies, portrayals of modern-day life below the 40th parallel are rare — especially for the people of Appalachia, the mountainous region stretching southwest from West Virginia, through Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas to northern Alabama and Mississippi. It was this area that Thunder Road depicted so vividly, in its compassionate and (comparatively) authentic portrayal of modern Appalachia that appealed to both the law-abiding majority of the region, who had rarely seen anything resembling home reflected on film, as well as to a law-flaunting contingent that would become intoxicated by the souped-up Ford that Mitchum’s Luke Doolin drives in the film. 11

The film's popularity extended beyond just the southern region, and Mitchum later joked that he made more money from Thunder Road than from his previous 50 films combined. However, its appeal came through the exploitation of the land and Doolin’s driving, which serves as a substitute for the individualism and ingenuity needed to maintain his family’s livelihood. In the end, however, as Harkins posits, Doolin dies a hero’s death on the highway, fighting to preserve a way of life destined to disappear.12 In this framework, moonshining is not just a form of work but a part of the Appalachian lifestyle, and therefore, the Southern lifestyle, continuously besieged from outside regulations or challenges. While the end of Thunder Road might offer such a stance, its success encouraged a slew of new films that used the moonshiner's point of view as the focus.

One of those films is White Lightning (1973), starring , with the title derived from an alternate name for moonshine. While that work is not entirely relevant to this discussion, Reynolds crafted an intimate relationship with Southern film, with an automobile frequently a secondary character. His films Gator or Smokey and the —both centered on tripping alcohol—point to a film that was a critical failure but which deserves more scrutiny.

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That film, Stroker Ace (1983), helps continue the onset of a racing tradition begun around the same time as Thunder Road made its impact is.

The fact that NASCAR did not become a sport until 1948 serves as a reminder that making any film about it would take time for it to establish its popularity. The tracks laid in that early era hardly portend the racing monolith that came into fruition during the 1990s and 2000s.

The sport, still in its infancy, needed time to become legitimate—an ironic description considering the ties with illegal liquor running—and that, in turn, meant that filmmakers needed to ensure that any film about NASCAR was a worthwhile endeavor.

However, the relationship between NASCAR and film emerged quickly, as cultural historian Mark Howell notes, with the production of Thunder Road. Ostensibly the first

NASCAR-centered film, it depicted the ascent of moonshine runners into the world of professional driving.13 This film is one of the first to feature stock-car racing in any form and was followed by (1960), which focused on two drivers and their attempt to win the , the race held at in South Carolina. Aside from the drama (1966), featuring James Caan, the next stockcar racing films of note both featured a lighter tone, with and starring in the comedy

Fireball 500 (1966) and then Elvis Presley in the musical Speedway (1968).

The studios spurned stockcar racing until 1973, with the release of The Last American

Hero, starring Jeff Bridges. Based on the life of NASCAR driver Junior Johnson, the film owes much of its creation to the article of the same name by Tom Wolfe, published first in Esquire magazine in 1963 and later in Wolfe’s collection of essays, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake

Streamline Baby (1965).14 This film offers one of the first serious perspectives at both a racecar driver and the sport of NASCAR, and the popularity of Wolfe’s article helped ensure a

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complimentary reception. Films about NASCAR, however, remain scant, even if they usually have been popular when released. The focus here is on the films that have left a cultural imprint, either by their box office success or continued cult following.

The following films, The Last American Hero, Days of Thunder (1990), Greased

Lightning (1977), Stroker Ace, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), all address aspects of auto racing and Southern identity, and in turn sell or reinforce those elements to the populace. The focus centers on the depiction of NASCAR racing, gender norms, sexuality, alongside home and land, and how the Southern context works to provide a unique perspective.

The intersection of these elements provides a glimpse into the southern imaginary and its representation in film, concretizing the South's protected identity. In many ways, these films are not only a product of the South but a way to reinforce and promote Southern culture to people of the region and people at large. That each movie invigorates masculine behavior and attitudes, ignoring the voice of feminine existence in many ways, makes these films overt reminders of specific roles that are furthered by filmmaking in general. Hence, filmmakers find that previous success indicates a belief that there is no need for change in representations. These films catalog the experiences of the South and allow and reinforce specific ways of being and doing.

It is essential to recognize some of the limitations. A few films could have been selected, notably (1977), a biopic on NASCAR’s remarkable Black driver Wendell

Scott who raced in the 1960s and 70s. This film was dismissed because “the film perceives a symbiotic relationship between black and white cultures of the day, and it presents racism almost matter-of-factly, as a by-product of cross-cultural confusion.”15 Labeling racism as a by-product is distressing as much as it is incorrect and ignores the predominance of racial discrimination in the South and NASCAR. That the racing sequences are disappointing, even by the standard of

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the day, highlights another issue with the film. This film would benefit greatly from a remaking, with a director who addresses the issues that Scott faced with more seriousness—having the

Wendell Scott biography, Hard Driving (2008), as source material would also be an enormous value to detail his life better.

What makes the film’s causal depiction of racism worse is that the crew encountered threatening behavior from the locals of Madison, Georgia. As a crew of mainly Black persons, the production became a bullseye for Whites in the area. The Black director, recalled, those locals “were creating all kinds of havoc.” The town’s White sheriff intervened to placate the group. Schultz remembers the sheriff saying, “Be cool, these niggers are gonna be out of here in a couple weeks. Y’all just be cool, it’s a lot of money.”16 The appeal of the monetary benefits bested racist desires, but the confrontation illustrates the challenges for both the film and

Blacks in the region.

For a film that should have been historically vital, with a Black star and Black director making a biopic about a Black NASCAR driver, the production encountered other problems.

“Filming came to a halt over creative disputes between Van Peebles and the film’s producers.

Van Peebles left the project, and Richard, faced with the wheels coming off his first star vehicle, called Michael Schultz and begged him to take over as director.”17 To add to the behind-the- scenes tension, Pryor had brought his longtime girlfriend with him, Kathy McKee, and she struggled to adapt to life in Georgia. Causing further tension, Pryor proceeded to have an affair with Pam Grier, his co-star in the film. The film itself became part of a power struggle between

Schultz and the producer Hannah Weinstein, as Schultz wanted a more granular picture, whereas

Weinstein sought one that could be more marketable. The result is that Pryor’s performance of

“Wendell Scott is free of raunch, free of neuroses, free of cutting edges — as soft and lovable as

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Richard’s ‘bicentennial nigger’ was sharp and disturbing. And that was how Hannah Weinstein liked it.”18 After another battle over the film's editing, Weinstein took over and produced a film that Schultz called a “soap-opera style of moviemaking,” with “a lot of emphasis on the family and on the boring parts of the picture.”19

Two more films have also been left out of the discussion. Both characterize the life of

Dale Earnhardt Sr. and could stand to gain more perspective by bringing less hubris to them.

Both 3: The Dale Earnhardt Story (2004) or Dale (2007) resemble to a great extent hero worship and attempts to capitalize on Earnhardt’s nostalgia than a genuine endeavor to make a statement or provide much insight. The chosen films, however, call attention to trends in the genre over a thirty-year period, even if hemmed in by whiteness. While each film faced scrutiny through typical reviews when released, they have not been examined as a combined body of work.

Similar elements appear in each film selected for analysis that deserve scrutiny. To begin, each is, basically, biographical, at least in conceptual development. The Last American Hero follows the rise of moonshiner-cum-racer Junior Johnson, named Junior Jackson in the film.

Johnson won fifty races in his career and was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers

(1998) and inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (1990), Motorsports Hall of

Fame of America (1991), and NASCAR Hall of Fame (2010). Next in line is Stroker Ace, which follows a talented driver at odds with his sponsors and what he must do to remain relevant in the sport. The following film, Days of Thunder, is a production implicitly about the early career of driver Tim Richmond, an incredible talent named to NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers list, but who died in 1989 from AIDS after only eight years driving in Cup. The Richmond character, played by Tom Cruise, is renamed Cole Trickle in the film and may have a couple of things in common with Richmond, but to call the picture a biography would be disingenuous. The last film,

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Talladega Nights, offers a satirical take on NASCAR and the South with a fictional driver, Ricky

Bobby, though the film situates itself within the real world of NASCAR both in its depiction of the racing and the overall culture. Each one of these films ascribes to film historian Robert Ray’s concept of the Hollywood hero, with all four main characters exhibiting the traits of the outlaw hero, the adventurer, explorer, gunfighter, wanderer, and loner; the outlaw hero is tied to the

American imagination valuing self-determination and freedom from entanglements.20

Furthermore, these films certainly follow Ferrence’s depictions of the mythic status of masculine

NASCAR, the masculine South, and general patriarchy.21 This kind of assessment may be part of why filmmakers eschew NASCAR and why the more recent racing-related films have been the

Formula 1 film Rush (2013) and Ford’s attempt to beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of LeMans in

Ford v Ferrari (2019).

The Representation of Racing

Early forms of stock-car racing varied from dirt track oval races to straight-line drag races to racing on Daytona Beach. One of the reasons that Daytona became a premier location for racing is that auto manufacturers from Michigan would, during the winter months, travel to

Daytona to use the relatively flat and long stretches of the beach to test their vehicles’ speed.

This relationship strengthened after World War II in two ways. As journalist Peter Applebome noted, many Southerners left the South after the war for manufacturing jobs, with many of them located in Michigan, Ohio, and the Midwest.22 These migrating Southerners took their cultural characteristics with them and influenced their new homes both culturally and politically. The second way that the relationship gained strength was with the inception of NASCAR and the situation of its headquarters in Daytona. With NASCAR as a showcase for selling production

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model automobiles, the Michigan manufacturers sought to build strong ties to the country's southeast region.

For Southerners, racing also held a different sense of promise. As historian Pete Daniel remarks, the people of the South took to automobiles differently from the rest of the country.23

Southerners tinkered with their cars and appreciated them for their ability to navigate rural areas and winding country roads, where handling was an important attribute. There was, however, a second reason for working on cars in the South: the moonshine industry.

As historians Neal Thompson and Howell note, the ties between moonshine running and

NASCAR are implicit and integral as even the most basic NASCAR histories include a testament to the sport’s association with moonshining. 24 The familiar story is that many drivers honed their skills evading revenuers or federal agents while racing through the hills of the Blue Ridge

Mountains in North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia while on delivery runs. In addition to becoming skilled wheelmen, they also learned to modify their cars to handle better than law enforcement in their attempts to be evasive. While a great number of drivers enjoyed ties to liquor running, two of the more notable drivers to come from this narrative were and

Junior Johnson. While both Thompson and Howell assert that not all stock-car drivers came from a moonshine running background, Johnson’s success story helps drive notions of southernness and the region’s racing acumen.

In The Last American Hero, the Johnson character, renamed Junior Jackson, is established as crafty and hard-driving, as seen when at the opening of the film, Jackson is racing down country roads delivering moonshine. The use of the country roads is important because it situates the character as a driver following the moonshiner-NASCAR mythos. The heightened roar of the engine and the “boot-legger’s turn” the character makes in front of a stationary police

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car all serve to illustrate that not only is Jackson driving fast but that he can handle his car adroitly. In the same sequence, Jackson then faces another stopped car and here shows his cunning by placing a blue spinning light, similar to the ones used by law enforcement, on his dashboard and then turns on his sirens. His ability to outwit his pursuers shows that beyond his driving acumen, he enjoys the intelligence to foil his competitors. Jackson is also demonstrating that he is an outlaw but positioned in a way to make him affable—he does not engage in a shootout to escape but uses talent and wit to elude his pursuers.

The film Stroker Ace displays several notable elements that mark it as a product of the

South and NASCAR. Stroker Ace, played by Burt Reynolds, is a three-time NASCAR champion who has a win-or-crash style of driving but whose arrogance has cost him his sponsorship.

Nevertheless, Reynolds is a man for other men, a redneck for other rednecks, a film star whose self-parody nonetheless offers an exciting shift in the limits of redneck identity.25 It is his exaggerated caricature of a southern man that makes him attractive, and for which his similar style can be found in his other films set in the South, such as Gator, White Lightning, and of course, . “His charm conceals the real danger of his portrayal, that the clear dominance of his redneck masculinity is both safe and welcome.”26 Thus, it is not Ace’s problems with other drivers or the law but corporate sponsorship that spurs his feud with the world, a second wave of encroachment on southern life after the federal government has already made its influence felt. That the sponsor he represents in the film is a fried chicken chain may be interpreted as an allusion to either or both Kentucky Fried Chicken, founded in Louisville,

Kentucky in 1930, or Chick-Fil-A, founded in Hapeville, Georgia in 1946, making the corporate ties ones of exploitation of southern culture.

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Days of Thunder opens with a similar kind of pattern to Hero. After Cole Trickle, played by Tom Cruise, motorcycles onto the Daytona International Speedway tarmac and chats with his potential crew chief Harry Hogge, played by Robert Duvall, he climbs into an awaiting racecar.

The use of Daytona figures heavily not only as NASCAR’s headquarters but also because the

Daytona 500 is the Super Bowl of NASCAR racing. The film, nonetheless, cracks under the weight of its efforts at Daytona. As Trickle begins turning laps, he remarks that he will “drop the hammer,” intoning that he is about to shift gears and go faster, under Hogge's protestations. The problem is that NASCAR racecars have only four gears, and for Trickle to be turning fast laps, he already would be in the uppermost gear; hence, there is no “hammer” to drop.

The “dropping of the hammer” is an effort to show the Trickle character doing something beyond just working the steering wheel. It also provides a way to develop tension between the driver and crew chief, with the former being brash, ignorant, and talented, and the latter being less adventurous but sagacious. What is happening, though, is unrealistic. A NASCAR racecar has only four gears, and if Trickle were turning respectable laps, he would already be in the top gear, with his accelerator control being the element that determines his overall speed. His rebellious, youthful spirit is what matters, marking him as someone fighting against the controls that have been placed on him while also acknowledging his unhewn skill.

In Talladega Nights, racing makes its entrance, not at the film's opening but after the

Ricky Bobby character, played by Will Ferrell, has experienced a couple of scenes from childhood. Bobby comes from a single-parent home with an itinerant father, Reese Bobby, played by Gary Cole. The outrageousness and impact of Reese Bobby manifest themselves when he shows up at Bobby’s career day, a time for parents to describe their careers, and delivers the wisdom “you don’t listen to losers like your know-it-all teacher” and “if you ain’t first, you’re

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last,” to his son, before being kicked out. Reese’s appearance establishes a few things worth mentioning: the first is his unconcealed bad-boy status as seen when he talks about peyote in front of secondary school students and that he is an amateur racecar driver, and that winning is, in a Machiavellian notion, all that matters. Ricky Bobby takes this advice and uses it as a guidebook for his life. What can be seen from the films is that they all feature classic masculine hero types, ones who follow their code of conduct that turns into respectable behavior.

The scene that follows features Bobby working on a pit crew at a race at Talladega

Superspeedway, which brings the film's focus succinctly to NASCAR and the Deep South of

Alabama. The Talladega track symbolizes the epitome of speed, as it is one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR while providing a sense of southern authenticity. When Bobby’s team driver parks the car and refuses to return, Bobby takes the opportunity to pilot the car on the track. Not unlike

Trickle in Days of Thunder, Bobby states he is “about to do some driving” and shifts the car into a gear that should not exist. Similarly, his crew chief, Lucius, played by the late Michael Clark

Duncan, tells him that if he wrecks the car, Bobby will have to pay for it, displaying much of the same dynamic between him and his driver, like Trickle and Hogge. The sequence closes with

Bobby crossing the finish line in second, followed by an ESPN interview, an outrageous conclusion to the race highlighting Bobby’s talents.

Both Trickle and Bobby show a willing disregard for the costs associated with a car and outside influences. They perform the role of the outlaw hero, focused on what they believe is right, fighting against rules or limitations. Of course, establishing this character is integral to their subsequent assimilation into the community, which at the onset is a significant threat to their focus.27 This concept is one that southern culture has come to regard in high esteem. Not only have fallen Confederate soldiers been lionized, but the region also proffers other confused

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exaltations of government officials and politicians even in the face of their overt racism, notably with George Wallace.

NASCAR, Television, and Authenticity

The first live broadcast of a NASCAR race came in 1971 but most races in early

NASCAR failed to garner much TV attention. Most broadcasting companies did not air

NASCAR races live, instead opting to show highlights or abridged coverage. Even as TV coverage grew, the sport struggled to have stable coverage in the early 1980s—though more races aired live even if the whole season did not. The launch of cable TV changed broadcast patterns, and the birth of ESPN meant more coverage of all sports, including NASCAR.

Incorporating the network in the films adds a sense of legitimacy, with ESPN working as an authoritative source. The Last American Hero does not have modern television to utilize, leaving any representation of racing to be delivered directly to the viewer and not through a different medium, much as Stroker Ace does. The latter two films, Days of Thunder and Talladega Nights, make widespread use of television coverage to convey authenticity. Trickle, when asked what he knows of stock-car racing from Hogge, remarks that he watches it on ESPN and that the

“coverage is excellent.” The usage solidifies that the network, which had just passed its tenth- anniversary mark, was already the leader in sports coverage, and here is a way to allow Trickle both a humorous response and a nod to the sport’s popularity. Furthermore, even though the televised NASCAR season began in its entirety only in the mid-1980s, here it is placed as a tool for Days of Thunder to authenticate itself as a movie serious about racing. Talladega Nights employs ESPN differently, first using it much as Days of Thunder does, but also as a critique on modern drivers.

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When ESPN first appears in Talladega Nights, Bobby gives an interview and struggles in front of the camera, mumbling his answer and asking what to do with his hands, indicating his unfamiliarity with the media. At one point, Bobby grabs the microphone, and the interviewer awkwardly snatches it back. Hence, incorporating ESPN shows the importance of developing a driver for the spotlight while also demonstrating its integral role in broadcasting the sport.

In addition to using ESPN, Talladega Nights incorporates other broadcast partners involved with NASCAR, having the teams from FOX, Speed Channel, and TNT all make appearances. Here viewers who are familiar with NASCAR can find a sense of familiarity, which provides further legitimacy. What makes this aspect interesting is that all four broadcast entities are used in a comedic or ironic way, allowing the broadcasters to make fun of themselves while offering a humorous take for fans. These instances provide authenticity to people associated with the South and NASCAR. These people represent a tribe, and in this manner, those who are not members are excluded naturally and inevitably because they are not authentic in the specific knowledge, practice, and identity by the established criteria based.28 Thus, fans of NASCAR can find comfort with both films, even if each has its limitations. Further, Jocelyn Neal would argue that within contemporary country music culture, the one career that trumps country music singers in their identity politics and authenticity games is arguably NASCAR.29

The Further Representation of Racing

Being authentic is what makes this film important as authentic NASCAR works as a stand-in for the authentic South of The Last American Hero. The journey from country roads to an actual NASCAR race is the featured plotline, offering the viewer a chance to follow Jackson from a local demolition derby event, to a dirt-track race, and to a qualifying race for the main

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event, with each race serving as a stage of development that exemplifies Jackson’s status in the southern environment. The emphasis is on the last two events, which were filmed at Hickory

Motor Speedway and in Virginia. The setting of Martinsville is critical as it is one of the first paved tracks in NASCAR and still hosts races. Little information exists to describe the film’s production, therefore, the analysis comes straight from the film itself. While the qualifying race earns a touch of Hollywood magic, with Jackson racing from the back to make the main race, the action depicted is genuine. Several factors contribute to establishing this idea. The filmmakers opt against conventional dramatic music during the race, instead choosing to rely on the sounds from the cars, fans, and the track announcer. The film acts as though covering an actual race. Even the celebration that follows Jackson’s victory evokes a sense that the camera covered a live event.

Days of Thunder, by comparison, does not offer the same kind of perspective in its race shots. Trickle’s story differs from Jackson’s from the beginning, as Trickle only races on

NASCAR tracks, such as Bristol (Tennessee), Rockingham and North Wilkesboro (North

Carolina), Darlington (South Carolina), and Atlanta (Georgia), though these tracks are misidentified in the film. While these locales seemingly indicate that Trickle is on the NASCAR tour, the circumstances shown at each track argue against their legitimacy. Ryan Rees interviewed championship-winning driver , who offered, “If we hit a wall once, we have to pit and get new tires.”30 In Days of Thunder, the cars routinely bounce off the wall and continue racing as if nothing happened to their tires or the aerodynamic aspects of the cars.

Lesley Hazelton’s review of the film also questions its genuineness. In NASCAR at the time, 43 cars comprised the starting field, but as Hazelton notes, the Daytona race has 44 to which she opines, “it was perfect Hollywood: in a bid for authenticity, they created the inauthentic.”31

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Creating inauthenticity recognizes how filmmaking can push for verisimilitude and make it so overwrought that it becomes phony. Fans of NASCAR ostensibly dismissed these two missteps, instead finding reason in celebrating NASCAR/southern culture.

There are other issues with the racing presented. As Jane Maslin wrote in her review, the

“typical scene in Days of Thunder is one that has screeching brakes, pounding drums, roaring engines, crashing fenders, and someone shouting at the top of his lungs.”32 While races are loud, they tend not to be filled with spinning cars and billows of smoke. Moreover, the film continues to use the visual cue of Trickle shifting into a higher gear as he bests his competitors when once again, they would all be in the same gear. Nevertheless, the film still attempts to give a sense of authenticity. The Hendrick Motorsports organization, home of championship-winning drivers

Terry Labonte, Jeff Gordon, and Jimmie Johnson, built fourteen cars specifically for the film.

Moreover, Darrell Waltrip, another championship-winning driver, noted that “many of the details were right on: the hand signals, the conversations back and forth on the headphones between the driver and the crew chief, some of the jokes they played on each other – there’s a lot of stuff there straight from real life.”33 Kulwicki concurs by telling Rees that “despite the unrealistic racing sequences, he found much in Days of Thunder to identify with.”34 Thus, the overall impression with the racing in Days of Thunder is that while it tries to show racing in a “real” way, it comes close. For its attempts at being genuine, the cuts of Trickle shifting into an imaginary gear stand in for normative hero tropes.

The filmmakers overlook their knowledge about racing and the car’s mechanics to show

Trickle having the “extra” required to win. The film is using the imaginary gear to satisfy and reify masculine urges. For viewers not attached to the South, this element is foundational in gratifying the heteronormative hyper-masculine can-do American disposition. Read in another

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way, the harsh shifting action is tantamount to a punch, one that serves as a battle against white- collar weakness, or as a re-imagining of the South’s continued fight against the North. To paraphrase Faulkner, the Lost Cause is never dead. It is not even lost. The incessant and pervasive nature to fight against change and outside nature from patriarchal White southerners underline their ideology.

Talladega Nights elicits a different set of expectations. As a satire, it ignores representing the racing as authentic, yet by establishing itself as a comedic foil to the serious “real” world of

NASCAR, it offers an aggrandized interpretation of the sport. In one scene, Ricky Bobby races with a large Fig Newtons sticker across his windshield. While NASCAR would never allow a driver’s vision to be blocked, the laughable nature of the promotion blocking his vision is an indictment of how the sport uses sponsorship. As a sport constructed on the framework of individual contracts, sponsors interact directly with the drivers, not through a governing body, such as the National Football League or the National Basketball Association. As such, each driver is his own contractor, free to sign as many sponsors as possible. Making a humorous diversion of the windshield illustrates an exaggerated willingness for a driver to make money regardless of the circumstances. This scene is, therefore, an ode to the over-commercialization that plagues the sports of NASCAR.

Talladega Nights is not unlike Days of Thunder in that it focuses on having cars rub the wall or each other and continue racing, often at the front of the pack, which would situate them in the lead. But Talladega Nights is not trying to be genuine as much as parodying both

NASCAR races, Days of Thunder, and American culture. The best example of this concept occurs late in the film when Bobby is racing his nemesis, Jean Girard. The two drivers bang into each other multiple times and finally trigger a wreck, one that is so long that the TNT network

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team interrupts with a commercial break for Applebee’s and then returns to the still-happening crash. This exaggerated wreck is an homage to many fans’ wish for crashes and an allusion to the action-hungry, bloodthirsty movie-goer, while an acknowledgement to the fantastical barrel- rolling wreck that takes place in Thunder. The reason it works is that racing culture seemingly dictates that these collisions are mandatory. In fact, in reviewing the 2012 season, journalist Jeff

Gluck noted that one of the worst races of the season was Texas in the spring because the only two cautions were for debris.35 Fans felt that even though the cars were reaching speeds around

200 mph each lap, there was not enough excitement.

The Last American Hero attempted to take its racing seriously, presenting racing with a sense of authenticity. Days of Thunder offered a bipolar spectacle of racing that was genuine and incredulous yet accessible for a broad audience. The evolution of a film such as Talladega Nights indicates that there is something about the South and the masculinity of stockcar racing that necessitates lampooning it. Though the number of films that portray NASCAR is limited,

Talladega Nights’ emergence suggests that future filmmakers must tell their stories differently.

Depicting the South and NASCAR is full of elements that satisfy both southerners and outside fans while providing access to people that have never been enticed by the area or the sport.

The Depiction of Sexuality

While the four films focus on auto racing, some components require further exploration.

One aspect is that the representations regarding normative heterosexual relationships require further discussion. In heterosexual relationships, most of the focus sits on the protagonist and how he comes to terms with himself vis-à-vis his interactions with a female character. In

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contrast, homosocial relationships come in the guise of power struggles and the contestation of knowledge and power.

The Last American Hero features two notable heteronormative relationships: mother-son and sexual partner. The former acts as a form of conscience. When Jackson returns home after his challenging day at the track, his mother confronts and lectures him. Her sense of care, hidden behind a hard hillbilly exterior, is still in line with the role of southern mothers. Historian Anne

Firor Scott remarks that there was a glorification of motherhood amongst White women of the

South, and plays out in stereotypical fashion.36 Additionally, Boles and Atkinson use Scott to further state that a Southern woman should be devoted to God, husband, and children.37 Thus, it is no surprise that Jackson’s mother handles herself in a way that is committed to her son, but the behavior in those scenes confirms how southern women are supposed to act. The relationship between Jackson and Marge, in contrast, provides more compelling material.

Marge plays a dual role in the film, being both a track worker and a sexual foil, or in colloquial parlance, a “track floozy.” Her role at the track is somewhat undefined, as she mentions that she works in the marketing department but appears to have a job as a secretary.

Women at this point were limited in what they could do at racetracks. Daniel avows that “as

NASCAR races became more organized in the 1950s, women disappeared from the cars and eventually the pits.”38 The expulsion of women from the pits constructed a homosocial environment on the track and forced women to shift into positions related to front office operations. However, they were able to hold one other official position, that of race queens, the women who handed the trophy to the race-winning driver.39 This role is a further enactment of the Southern Belle, a woman held in high esteem for her beauty and meant to be an adornment for men.

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Marge never appears as a trophy queen, but her job allowed her to develop a comfortable rapport with the drivers. Marge is linked romantically with driver Kyle Kingman, yet Jackson still manages to woo her. Though Jackson wants to keep her as his own, she retreats to Kingman soon after her tryst. The marginalized role of women is apparent when Marge runs into

Kingman’s wife, discovering that Marge is loyal even as a mistress. After the final race, Marge again appears with Kingman, but Kingman’s wife pulls Marge aside and tells her that there will be another, meaning that there will be other girls at other tracks. Both women have surrendered themselves to their roles, one as a dutiful trophy wife willing to endure infidelity, the other as the track girl. Marge might even be credited with agency as after recognizing that Kingman is no longer her man, she chooses to walk off with another driver. Of course, the same kind of scenario would be the undoing for a character like Stroker Ace.

As he is already an established driver and one with a “ladies man” persona, Ace is searching for his latest conquest. His attempts to couple with Pembrook Feeny, played by Loni

Anderson, is an odd part of the film. Played as virginal, Feeny is Ace’s new PR director when he begins work for his sponsorship.

Days of Thunder does not feature the same dichotomy regarding women’s roles as there is no mother figure. The first representation that surfaces is comparable to Marge. Trickle, after winning his first race, is riding with his team in an RV when the police pull them over. Two officers, one male, one female, order the occupants out and have them lean against the RV. The female officer then frisks Trickle and stops to focus on his groin. At that point, the reveal themselves as a hoax, and the female officer takes off her hat, then tears open her blouse and says, “Don’t be mad. Harry and the boys thought you might like me.”40 That this woman allows herself to be objectified is neglected as a political issue but demonstrates the esteem in which

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women are placed, especially as objects for male fantasy. Again, as with Marge, it could be argued that the woman made this choice on her own, or that the allure of sleeping with a winning racecar driver is overwhelmingly appealing. However, the message is that women can be treated as objects, passed around by the team, especially as crew chief Hogge is apparently behind the whole ruse.

After Trickle suffers an on-track injury, a different construct of a woman appears, that of

Dr. Lewicki, the neurosurgeon. Lewicki, played by Nicole Kidman, is the person who can clear

Trickle to race again but becomes his paramour. Lewicki holds power over Trickle, going beyond the traditional role of the Southern woman, and her Australian accent positions her outside the purview of the norms of Southern culture. There is a parallel here as Trickle himself was initially seen as an outsider because he comes from California. Their shared status allows a comfortable pairing that does not disrupt southern notions of coupledom. As there is no mother figure present, Lewicki takes on the task of offering matriarchal wisdom, being the safeguard to

Trickle’s health. Once Trickle and Lewicki are featured as a couple, the film forgoes any further recognition of the trophy queen or track girl.

Oddly enough, Talladega Nights excels in crafting memorable female characters that play upon the South's typical roles. While Ricky Bobby’s mother, Lucy, helps open the film, she has little onscreen presence during its first half. Instead, it is Carly, the track girl, who plays an important role. After winning a race, Bobby espies Carly, who says, “Hey driver, drive these,” then raises her shirt. With this introduction, Carly summons both Marge and the female officer's roles, playing the track floozy, willing to give herself to a driver. However, the film transitions to a montage of Carly and Bobby getting married and the beginnings of a life together, moving beyond the track girl dynamic, one she, however, never leaves behind. Though we see Carly

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attempting to take on the role of the domesticated wife, she fails. A dinner scene with the family where Carly announces that she has been slaving over the meal for hours, even though the table is laid out with Taco Bell, Domino’s, and drinks such as Powerade–all sponsors of Bobby’s– illustrates her inability to become a true southern wife. While Talladega Nights is again satirizing modern consumer culture, it is also showing Carly’s inability to adapt to her prescribed role. Although she now lives a rich life, she fails to leave her poor roots behind and become a proper erudite woman.

The Susan character, played by actress Amy Adams, takes on the expected role of female caretaker after Carly has left Bobby for his best friend and fellow driver, Cal Naughton, Jr. Susan works as Bobby’s assistant and is overlooked both figuratively and literally in the early parts of the film. For instance, when Bobby is at an autograph session, he fails to notice Susan and signs her forehead as though she were any other fan. However, Susan is one of the characters longing to see Bobby return to the track after an accident forces him out of racing. Her appearance at a rustic bar where Bobby is getting drunk and playing racing video games satisfies this construct after she sits with and gives him an inspirational speech encouraging his return. She follows by appealing to him sexually, climbing across the table that divides them, and starting a romantic interlude. Susan has taken on the role of the supportive woman, following the quintessential

Southern woman role.

Like Susan, Bobby’s mother, Lucy, played by Jane Lynch, takes on the role of corralling

Bobby’s two young wayward sons. Lucy represents another aspect of archetypal Southern women by offering guidance to these two children and being a conservative, religious woman.

Her desires to have family dinners and teach the sons the value of hard work are not necessarily just a southern trait but fall within normative family values, which represent a centerpiece of

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southern values. Perhaps the scene that best illustrates her ability to subscribe to southernness is when she and the two children are singing in the church choir. In historian Christine Heyrman’s account, women played a crucial role in developing the importance of religion in the South, one that is still maintained.41 Lucy, therefore, presents another female role crafted as decidedly

Southern.

The contradiction to heterosexual relationships is constituted by the homosocial ones.

Daniel remarks that “consigning women to the bleachers and floats left the garages, pits, and tracks a male preserve.”42 The track became a space for overt maleness with bonds between driver and crew, driver and crew chief, and the team and its owners and sponsors. In The Last

American Hero, Jackson does not develop any meaningful ties outside of the ones with his crew and brother, and even still seems alone. The scene that depicts Jackson wandering a grocery store at night hints at his lack of connection, while the recording he makes for his family shows his loneliness. Jackson finds himself as an outsider and a competitor trying to race his way into the world of NASCAR. Even his crew's presence is scant, with much of their interactions coming when they are at a pool party. The close of the film is where a different and pointed message emerges. At its end, Jackson procures sponsorship, but the sponsor believes that Jackson’s crew is a hindrance to his success. Jackson gives the ultimatum for his crew to be part of the deal, or there is no deal, and shows loyalty to and an affinity for his team. The bonds represented show willingness for one man to sacrifice for others, much as lovers might do.

Days of Thunder offers a different take on the homosocial roles involved in NASCAR.

The Trickle-Hogge relationship is comparable to that of son and father. There is no father figure present for Trickle, so Hogge assumes that role in shaping Trickle into a leading driver and later to bring Trickle back from his concussion and fear of the track. The two men start their

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relationship as combatants, but it evolves into one of mutual respect and, in many ways, love.

Film critic notes that this relationship is a key feature of early Tom Cruise films, remarking that Hogge fulfills the role of mentor, “an older man who has done it himself and has been there before and knows talent when he sees it, and who has faith in the kid even when the kid screws up because his free spirit has gotten the best of him.”43 Hence, Hogge offers both guidance and support. In the concluding scene, after Trickle has conquered his demons and won the race, he and Hogge sit on the pit wall and share a moment that fundamentally amounts to the two offering their love for each other. Before the moment might cross into anything infringing on homosexuality, the two challenge each other to a race to victory lane, eschewing any genuine emotionality. The relationship at play here is an homage to how southern men exalt their familial fathers, celebrating their heritage of Confederate soldiers, and honoring the patriarchal structure with the continued use of the labels “Daddy” or “Pappy.”

The other interesting relationship exists between Trickle and Rowdy Burns, played by

Michael Rooker. The two begin as hyper-competitors but become friends after both of them suffer injuries in the same wreck. Ebert asserts that this is another common aspect of Cruise films, commenting that Burns is the proto-enemy “the bad guy… who provides the hero with an opponent to practice on. At first… (they) dislike each other, but eventually, through a baptism of fire, they learn to love one another.”44 Ebert’s use of the word love represents the bond and adoration the two characters later show for one another, especially as Trickle wins in Burns’s car during the films’ final scenes. The Cruise film construct dovetails wonderfully with southern social expectations of respect for elders, homosocial relationships, and continued displays of manliness.

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In contrast to the more serious homosocial relationships of the previous two films,

Talladega Nights offers a satirical perspective. The relationship between Bobby and his best friend, Naughton, Jr., targets the concept of the buddy-film genre, with the two drivers playing vital roles in each other’s lives. They are shown together at the track, in Bobby’s wedding photos, at victory celebrations, at Bobby’s family dinner, and the bar together. Naughton, Jr. first utters that he loves Bobby at the beginning of the film, with his claim substantiated through these moments. The hospital scene where Bobby is recovering from his injuries from a crash offers a different perspective on their relationship. With Bobby unconscious, Naughton, Jr. sees the time as one for confession and tells Bobby that he once posed for Playgirl magazine. The goal is to play upon the commonly constructed behaviors of buddies and ridicule these norms. Naughton is also addressing the fear of queerness prevalent in the South, one where it is difficult for

Naughton to express himself fully to Bobby when the two are sober and alert. The film goes further in its depiction of gayness beyond that of Bobby and Naughton, Jr.

Jean Girard, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, is a driver who comes to NASCAR from

Formula 1 racing. Not only is he European, but French and also gay, marking his position as a conspicuous outsider. Talladega Nights plays upon Girard’s gayness, showing clips with him and his boyfriend raising blue-ribbon dogs “who are also gay.” The joke is supposed to play against the South's conservative values and the racing community, as seen in the disgusted and quizzical expressions of the Speed channel reporters delivering the profile piece. A gay character's appearance offers a way to ridicule numerous aspects of racing, including the vernacular,

“driving hard, driving it in deep, and sitting on the pole,” the last phrase referenced in the film.

As yet, no NASCAR driver at any level has come out as gay; instead, they flaunt their heteronormativity frequently, highlighted by presenting their wives or girlfriends at the

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beginning of each race during the national anthem. That the film looks past the act of shifting gears and its phallic nature might be considered an oversight.

Each of these films employs various sexual relationships in different ways and for different reasons. The conclusion drawn from them is that NASCAR offers a place of continued gender norms and behaviors, though Talladega Nights works to satirize them to illustrate how conservatism works as a barrier. Much of this criticism is planted within the South, a unique place with distinct values meant to be considered home.

The South as Character

With its agrarian roots and contentious history with the North, the South opposes the rest of the nation. In appreciating its mythology, there are the assumptions that it is rural and confined to its ways.45 Historian Jack Kirby contends that in the 1970s, the media representation of the South focused on the home, family, and good values, all conventional constructs that still prevail.46 Each one of these films uses and relies on these ideas to perpetuate the authenticity of place.

As can be seen from the film's previous analysis, The Last American Hero does its best to remain faithful to the region. The rural opening establishes the film's overall setting, but the sequences that occur in the woods of the Jackson family property further this concept. Two elements add to this impression, the first being the appearance of moonshine stills in the woods on the property and the second situating Jackson working on his racecar in a barn. These elements display the earthiness of the characters and “ground” them, connecting them to the land of the South. Distinguishing oneself as a southern against the Yankee identity is another way that this character-building takes shape. Jackson refers to a group of girls as Michigan girls both

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situates himself while also commenting on the other with the insinuation that the Michiganders are both exotic and easy.

The use of Yankee also factors in Days of Thunder. Before their first meeting, Hogge asks where Trickle is from and is told, “Eagle Rock.” Hogge then asks, “Is that up around

Wilkesboro?” and is told, “No, Glendale, California.” Hogge follows by asking, “So he’s a

Yankee?” which receives the response that Californians “aren’t Yankees, they’re not really anything.” This exchange shows two things, the first being the notion that Yankees are outsiders and that a Californian is more likely to be accepted. This moment is ironic as, over the years, more and more drivers come from California and the West than elsewhere, a trend set off in the

1990s with Jeff Gordon and followed by seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson, both from the

Golden State.

The film also is sure to use the land and country mythos numerous times. After opening the film with shots of a race at Daytona, the camera switches to Hogge riding his tractor on his farm. When Burns asks him how he is doing, Hogge states, “I never minded spreading a little fertilizer around now and then.” These scenes establish Hogge as a rural southern character, with

Hogge further confirming his southernness by wearing the hats of the University of Georgia and

Clemson University in the film. One additional aspect contrary to NASCAR actuality but which serves to craft the rustic South mythology is Hogge building his racecar in a barn. As Kulwicki posits, “We don’t build them in a barn with the sunlight coming through the boards. We work in highly technical shops with all kinds of technical equipment.”47 Therefore, the film highlights its southernness even at the expense of being true to its NASCAR component.

One element that additionally depicts the southernness of Days of Thunder is the use of the Confederate Flag. As historian John Coski points out, the flag is both uniquely southern and a

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source of Southern pride.48 By opening the film with the flag flying in one of the B-roll shots, the production offers a symbol to locate the story. Though its continued display has become an essential issue throughout the country, the flag is a unique symbol of the South for which the rest of the country does not have an equivalent.

In Talladega Nights, there is little in the way of crafting a distinct notion of southernness as there is little in the way of Southern regalia. If the road vehicles did not have North Carolina plates, the film could be taking place in Anywhere America. The film, however, positions itself in the South by showing races held only in the South, such as Texas, Martinsville, and Talladega.

Besides, the film plays upon a different aspect to evoke a Southern construct.

The method is one of portraying the ignorance and lack of education perceived to exist in the South. Both Kirby and Rawls discuss the stereotypical concept of southerners being less educated and anti-intellectual, and Talladega Nights uses this idea to show that ignorance is an acceptable state. One of these examples can be seen at the Bobby family dinner when one of

Bobby’s children relays his day at school. The child states that his teacher asked what the capital of North Carolina was and replied with Washington, DC. Both Bobby and Naughton, Jr. support this answer, demonstrating their ignorance and acceptance. While Talladega Nights is satirizing the notion of anti-intellectualism in American society, it confirms its existence through southern culture.

There are other aspects in each film that also serve to substantiate the claim of southernness in each film, such as using Lynyrd Skynyrd or Kenny Rogers, or the accents the actors use also indicate southernness. All these factors contribute to the South's overall setting, distinct from the rest of the country.

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Final Thoughts on Films

Other aspects of these films deserve exploration and analysis. Commercialization and sponsorship manifest themselves through the racecars, and the races merit further exploration and are something Talladega Nights criticizes overtly. This focus has been to limit the scope to the on-track racing, sexuality, and the notion of the South. Each of these films has used these notions in similar ways, manifesting an identity that appears inherent in NASCAR.

One intriguing aspect is that each of these films functions as a biography, even if fictional. The Last American Hero represents Junior Johnson’s story, where Days of Thunder was initially supposed to tell the story of Tim Richmond. While there has never been a Ricky

Bobby, his story is a satirical construct of the race films that have preceded it. Further examination of the films used here is warranted, as is looking at films not selected. Greased

Lightning would bring in the concept of race and its relation to both the South and NASCAR, and any analysis of a Dale Earnhardt film would encourage an examination of class status and the blue-collar worker and a further look at hero worship and how Earnhardt is lionized as a fallen mythological figure.

The Importance of Music

Missing from the discussion of the films and NASCAR’s representation is music, yet the soundtrack to both the films and the sport is vital for selling both. The conscious blending of certain genres of music, notably country and rock, establishes a relationship of connection between automobility, rural life, manliness, outlaw notions, and speed. Thus, rock has often provided a harder edge to the accompanying country music, with the two working in concert to provide a marketable representation. Country music offers a feeling of authenticity as “its origins

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and development as an evolving product of southern rural society’s ongoing interaction with and adaptation to the forces of change.”49 The South continues to grapple with its oppositional tugs of country and city; the collapse of traditional supports, such as family, community, church, rural

Americans’ hard adjustment to urban life, which has been reflected in “honky-tonk” and now country music.50 Country music and rock, however, are branches of the same tree of music and are tied to the South and NASCAR.

As a style coming from a blend of blues, hymns, and folk songs, a new generation of artists rose to prominence in the late 1930s, spearheaded by Hank Williams. Williams was as talented as he was tormented. Though he wrote many popular songs, covered to this day, he was beset by painkiller and alcohol addiction. He failed to reach his thirtieth birthday but did create a template for future country artists. Musicians, such as Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Willie

Nelson, and Waylon Jennings all found inspiration in some way from Williams and rose to prominence in the 1950s and 60s.

This new group of artists developed as an outlaw image and one highlighted by Cash.

With Cash clad all in black, and the others of the outlaw sect taking on less mainstream representations, namely jeans and t-shirts, they crafted an identity that Cobb describes as reviving “the Jefferson ideal of the agrarian-as-salt-of-the-earth.”51 In conjunction with this aspect was that the aloof presence these artists also conveyed “elicited images of pickups with shotguns stacked in the back of the cabs, shotguns waiting to be used to terrorize or kill civil rights marchers or those who sympathized with them.”52 These musicians were not only cultivating an image associated with the South, but they were defending the land and culture.

This group is a vital component of the southern music story and one that comes back to influence

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later generations. Having said that, settled in with the outlaw country musicians was another group that emerged in the late 1960s, one known as Southern Rock.

Eschewing Presley as the bedrock of Southern Rock, The Allman Brothers Band sits as its likely progenitor.53 The Brothers act as an excellent complement to much of the burgeoning sixties idealism, which seems somewhat counterintuitive coming from the South. The band is one of the first to experience widespread success with an integrated band—one drummer, Jai

Johanny Johanson, is Black and had previously toured with Otis Redding. Aside from their unique band composition, the band mixed jazz and blues into their rock sound and were among the early members of the jam band sound. The band adopted a working-class persona, wearing jeans and t-shirts. They also grew their hair long, which was something that their musical counterparts in other areas of the country may have embraced with more ease but made them stand out all the more. Their ties to the South, however, ran more profound than just their appearance. In early press photos, the band frequently appears in the woods, and in one shot, all the members are naked and in a stream. This connection to nature is one that is related directly to the agrarian background of Southerners. The band is not just claiming to be “earthy” but is, instead, deliberately identifying themselves as in touch with their homeland.

The Brothers further staked this claim when they released Eat a Peach in 1972. This successful featured the song “Blue Sky,” which became one of their longstanding fan favorites. Guitarist Dickey Betts wrote the song as an ode to his girlfriend, Native American

Sandy “Blue Sky” Wabegijig. In it, Betts references a river as a “sweet lullaby” and tells a bluebird not to fly as he is “just walking down the road.” These lines showcase a man at ease in nature, who both appreciates and finds peace there. The simple but memorable chorus of “You’re my Blue Sky/You’re my sunny day/Lord you know it makes me high/When you turn your love

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my way” continues the mood established in the verse. This song comes across as a joyful embrace of the southern landscape, something that is mentioned in the final verse, when Betts penned, “Going to Carolina, won’t be long and I’ll be there.” The unspecified Carolina elicits a lack of distinction between the two of them and connotes the sense that the South is interconnected. The Brothers, in this regard, establish a bookend to the outlaw country persona, perhaps a kinder version, one imbuing the notion “can’t we all just get along?”

In 1973, The Marshall Tucker Band joined the Brothers as another prominent Southern rock band. Their hit, “Can’t You See,” does not employ the Southern landscape in the same way.

In the song, the narrator, a jilted lover, seeks solace and believes it can be found in the South.

Two salient aspects come to the fore in the song. First, Toy Caldwell, the , uses the mountains as a setting to leave everything behind with an inherent consideration toward suicide.

One could argue that jumping off a mountain might be the ultimate attempt to reconnect with nature, but that argument would be improbable. The second aspect is that Caldwell uses the idea of riding on the railroad until it ends in Georgia as a way to get lost and not be found. This notion supports the idea of a rural landscape, an undeveloped place where one can be lost.

The Marshall Tucker Band also produced a song that adheres to an early conservationist perspective. Titled “Fly Eagle, Fly,” the song is a paean to nature and mentions “a gray squirrel climbing in an oak tree,” the “wild duck flyin,” a lion, an old black bear, “that poor alligator,” wild geese, a yellow butterfly, the “tiny flutter of the little wing of a hummingbird,” a buffalo, and the titular eagle. This work is a way of conveying the frustrations of what seems to be an evaporating wilderness and works in a universal context for any threatened land.

When Lynyrd Skynyrd flourished in 1973, they brought with them a different approach to using nature. While “Sweet Home Alabama” features the line “Where the skies are so blue,”

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which parallels the Allman Brothers Band’s “Blue Sky,” other notable songs from the band evoke other aspects. Though Skynyrd mirrored the Brothers’ use of rural press photos, their song

“Swamp Music” from Second Helping is a way of transporting the listener to a remote and foreign place, though one that is very much southern. As the song describes spending time in the swamp and how the narrator is “Gonna watch me a hound dog catch a ‘coon,’” there are two things at play here. First, the rustic aspects come to the forefront, especially as the band describes being in a remote rural place. Second, the language used is that of the “backwoods country” and thus aligns the song further with the region. An additional theme and one repeated in other

Skynyrd songs is the contrast between the city and the South.

The last line of the chorus to “Swamp Music” avows, “I ain’t got them big ol’ city blues.”

This statement serves as a way for southerners to claim their space and identify with the land they call home. It is also a way of denouncing industrialization or, from a southern perspective, northern industrial interests. The band rejects the city lifestyle again in 1978’s “Comin’ Home.”

The song features the line “a concrete jungle surrounding me,” which is followed a few lines later by the chorus, which states, “I want to come home/It’s been so long since I’ve been away.”

These lines contrast the city and its concrete to that of the land where the band finds comfort.

Southern Rock is a small subset of popular music, but the popularity that these three bands experienced reinforces what Cobb believes to be an acceptance of the South by the rest of

America.54 John Egerton initially discussed the country’s acceptance of the New South and espoused a blending of cultures between the South and the rest of the US. The unique southern culture, however, is the one that remains a unique identifier. However, the music changed not because any of the bands lost their identity but instead because America chose a different southern strain to follow as Americans warmed to country music, which ostensibly took its place.

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With declining popularity in the 1980s, and each band suffering personnel and business losses,

Southern Rock faded into the abyss of forgotten musical trends, even if songs such as Lynyrd

Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” or “Sweet Home Alabama” continued to receive consistent radio rotation and still play at NASCAR events.

The shift to television exposure brought the need for marketing, and the two elements of country and rock have surrounded the sport since. The soundtracks of the films demonstrate how these two genres rule the sport. For Stroker Ace, every song is either rock or country and performed by White men with the excpetion of Terri Gibbs, a woman (Table 4.1).

Table 4.1 – Stroker Ace Soundtrack1

Title Artist

A Victim of Circumstances The Marshall Tucker Band

Heartache Comin’ On Terri Gibbs

I Feel a Heartache Comin’ On Terri Gibbs

On the road Al Capps

Southern Lovin’ The Marshall Tucker Band

Stroker Ace The Charlie Daniels Band

Stroker Ace (Stroker’s theme) The Charlie Daniels Band

Victim of Life’s Circumstances The Marshall Tucker Band

What Have We Got to Lose Larry Gatlin

What Have You Got to Lose Larry Gatlin

1 Stroker Ace soundtrack.

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In much the same way, Days of Thunder mimics the previous soundtrack, offering nothing but rock and country, though this soundtrack offers more variety, with three female performers involved: Tina Turner, Maria McKee, and Joan Jett. The soundtrack pushes no boundaries and resembles one for any other Hollywood star production. The track listing for the Days of

Thunder soundtrack is provided in Table 4.2.

Table 4.2 – Days of Thunder soundtrack2

The Last Note of Freedom

Deal for Life

Break Through the Barrier Tina Turner

Trail of Broken Hearts Cher

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door Guns N’ Roses

You Gotta Love Someone Elton John

Show Me Heaven Maria McKee

Thunderbox Apollo Smile

Long Live the Night Joan Jett & the Blackhearts

Gimme Some Lovin Terry Reid

An attempt to break away from rock and country music eluded NASCAR or the networks and came instead from Chevrolet in 2007. The superstar of the sport, Dale Earnhardt Jr., was partnered with rapper TI (nee’ Clifford Harris) in a send-up of the two celebrities swapping rides.

The spot's humor comes with TI cruising during a supposed NASCAR race, hugging the bottom of the track and focused on a mellow drive rather than competing. The allusion to the style of

2 Days of Thunder soundtrack.

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driving is tied to lowrider culture and commonly associated with the West Coast hip-hop world.55

The fusing of NASCAR with hip hop was a hopeful, tenuous existence. Though drivers have often discussed their enjoyment of rap, notably with Arkansas native speaking about rappers Gucci Mane or Drake, several driver names are featured in songs by Jay-Z, Tupac,

Gucci Mane, or Ludacris; the crossover appeal has never resonated with the NASCAR crowd at large.56 A change in country music's direction may have usurped whatever ties that NASCAR and rap were building.

“Starting around 2008, the good ol’ boy, boastful of his stereotypical redneck persona, invaded and nearly took over country music.”57 For commercial purposes, the “good ol’ boy” is the South’s blend of swagger, daredevil attitude, reckless talent, and anti-authoritarianism. These are the same qualities that all the best NASCAR drivers from Richard Petty to Dale Earnhardt to

Tony Stewart to Kyle Busch have embodied, racing in a sport that transformed from a way to pass the time between moonshine runs into a national phenomenon.58 The unmentioned aspect is the hospitable racism that accompanies this celebrated stereotype. This shift in music came in concert with how NASCAR sought to market itself. With the economic depression coming to the fore in 2008, NASCAR endured a steep drop in attendance and then viewership numbers. This trend coincides with the country’s economic downturn, though frequently fans and pundits like to blame the shift on three changes: moving away from tracks in the Southeast, adopting to decide a champion, and using the . These three elements possibly caused many older fans to turn away, but any number of reasons could explain the sport’s continued downslide from 2008 onward.

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In response to the downward shift in popularity, NASCAR has ostensibly returned to its roots in the South, displaying an adherence to the roots that it may have been trying to outrun in its desire to be a mainstream sport. One example that stands as a marker to show how this pattern takes effect can be seen in a race at in 2018.

Fans selected the song for driver introductions before the night race at a track that calls itself “The Last Great Coliseum.” This race once held the distinction of being one of the most difficult to procure tickets for, but since the sport has dipped in popularity, empty seats litter the grandstands. To increase track-fan interaction, each driver selected three songs for the public to choose from for them to use as entrance music. The fans cast over 100,000 votes in total.59 The breakdown of the songs selected, however, looks like a familiar pattern constructed three decades ago.

Of the 39 drivers listed below, the breakdown for song selections tallies as 6 rap/hip-hop songs, 17 rock/pop songs, and 16 country songs. Considering that Days of Thunder was made in

1990, nearly 30 years before the fans’ vote, it is striking how so little has changed with the music that surrounds the sport. Though drivers may be fans of rap/hip hop, the sport’s fans have shown little interest in following them beyond their comfort level. This conservatism brings remarkable continuity to the sport, but it also indicates how it enacts the region’s resistance to change.

Though choosing such small examples to make such a broad claim may look like an overstatement, it is perfectly suitable as it supports the contention that “if their culture serves

Southerners for better or worse, in dealing with a hostile ‘outside,’ it will probably continue to serve as long as the outside seems hostile.”60 This assessment relates to both the films and the music trends, indicating that both the South and NASCAR are entrenched in maintaining an

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identity, using that identity as a shield to fend off potential threats to their practice of the status quo.

Table 4.3 – 2018 Bristol Song Selections made by NASCAR fans3 (Source material: ESPN.com)

2018 Bristol Song choices – chosen by fans

Winning Fan Vote Songs Rap / Rock / Country Hip Pop Hop Kyle Busch “All I Do is WIN” by DJ Khaled x “Outlaw State of Mind” by x Brad “Little Deuce Coupe” by The Beach Boys x Keselowski Ricky “People Back Home” by Florida Georgia x Stenhouse, Jr. Line “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash x “Dirt Road Anthem” by Jason Aldean x “ROCK in the USA” by John Mellencamp x “Rise” by I Prevail, 60 percent x Michael “Taken it to the Streets” by The Doobie x McDowell Brothers “Brass Monkey” by The Beastie Boys x William Byron “Fan the Flames” by Liberty University x Daniel Suarez “Speedy Gonzalez” by Pat Boone x “You Ain’t Seen Nothin Yet” by Bachman x Turner Overdrive “Country Boy Can Survive” by Hank x Williams Jr. “5-1-5-0” by x Chase Elliott “A Crazy Racin’ Man” by Bill Elliott x Jimmie “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes x Johnson AJ “I’m Alright” by Kenny Logins x Allmendinger “Miami Vice” x

3 ESPN.com. “Fans Determine Bristol Driver Intro Songs,” April 15, 2018. https://www.espn.com/jayski/cup/2018/story/_/id/23186638/fans-determine-bristol-driver-intro- songs.

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Darrell “Into the Fire” by Asking Alexandria x “Bubba” Wallace, Jr. “Cowboy” by Kid Rock x “Pork and Beans” by Weezer x David Ragan “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the x Charlie Daniels Band Matt “John Cena Theme Song” x DiBenedetto “Forever” by Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne x & Eminem Martin Truex, “Nothing But The Taillights” by x Jr. “Watermelon Crawl” by Tracy Byrd x “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins x “Going to Mars” by Judah and the Lion x Ryan Newman “Huntin, Fishin & Lovin Every Day” by x Luke Bryan Jamie “One” by x McMurray “Walk It Like I Talk It” by Migos x “Rocky Top” by the Pride of the Southland x Marching Band Corey LaJoie “ Yodeling Song” x DJ Kennington “The Hockey Song” x “Motorsport” by Migos x Harrison “Enter Sandman” by Metallica x Rhodes “Where I Come From” by Alan Jackson x Kevin Harvick “Happy” by Pharrell x

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CHAPTER 4 – ENDNOTES

1 James C. Cobb, Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 206.

2 Jack Temple Kirby, Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 39–63.

3 Kirby, 43.

4 Arthur G. Pettit, Mark Twain And The South, 1st ed. (University Press of Kentucky, 1974), 35– 50, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130j5rc.

5 Kirby, Media-Made Dixie, 6.

6 John C. Finn, “Gone With the Wind,” Variety (blog), December 20, 1939, https://variety.com/1939/film/reviews/gone-with-the-wind-2-1200412649/.

7 Frank S. Nugent, “The Screen in Review; David Selznick’s ‘Gone With the Wind’ Has Its Long-Awaited Premiere at Astor and Capitol, Recalling Civil War and Plantation Days of South- -Seen as Treating Book With Great Fidelity,” The New York Times, December 20, 1939, sec. Archives, https://www.nytimes.com/1939/12/20/archives/the-screen-in-review-david-selznicks- gone-with-the-wind-has-its.html.

8 David Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 26.

9 Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, First Edition (Oxford University Press, 2004), 57, http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=96dbea769c0764450250ffe7d4264813.

10 Harkins, 58.

11 Craig Caron, “How *Thunder Road* Became a Southern-Fried Cult Phenom,” TIFF, accessed January 1, 2020, https://www.tiff.net/the-review/how-thunder-road-became-a-southern-fried- cult-phenom.

12 Harkins, Hillbilly, 211.

13 Howell, From Moonshine to Madison Avenue, 118.

14 Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965).

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15 Janet Maslin, “Movies: Pryor Is Serious (and Fine),” The New York Times, August 4, 1977, https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/04/archives/movies-pryor-is-serious-and-fine.html.

16 Scott Saul, Becoming (New York: Harper Collins, 2015), 287, http://ebook.3m.com/library/gvpl-document_id-eweb6r9.

17 David Henry, Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2015), 152.

18 Saul and 3M Cloud Library, Becoming Richard Pryor, 298.

19 Saul and 3M Cloud Library, 298.

20 Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 59.

21 Matthew J. Ferrence, All-American Redneck Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 2014), 133, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10909220.

22 Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture (New York: Times Books, 1996), 10.

23 Daniel, Lost Revolutions, 93.

24 Neal Thompson, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR (Broadway, 2007), Introduction.

25 Ferrence, All-American Redneck Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks, 52.

26 Ferrence, 52.

27 Ray, 1985, 73.

28 Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 83.

29 Jocelyn Neal, “Why Ladies Love Country Boys,” in Diane Pecknold and Kristine M. McCusker, Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 21, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhm/detail.action?docID=4438674.

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30 Ryan Rees, “Alan Kulwicki’s View From the Cockpit,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1990, http://articles.latimes.com/1990-06-27/entertainment/ca-511_1_alan-kulwicki.

31 Lesley Hazelton, “Race Cars as Actors Fuel the Eye in ‘Thunder,’” The New York Times, July 8, 1990..

32 Janet Maslin, “Review/Film; Tom Cruise and Cars, and a Lot of Them,” The New York Times, accessed December 4, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/27/movies/review-film-tom- cruise-and-cars-and-a-lot-of-them.html.

33 Hazelton, Ibid.

34 Rees, Ibid.

35 Jeff Gluck, “SB Nation NASCAR Awards: Our Picks for the Best and Worst of 2012,” Sbnation.com, December 6, 2012, http://www.sbnation.com/nascar/2012/12/6/3735370/nascar- awards-2012-best-and-worst.

36 Anne Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics, 1830-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 37.

37 Jacqueline Boles and Maxine P. Atkinson, “Ladies: South by Northwest,” in Caroline Matheny Dillman, ed., Southern Women (New York: Hemisphere Pub. Corp, 1988), 128.

38 Daniel, Lost Revolutions, 104.

39 Daniel, 104.

40 “Days Of Thunder Script - Transcript from the Screenplay,” script-o-rama.com, accessed April 20, 2020, http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/d/days-of-thunder-script-transcript.html.

41 Heyrman, Southern Cross, 93.

42 Daniel, 2000. 104

43 Roger Ebert, “Days of Thunder,” Rogerebert.com, June 27, 1990, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19900627/REVIEWS/6270301/103.

44 Ebert, Ibid.

45 Kristin Rawls, “5 Big Media Stereotypes About the South (And the Real Story Behind Them),” AlterNet, April 2, 2012, http://www.alternet.org/story/154794/5_big_media_stereotypes_about_the_south_(and_the_real _story_behind_them).

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46 Jack Temple Kirby, Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American imagination, 134.

47 Rees, 1990.

48 John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 98.

49 James C. Cobb, Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 203.

50 Tony Scherman, “Country,” American Heritage, November 1994, https://www.americanheritage.com/country.

51 James C. Cobb, Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 84.

52 Cobb, Redefining Southern Culture, 81.

53 Joshua Guthman, “Southern Rockers,” Southern Cultures 15, no. 3 (2009): 141–143, doi:10.1353/scu.0.0062.

54 Cobb, 84.

55 Michael Arria, “The Cultural Significance of Lowriders in America,” Vice (blog), October 15, 2012, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkkmpw/lowriders.

56 Doug Demmons, “Mark Martin’s Favorite Music? Rap,” News. AL.com, October 31, 2009, https://www.al.com/blogoftomorrow/2009/10/mark_martins_favorite_music_ra.html; KesFan_NavyVet, “R/NASCAR - NASCAR and Hip-Hop: Why Two Seemingly Opposite Worlds Are Closer than We Think,” Reddit, accessed January 16, 2020, https://www.reddit.com/r/NASCAR/comments/7ksyd3/nascar_and_hiphop_why_two_seemingly _opposite/.

57 Jocelyn Neal, “Why Ladies Love Country Boys: Gender, Class, and Economics in Contemporary Country Music,” in Pecknold, Diane, and Kristine M. McCusker, eds. Country Boys and Redneck Women: New Essays in Gender and Country Music. American Made Music Series (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016), 3.

58 Busbee, “Day of Reckoning Has Arrived for NASCAR and Its Fans.”

59 “Fans Determine Bristol Driver Intro Songs,” ESPN.com, April 15, 2018, https://www.espn.com/jayski/cup/2018/story/_/id/23186638/fans-determine-bristol-driver-intro- songs.

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60 John Shelton Reed, The Enduring South: Subcultural Persistence in Mass Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 90.

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CHAPTER 5

THE PARADOX OF SOUTHERN TRADITION AND NASCAR TECHNOLOGY

Introduction

NASCAR likes tradition. Humpy Wheeler, who transformed Charlotte Motor Speedway into a prized track, developed an annual ode to nationalism, bombastic technology, and

NASCAR each Memorial Day. Prior to the 600-mile race on that holiday weekend, Wheeler would devise a spectacle to kick off the show. “He's bombed everything this side of the Persian

Gulf to promote his race on Memorial Day weekend. He's re-enacted everything from the invasion of to the first Gulf War.”1 These shows pay homage to the country as much as they do to masculinity and the recognition of technological marvel. While Wheeler and the fans may embrace the extravaganza, NASCAR has been slow to adapt to technological advancements.

Perhaps the reluctant approach is best. For example, when the Coronavirus shut

NASCAR down for nine weeks in early 2020, the sport moved to airing I-Races. The stock-car circuit certainly would have preferred running its traditional season, but faced with that impossibility, it staged simulated online events, with top drivers, on the iRacing platform.2

During one of the races, Kyle Larson wiped away all the good will when he said the N-word to the person on his headset. Broadcast to the nation, this utterance started a cascade of troubles.

“For the past two decades, NASCAR brass have rolled that boulder up the mountain, tirelessly working to change the sport’s long ago earned but increasingly dated perception as a safe place for racists. On Sunday, Larson pushed the rock back down the hill with two syllables.”3

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First, Larson lost his ride and was kicked out of NASCAR until he underwent sensitivity training. “He also delivered a body blow to NASCAR itself, which for years has sought to reach beyond its traditional fan base and driver pool while presenting its reality as a far more diverse and welcoming place than the old stereotypes suggest.”4 In a fit of paradox, Larson used new technology to adhere to traditional racism. “It’s NASCAR’s old, worst stereotype being reaffirmed, just as it was finding a flash of iRacing positivity to perhaps push through the pandemic.”5

The Larson incident functions as a way of seeing the relationship between technology and tradition in NASCAR. In a region beholden to tradition because “that’s the way that daddy did it,” the sport reflects and employs this mindset. As an enterprise that runs on technological ingenuity, the framework of tradition often holds back the innovation that other racing series enjoy. The result is that the sport is often criticized for being backward or that some people find it less interesting because they do not relate to the product. The sense of tradition is an overriding theme in the South as well, a tool used to maintain stability and community. The problem with tradition is that it also works as a barrier to needed change, growing stronger through fear.

Tradition as Ideology

Tradition in the South is a nebulous concept. The idea of tradition is often acknowledged and accepted but rarely defined. Nearly everyone recognizes that traditions surround normative cultural existence in the South, but there is little effort to offer what makes something a custom.

When examining what traditions persist in the region, many scholars, pundits, and journalists find commonality with a group of terms and concepts with the agrarian tradition leading the way, joined by violence, racism, honor, hospitality, chivalry, family, patriarchy, religion, and others.

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Hence, many write about southern traditions but fail to depict precisely what a tradition is and when it emerged. The notion of tradition is as much a communal concept as it is a deterrent to any kind of change in the region. Josephine Pinckney noted that “tradition has it that the southern states, of all American groups, stand firmest against the rapid social drift characteristics of this rootless nation.”6 Pinckney’s comment, published in 1934, indicates how ingrained and practiced tradition had already become after the end of the Civil War.

The value of traditions manifests itself in how it assists people participating in a continued common existence. David Goldfield develops the thought further by noting that “the intersection of history and memory creates traditions, and traditions are central to a people’s identity in that they give meaning to the present and offer hope for the future.”7 And it is the future that is, in a paradoxical way, the reason that people remain attached to thoughts and behaviors that are supposed to be steeped in history. That Goldfield mentions hope is in line with the findings by Cheung et al., as they avowed that nostalgia, the emotional component of tradition, increases optimism.8 Therefore, traditions are a way to look past the difficulties or challenges and feel better about the future. In this regard, the South finds itself in a unique position to argue for traditions.

If Goldfield’s argument is that “tragedy is a central element to establishing and fostering tradition,” then the North’s victory in the Civil War provides all the calamity needed to carry forth traditions that differentiate it from the rest of the country.9 The South’s construct of the

War of Northern Aggression gave a license to both remember and rebuild the South in a way that those in power saw fit. Because of this ability to craft its own narrative, the New South was born.

As Cobb notes, “as champions of past, present, and future, the New South’s proponents were in an all but impregnable position while anyone who challenged them could readily be cast as the

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opponent of both progress, tradition, and, for good measure, the status quo as well.”10 The New

South ideology created a cabal of former Confederate states aligned in their conformity even with the subtle differences between them. This creation is a direct effect of the intent of traditions.

In examining the construct of traditions and what they achieve, Eric Hobsbawm conceives the idea of “invented traditions.” He notes that “they are highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the ‘nation’, with its associated phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, histories and the rest.”11 That all traditions are invented is clear, but the reason for their creation is the focal point. Hobsbawm’s description aligns smoothly with the South and its nation-within-a-nation position. As the Confederate States had developed their symbols when they seceded from the union, they were readily available to use when rebuilding the region after the war to ensure a sense of community. Hobsbawm goes further when asserting that these identity markers are vital because “they inculcate: ‘patriotism’,

‘loyalty’, ‘duty’, ‘playing the game’, ‘the school spirit’ and the like.”12 Cobb maintains that “for the New South, this meant not only the celebration of a greatly embellished Old South but the almost ritualistic trotting out of the old captains of the Lost Cause to convey their blessings on the new captains of industry and commerce whenever the latter sought local financial and moral support for their ventures.”13 The Confederate Flag stands as the overt marker of constructed ties.

Still, traditions can be found elsewhere, such as when fans at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on the University of Mississippi campus sang the song “Dixie” and added the refrain that the “South will rise again” before football games. This allegiance brings cohesion with the group that is emotional, psychological, and political, forming a backbone for a singular ideology to predominate the South.

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While tradition serves to bring the people together, anti-intellectualism, racism, and a belief in populism are the foundational ideologies that accompany it. For a country with a propensity to ignore or dismiss intellectualism, the South stands as the center of these practices, one region tied to fundamentalist Christianity. Journalist Chuck Thompson, when attacking the

South, remarks that “while it’s true that over the last half-century the South has pulled closer to national academic norms, the essential narrative of a southern region dragging down the nation’s intellectual potential remains unchanged.”14 Placing the blame on the South for failing to follow the nation’s norms is a concept that has been prevalent for some time. H.L. Mencken had proclaimed the South to be an intellectual desert, a comment that his protégé, W.J. Cash followed by stating what a southerner felt and that “discharging his feelings immediately, he developed no need or desire for intellectual culture in its own right - none, at least, powerful enough to drive him past his taboos to its actual achievement.”15 The totality of these remarks supports the perception that the South is backward and overly smitten with religion. Cobb proffers a succinct way of considering traditions by stating that except perhaps its tragic propensity for racial savagery, none brought more criticism and ridicule down on the White

South than its apparently unshakable dedication to evangelical, fundamentalist Protestantism.16

While religion may again be a ubiquitous force in the region, the practice of anti- intellectualism has fostered lasting effects. This statement does not dispute the fact that there were and are intellectuals in the South. Michael O’Brien’s six-volume collection of essays from southern intellectuals, Conjectures of Order: Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810–

1860, recognizes that the South was not void of thinkers but instead that their voices were seldom heard over the din coming from politicians and New South aristocrats. Because intellectuals could not command public discourse, the region developed disenchantment with

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them, and populism grew as a problem.17 The result of this ideology may best be manifested in how the George W. Bush presidency “offered a finely rendered contemporary Redneck presidency: strong, male, hawkish, anti-intellectual.”18 With Bush’s success, the South had celebrated a mindset that has lasting consequences.

The South has engaged in disappointing displays of celebration with monuments for the

Civil War strewn throughout the former Confederate states, reminders that overlook the conflict's history. Perhaps that most egregious example is what can be considered the largest memorial, the

158-foot tall carving on the side of Stone Mountain in Georgia that depicts the three Confederate figures, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. Chastising the South for its commemoration of being on the losing side of the war is easy, and the criticism in the 2010s toward southern Civil War monuments has finally brought down many of these structures. But these memorials are representative of the anti-intellectualism that has grown since reconstruction and the same ideology that purports that the Civil War was fought for the states’ rights to govern themselves and not slavery. This is how the Lost Cause ideology is made real. Richard Rose, the president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP), argues that Stone Mountain “speaks not to Atlanta, per se, but to the state of

Georgia, which every year tries to proclaim a Confederate History Month.”19 Though Rose may be arguing that many in the state have failed to recognize the proclamation, Georgia has declared

April as Confederate History Month since 1995. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and

Virginia also celebrate Confederate History. With the Confederacy serving as a stand-in for overt racism, it is no surprise to find stories like the one of three University of Mississippi students, two who were armed, standing by a bullet-ridden plaque marking the location Emmett Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in 1955. 20

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Tradition as Economy

While anti-intellectualism may be a factor in overt racism, it has also been part of the

South’s economic structure and systemic racism. In the 21st century, the American South has become the low-wage anchor of a global production process, just as it was before the Civil

War.21 The engine of this production is unskilled labor, where the workforce's quality of education is dismissed. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s highlighted the division in education as states fought to keep African American students from attending colleges and schools. The practice of denying equal opportunity did not disappear but rather shifted in how it was constructed. The South can be easily chided for its redrawing of district lines to separate White and African American neighborhoods, which consequently delivered more resources to the former over the latter.

The policy of denying African Americans the same opportunities is a tradition of its own in the South and the creative ways, but by failing African Americans and other low-income persons of color, the South could torment this workforce.

One reason wages continued to fall throughout the Deep South, despite the influx of jobs, is the region's distinctive absence of legislation and institutions that protect workers' interests. The five states that have no minimum-wage laws are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Georgia is one of the two states (the other is Wyoming) that have set minimum wages below the level of the federal standard. (In all these states, of course, employers are required to pay the federal minimum wage.) Likewise, the rates of unionization of Southern states' workforces are among the lowest in the land: 4.3 percent in Georgia, 3.7 percent in Mississippi, 2.2 percent in South Carolina, 1.9 percent in North Carolina.22

The combination of low wages, strong anti-union attitudes, and right-to-work legislation situates those who work unskilled labor positions as less than and attempts to keep them in this position.

This environment also gives power to the South as it can lure companies to the region, basically

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pitting the region against the rest of the country and practices established elsewhere. Hence, “the

American middle-class has been eroded by the emergence of lower-wage competition from both the Global South and the domestic South.”23 The rest of the country has been unable to fight back and is instead mirroring the former Confederate states' constructs. The division between the

South and the rest of the country is always more dramatic than actual as the two are continually adopting features from one another. However, as Meyerson remarked, “the South's efforts to spread its values across America are advancing, as Northern Republicans adopt their Southern counterparts' antipathy to unions and support for voter suppression, and as workers' earnings in the North fall toward Southern levels.”24

What the rest of the country is adopting, in a way, is Southern tradition. Through the practice of slavery, the enactment of Jim Crow laws, and the fight against Civil Rights, the South has developed the best practices for maintaining the racial divide. When other regions follow their lead, those moments offer a chance to revel in their traditions. While that may seem grotesque, one need only look toward the prison industrial complex in the South and how it disenfranchises African American males in the region.

The pride in southern tradition is unlike anything seen in the rest of the country. From one perspective, southerners can enjoy a sense of satisfaction as their practices are adopted in other places – they may have lost the war, but they significantly influence how the rest of the country runs. These changes allow southerners to enjoy the result of their continued performance of culture, even if they might not see their traditions in that manner.

To think of tradition as performance is to reconsider the practices as being part of a theater, a show that is meant for a specific audience. Schechner and Brody assert that “performances mark identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the body, and tell stories.”25

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For the South, embracing these characteristics is vital in both remembering their unique identity and in practicing hope, believing in a better future. Each element works by heightening and acknowledging the specifics of their identity and the love of remembering, confusing time between the Old and New South, and building the body in the conformity of the region. If performance does that work, the functions of it align just as well. Schechner and Brody purport that the seven functions of performance are: to entertain; to create beauty; to mark or change identity; to make or foster community; to heal; to teach or persuade; to deal with the sacred and the demonic.26 In the South, performance is crucial in the reconstruction of its ideology, constantly updating but always clasping and paying tribute to its antebellum roots. Although tradition may be the apparent concept to mention, it has a component aside from nostalgia.

What traditions do and the messages they carry tells only part of their importance. The ingredient that is just as important is emotion, which is difficult to define but governs so many behaviors. Sentiment once evinced a negative connotation, being thought of as something with too much emotion or wistfulness and thus unable to qualify well. The use has changed and become significant in exploring ideologies. June Howard asserts that “the term ‘sentiment’ marks the recognition that emotions are social and historical.”27 Overlooking sentiment means overlooking how emotions tie people to the world, and the South’s use of Lost Cause rhetoric plays upon sentiment to inculcate and engender groupthink and conformity. When the southern construct is overlaid onto NASCAR, the result is zealous adherence to established practices.

One way to position this ideology is to address common gender roles. The South believes in traditional roles, and males tend to dominate the field of technology. Bill Adler, seizing on pop psychology rhetoric, divides genders into simplistic notions of “men are from Mars, women are from Venus,” and asserts that gadgets are representative agents of freedom, independence,

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macho ego-boosting, and power.28 Therefore, the automobile represents one of the ultimate gadgets and has continually been sold as a tool for freedom and independence, something meant for the open road or nature meant to be tackled, both as indicators of overt maleness. Any threat to this way of thinking challenges both the self but also the community and its foundations.

Tradition as NASCAR

The sport of NASCAR is like any other in that it constructs its traditions, usually through the rules that govern it. Sport, in general, has been troubled by the notion of breaking from tradition. For Major League Baseball, the lowering of the pitcher’s mound, or the introduction of the Designated Hitter, brought vitriolic reactions from the fans. In the National Football League, rule changes consistently attract journalistic and fan criticism. Every other sport has endured similar responses, as when soccer introduced micro-chipped balls that could be tracked, or when

Formula 1 changed engine regulations that resulted in a different engine pitch. What makes the responses to these changes absurd is that little change occurs in the fandom; the numbers do not change. It seems that the reaction is a performance of fandom, and each voice adds to the sense of community. That sense of community is a critical point in giving a sport validity, and arguing against any kind of change is an adherence to tradition.

Community and tradition are a focal point of what Hobsbawm contends. He sets tradition into three overlapping types: “a) those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial communities, b) those establishing or legitimizing institutions, status or relations of authority, and c) those whose main purpose was socialization, the inculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behavior.”29 For NASCAR, all three varieties are in play. The first has been established before when recognizing NASCAR fans as an

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example of Benedict Anderson’s imagined community. The second gives legitimacy to the governing body, for better or worse. The third encourages the fan base’s conformity, developing what could be considered a guidebook in how to be a fan. The latter includes practices of when to cheer, acceptable attire, language, and others, but attitude is as much a part of it as anything.

One of the things that fans of NASCAR have expressed lasting and concerted derision toward is the change in how the Cup champion is decided. Prior to 2004, a driver won the championship by accumulating the most points throughout the entire season. Sometimes, this system produced a winner with races still left to be run, while the championship was sometimes decided in the final race. But beginning in 2004, NASCAR implemented a system that followed ball sports and the playoff format. While there is no need to get into the specifics of what was originally called The Chase for the Cup Championship, known mainly as The Chase, the gist is that it divided the season. The first 26 races were the regular season, and the last ten races served as playoffs for what was initially ten drivers but grew to 16 as of 2019. The governing body sought to bring new energy to the championship, but for the vocal fans, this move was a poor decision. Forbes ran an article titled “Why Does NASCAR Even Have Playoffs, Anyway?” which echoed the sentiment of many fans.30

The addition of the Chase/Playoffs is a prime example of manufacturing new tradition.

Dave Caldwell used a key word to describe the new format when he stated that “the ‘Chase’ was invented to make the end of the season more relevant as NASCAR jostles for fans and viewers with the NFL on Sundays and, to a lesser extent, college football on Saturdays.”31 While the reasons for initiating the Chase may be numerous, Caldwell’s use of “invented” is essential.

Though the choice of “invented” may seem nothing more apt for the article, it can be read as recognizing the construction and demolition of tradition. Hobsbawm used the same word when

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stating that “‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.”32 Though associating invented tradition with the South and NASCAR is intuitive, the centerpiece again ties to the past. The history of the automobile may have its history and traditions, but NASCAR’s history begins in 1948, meaning that all traditions are invented and recent.

The sport of NASCAR uses the refracted idea of southern tradition as the basis for many of the rules that have governed the sport. The car is the focal point for this argument, and in that regard, the car has embodied traditional feelings. At its foundation, “NASCAR runs high- horsepower rear-wheel-drive cars with V8s and four-speed manual transmissions, while the road versions of those cars, for the most part, aren’t nearly that wild.”33 This statement causes a need for a quick breakdown. For the most part, passenger cars in the US are front-wheel drive and feature economical four-cylinder or sporty six-cylinder engines. The four-speed transmission is a relic, as six-speed transmissions have become the standard in the late 2010s, with sports cars running eight-speed gearing.

In his piece that examined new technologies in racing in 2017, Aaron Robinson began his lone statement about NASCAR by stating that “NASCAR isn’t known for tech innovation,” an assertion that encourages a perception that the sport is not keeping up with the times.34 This construct divides fans, frequently between those who maintain the attitude that change in the sport is contemptible, pitted against those who see advancements as positive endeavors. The overall sense, however, is that NASCAR is backward and has not been progressing with the technological times in the way that other series have. Consider that Chevrolet has been running a

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358 cubic inch V8 in the Cup series since 1974. While there is little resemblance of a race engine to the engine you find in cars on the streets, the current Chevrolet engine, known as the R07, which debuted in 2007, is perhaps the most refined small-block engine in the world.35 The cars in

NASCAR used to be based on production models, but this engine bears no similarity to the one in a streetcar. The result is that NASCAR has adhered to their agreed-upon specifications for the engines used in racing based upon a singular belief that it is the best way to do things.

While it may be unfair to compare racing series, the lack of change in NASCAR is disappointing, especially when discussing the evolution of engines in two other top racing series.

In Formula 1, change is part of racing. From 2006-2013, the cars were powered by 2.4-liter V8 engines. Beginning in 2014, the series switched to 1.6-liter V6 engines, a smaller engine that was still able to deliver the same amount of horsepower as its predecessor. The latest engine systems also feature energy capture systems from breaking and turbos that cycle air for more engine input. The American open-wheel racing series IndyCar ran a 3.0-liter V8 from 1995 to 2005.

Beginning in 2006, the series switched to a 3.5-liter engine, which was then followed by the fuel- efficient DOHC 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 in 2014. However, NASCAR has continued to use the same engine, a peculiar ode to tradition, especially as attitudes about automobiles have shifted, and hybrids and electric cars have become prominent.

The tweet featured in Figure 5.1 shows a response to the attitude that many fans have when thinking about the car. Fans often demonstrate an ardent belief that racecars should either be “like they used to be” or that they should be “stock.” When confronted with the fact that the previous car models were hardly stock, there is still a resounding guffaw that the cars of today are not matching some baffling archetype of whatever these fans imagine. Resistance to change is a common condition, but NASCAR fans are frequently holding on to concepts that match

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tradition than anything in reality. David Ragan, a former Cup driver, responded to a fan’s comment about technology with: “Yea. I can’t stand all this new technology. What happened to

‘Stock Car racing in the good old days??’ –typed from my iPhone X, while driving in my 2020 vehicle with heated seats listening to a Podcast” Figure 5.1.). Ragan’s tweet exemplifies a humorous response to these fans. Ragan satirizes how fans want NASCAR to exist as an anachronism, contending that the contemporary cars feature all the latest technology, including ones based solely on comfort. The tweet is also reflective of how the automobile has been a showcase for technology since its creation. Lutz and Lutz see the car “as the very model of technological development, with American consumers eagerly awaiting each new innovation in driving performance, design, comfort, and safety and, until quite recently, trading in their older cars earlier and earlier to get them.”36 The level of technology expected for road vehicles fails to match that for NASCAR vehicles, yet many fans believe in tradition and disregard that bifurcation.

Figure 5.1 – Tweet from Cup driver David Ragan1 (source: Twitter)

1 Source: Twitter.

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The engine may be one element of a stockcar that has failed to evolve, but it is not alone.

The suspension of the car is also beholden to old technology. “Whether the reason is historical, economical, or technological, NASCAR has stuck with the solid rear axle.”37 For NASCAR vehicles, the rear axle powers the rear wheels after being linked from a hub in the center and being connected to the driveshaft. Again, many modern road vehicles differ in their engineering, featuring independent suspension. The difference between the two is that a solid axle joins the rear wheels, while an independent suspension allows one wheel to move vertically without influencing the other. The use of independent suspensions originated in the 1930s and started to be implemented in the 1950s. While the focus was first on the front end of a car, the attention shifted to the rear throughout the 1950s and 1960s. What had been a technological marvel has grown more commonplace over time, with even most low-end models featuring independent rear suspension in the 2010s. Such stubbornness on NASCAR’s part is often couched under financial terms and how teams would have to spend on upgrades, but it can also be situated in the notion of tradition and doing things the way they have always done them.

Racing series have helped bring technology from the track to the street, but NASCAR has never contributed in the way that Formula 1 has. The European series has refined features, such as anti-lock brakes, all-wheel drive, and adaptive suspensions, which have all found their way onto production vehicles. Even IndyCar can make the case that they introduced rearview mirrors when Ray Harroun employed the device to win the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911.38 But

NASCAR has not shown the same crossover. The uniformity of the cars and the reliance on updated forms of traditional technology has meant that the sport has become more advanced but

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in its own bubble. Edmonson declares that a “spec car series, such as NASCAR, where all platforms are essentially identical, will have a tough time contributing to new technology.”39

Tradition and Advancement

When NASCAR has implemented changes in the sport, they have frequently come well past their due date. Making such a claim requires a comparison with the street vehicles than with other racing series. One example that deserves criticism is fuel. In 2008, NASCAR switched from leaded to unleaded fuel, matching what most passenger vehicles on the road use. However, this transition came twelve years after the federal government mandated that on-road vehicles run on unleaded gasoline beginning January 1, 1996. Such a delay merits any condemnation that can be pushed on the sport. One element that allowed NASCAR to work on a schedule of their own making is that they are exempt from the 1970 Clean Air Act designed to encourage the switch from leaded to unleaded gasoline. What troubled NASCAR was crafting a fuel that could offer the same lubrication as its leaded counterpart. By 2008, the series had found their answer as

“the new fuel alleviates that problem without using MTBE, an additive that had been considered in the past but was rejected because it was barred in some states as a health hazard.”40 The sport needed 12 years to find a replacement, while unleaded gas had become the norm for production vehicles, signaling a strange divide between the sport and any sense of stockcar.

Surprisingly, only three years after introducing unleaded fuel, NASCAR switched to using ethanol as part of its fuel. The transition to Sunoco E15 in 2011 was meant to sell an idea of a more environmentally friendly NASCAR while also tacitly acknowledging the farmers of the country for their contribution. The sport seemed to have overlooked tradition by introducing contemporary technology. While engineers may have had misgivings, the switch to unleaded fuel

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had allayed many fears after engine wear had not jumped significantly. The problem is that ethanol, in many ways, is a bad product.

If one of the goals of NASCAR is to advertise or sway public consumption, pushing ethanol was a poor choice for a variety of reasons. The consensus is that ethanol is not doing what many believe it to be doing to contribute to a greener planet. The effect is multi-level, spreading its problems into several areas. Runge’s critique of ethanol argues that “higher-ethanol blends still produce significant levels of air pollution, reduce fuel efficiency, jack up corn and other food prices, and have been treated with skepticism by some car manufacturers for the damage they do to engines.”41 Elements of this criticism are echoed in Dave Juday’s takedown of the fuel as he states that “Ethanol provides a short speed burst. Putting it into fuel is the dietary equivalent of carb-loading. Like carbs, Ethanol burns faster. Ethanol blends have a significantly worse fuel economy than traditional gas. The particular blend used by NASCAR gets about 5 percent less mileage than gas.”42 Not only did NASCAR vehicles worsen their fuel mileage, but they continued to pollute at the same if not worse levels as they did when using unleaded gasoline. The effects elsewhere are also important.

As Runge mentioned, the production of ethanol is also a concern. Making the product does not create the tradeoff that should be anticipated when thinking that something is a green alternative. For starters, “we know that between 2005 and 2009, US taxpayers spent $17 billion to subsidize corn ethanol blends in gasoline, an outlay that produced a paltry reduction in overall oil consumption equal to a 1.1 mile-per-gallon increase in fleetwide fuel economy.”43 From this statement, the US taxpayers have paid into a program that does not yield a dividend worth the investment. As Yang et al. noted, increased land use to produce more corn is also a concern, as is the increased water use that is part of the production.44 Ethanol production means that more land

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is being used to grow corn in this country, which has forced other countries that rely on other crops to clear land to harvest them. The overall increase in water usage is also of concern as it minimizes this vital resource in other areas. But the problem does not stop there. The increased use of pesticides and fertilizers for the crops, combined with the water usage, creates a runoff that eventually makes its way to the Mississippi River, making the water non-potable and further running into the Gulf of Mexico, creating dead zones.45 One additional problem that should be noted is that Yang et al. found that ethanol use increases smog.46 Smog is an issue all by itself and one that many major cities have tried to combat. Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson estimates that E85 fuel in “flex-fuel” vehicles may increase ozone-related mortality, asthma, and hospitalizations by 4 percent compared to gasoline by 2020 for the US as a whole, and 9 percent in Los Angeles alone.47 For the supposedly eco-friendly product, these numbers are terrifying as such a reaction should be the last thing they do. The scarring that ethanol fuel enacts on the environment is one problem, but there is also injury at the personal level.

The vehicles that use ethanol also incur problems. A 2012 study by Auto Alliance argued that some cars (model years 2001 to 2009) showed internal engine damage, coming from the deterioration of the valves and valve seats in some of the cars tested.48 The product that is supposed to be a better fuel alternative appears to cause the erosion of critical components that would further hinder efficiency. The AAA automotive engineering experts agreed and believe that the sustained use of E15 in both newer and older vehicles could result in significant problems, such as accelerated engine wear and failure, fuel-system damage, and false “check engine” lights for any vehicle not approved by its manufacturer to use E15.49 Taxpayers have to pay twice under this scenario: first in the industry's subsidization and then in the repair costs associated with keeping their cars running in good order.

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The choice that NASCAR made to run ethanol-infused gas for the series indicates that caring for the environment may never have been the goal. Instead, the hasty desire to break from tradition looks to be one of a money grab by NASCAR as the decision was a deal and not an outright transition. American ethanol, a joint venture between Growth Energy, a consortium from the ethanol industry, and the National Corn Growers Association, made a deal with

NASCAR to use E15.50 What looked like a decision born from a desire to show the sport’s progressive side instead emphasizes the model of corporate greed that exists in neoliberal capitalism. Even more so, NASCAR then participates in artificially supporting an industry that requires fundamental change. If switching fuels were not enough, NASCAR tinkered further with the fuel system in 2012.

The pattern of belatedly adopting common technology was repeated by NASCAR once more. By the mid-1990s, Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) had replaced the in almost all road vehicles. Both the carburetor and EFI are methods of delivering gas to the engine, but EFI has long been more efficient. Though the carburetor had become a relic by the late 1990s,

NASCAR chose to wait to implement the transition to fuel injection until 2012. The switch did not garner the same type of antagonism as other alterations in the sport. Still, Paul Stenquist opined, “It’s an exciting time for Nascar fans and potentially a welcome change, but for old-time, shade-tree mechanics who miss the days when a factory team could show up at Daytona and blow everyone away with some outrageous technology, doubts may linger.”51 His comment is another homage to the past, that how things were done in the past should not be forgotten, that tradition is still an important aspect of the sport. The truth is that teams in NASCAR are multi- million dollar businesses and hire a team of engineers and mechanics to develop, build, and tune

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their cars. The age of the shade-tree mechanics passed long before the introduction of fuel injection.

Perhaps one of the more comical changes in NASCAR came in the form of a bump stop.

When the sport introduced the new specifications for their cars in 2007, and the travel rate for the front end to move vertically lessened from eight inches to four, the sport’s engineers had to find a solution to make the suspension work. Within the archaic parameters that govern NASCAR, the bump stop became the best solution. That is, the best fix that could be made was to insert rubber doughnuts into the shocks. They come in all different sizes and materials—mostly polyurethane or rubber—and are used in most street cars and trucks.52 Race teams seek to find whatever edge they can in a series where the cars are nearly identical because of the sport’s specifications, so bump stops became a significant expenditure. As Dave Newton noted, Richard

Childress Racing, in 2008, had six employees dedicated full time to bump stops.53 The attempt to adopt rubber doughnuts is another example of NASCAR preserving tradition rather than exploring the possibility of different front suspension set-ups. There is little chance that

NASCAR would ever implement active suspensions, which feature onboard computers acting as assistants; there was an opportunity to see if something could have been constructed from the latest designs to bring the car closer to contemporary.

The sport has long been resistant to allowing anything governed by computers into their vehicles. The switch to fuel injection was long overdue but sits as an example of how they have avoided electronics. There are two fears at play: one is that teams will find ways to cheat using computerized methods, and the second is that any advanced technology takes away from the driver’s importance. But cheating has always been a part of NASCAR, even for champions. And

Formula 1 boasts sophisticated technology in their cars, and those drivers are maestros behind

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the wheel. Yet, as part of another initiative that will make race cars closer in style and appearance to street vehicles, NASCAR required teams to run digital dashes in their Cup cars for the 2016 season.54 The tradition had been analog instrument clusters, but the digital dash can both collect more data as well as more accurately display it. Of course, the new dashboard will still not feature a speedometer or gas gauge. Both measurements have been considered unreliable compared to using a tachometer for speed and a fuel pressure gauge for the leftover gas. That argument may have worked in the past, but modern technology would argue that accuracy for both speed and fuel could be heightened given the opportunity.

The measured adoption of the new technology NASCAR uses butted against rapid changes when the governing body offered a glimpse of its 2022 car. While the new car was supposed to make its way to the track in 2021, the limited testing available because of the

Coronavirus pandemic postponed the debut. One thing that has been noted is the transition from an H-pattern shifter to a sequential shifter for the transmission. This change allows for faster and smoother shifting.55 The potential transition in shifters surprised fans, but their comments were reserved. The same cannot be said for the sport’s possible adoption of 18-inch wheels with a single lug nut. The cars in NASCAR have long featured five lug nuts, but the manufacturers involved in the sport want a wheel that is closer to their street models. Because 18-inch wheels will weigh around 70 pounds, moving to a single lug nut patter helps the crew. The reaction to this change was overwhelmingly negative, with many fans believing that crew persons would lose their jobs or that pit stops had become too easy or that the new wheels were not “stock.” For this instance, fans are both tolerating and criticizing change, finding comfort in newness while also adhering to the past.

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Conclusion as Tradition

The confluence of southern ideology, adherence to tradition, and disputable decision- making in NASCAR has created its own distinct culture surrounding the sport. While these examples may not speak for the entire crowd, the louder voices have frequently dictated and created how the sport is seen. The practice of the status quo is an important mindset and has helped to keep NASCAR from thinking in more advanced terms. Just as the South has been limited in its thinking, NASCAR fails to consider what could be called a bigger picture, one that brings something fresh and inspiring. The fan exodus from the sport has been tied to economics, following the 2008 recession, but also to demographics, as the sport has failed to connect with

18–39-year-old males.56 These claims are ostensibly correct, and many pundits have argued for them. But what might be the problem is that NASCAR has not shown enough innovation both on the track with the cars they race but also in moving beyond traditions that many potential young fans find uncomfortable. The Fast & The Furious film franchise has grossed over $5.1 billion and indicates that cars are still a selling point. The difference is that the cars, the real stars of the films, are modern, sleek, souped-up hotrods. The multicultural cast also gives many fans a glimpse at something other than the common White, conservative narrative, which appears each

NASCAR weekend.

The sport has let itself down and has failed to look at their relevance. Because of its adherence to tradition, it has failed to stay up-to-date with the cars on the streets and has forgotten the concept of “win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” Instead, hybrid and electronic car technology is beginning the lap NASCAR and proves just how far traditions will go.

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CHAPTER 5 – ENDNOTES

1 David Newton, “Humpy Ready to Blow More Stuff Up,” ESPN.com, May 6, 2008, http://www.espn.com//www.espn.com/racing/blog/_/name/newton_david/id/3384226.

2 Dan Wetzel, “Kyle Larson’s Racial Slur Drags NASCAR Backward,” Yahoo Sports, April 14, 2020, https://sports.yahoo.com/kyle-larsons-racial-slur-is-a-massive-blow-to-nascar- 203246080.html.

3 Ryan McGee, “Larson’s Racial Slur Throws NASCAR into Reverse,” ESPN.com, April 13, 2020, https://www.espn.com/racing/story/_/id/29031596.

4 Wetzel, “Kyle Larson’s Racial Slur Drags Nascar Backward.”

5 Wetzel.

6 Josephine Pinckney, “Bulwakrs Against Change,” in David R. Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 3.

7 David R. Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 3.

8 Wing-Yee Cheung et al., “Back to the Future: Nostalgia Increases Optimism,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39, no. 11 (November 2013): 1484–96, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213499187.

9 Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War, 2002, 3.

10 Cobb, Away down South, 98.

11 Eric J. Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Terence O. Ranger and Eric J. Hobsbawm, 19th pr, Canto (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr, 2010), 13.

12 Hobsbawm, 10.

13 Cobb, Away down South, 81.

14 Chuck Thompson, Better Off Without ’em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession, 1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 159.

15 Cash, The Mind of the South, 99.

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16 Cobb, Away down South, 114.

17 Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, 143.

18 Matthew J. Ferrence, All-American Redneck Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee Press, 2014), 104, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10909220.

19 Khushbu Shah and Tom Silverstone, “Stone Mountain: Is It Time to Remove America’s Biggest Confederate Memorial?,” The Guardian, October 24, 2018, http://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2018/oct/24/stone-mountain-is-it-time-to- remove-americas-biggest-confederate-memorial.

20 Ali Gostanian and David Li, “Mississippi Students Who Posed with Guns in Front of Emmett Till Memorial Suspended from Frat,” NBC News, July 25, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mississippi-students-who-posed-guns-front-emmet-till- memorial-suspended-n1034726.

21 Harold Meyerson, “How the American South Drives the Low-Wage Economy,” The American Prospect, July 6, 2015, https://prospect.org/api/content/3e0bbca2-86a0-5ae5-90e3- cf81a99cd211/.

22 Meyerson.

23 Meyerson.

24 Meyerson.

25 Richard Schechner and Sara Brady, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2013), 28.

26 Schechner and Brady, 46.

27 June Howard, “Sentiment | Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Second Edition,” Keywords, accessed April 6, 2020, https://keywords.nyupress.org/american-cultural- studies/essay/sentiment/.

28 Bill Adler, Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets (New York: AMACOM, 2007), 2.

29 Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” 9.

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30 Dave Caldwell, “Why Does NASCAR Even Have Playoffs, Anyway?,” Forbes, September 10, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davecaldwell/2019/09/10/why-does-nascar-even-have- playoffs-anyway/#3a1deb786c37.

31 Caldwell.

32 Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” 1.

33 Alanis King, “Here’s How Modern NASCAR Race Cars Compare To Their Road-Going Counterparts,” Jalopnik, July 9, 2018, https://jalopnik.com/heres-how-modern-nascar-race-cars- compare-to-their-road-1827401884.

34 Aaron Robinson, “Racingʻs Little Secrets,” Car and Driver, March 2017, 64.

35 Jesse Kiser, “Chevy Small-Block Perfection - Hot Rod Magazine,” Hot Rod, February 3, 2014, https://www.hotrod.com/articles/small-block-perfection-nascar-engine/.

36 Catherine Lutz and Anne Lutz Fernandez, Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives, 1st ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 34.

37 Chuck Edmondson, Fast Car Physics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)., 145

38 Victor Mather, “How the First Rearview Mirror Won the First Indy 500,” The New York Times, May 16, 2016, sec. Sports, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/sports/autoracing/at- indianapolis-500-innovation-began-with-a-look-back.html.

39 Edmondson, Fast Car Physics.

40 Viv Bernstein, “NASCAR Plans to Switch to Unleaded Fuel in ’08 - The New York Times,” The New York Times, January 20, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/sports/othersports/nascar-plans-to-switch-to-unleaded- fuel-in-08.html.

41 C. Ford Runge, “The Case Against More Ethanol: It’s Simply Bad for Environment,” Yale E360, May 25, 2016, https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_for_environment.

42 Dave Juday, “NASCAR Jumps Shark on Ethanol,” The Detroit News, November 18, 2014, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/11/18/nascar-endorses-ethanol/19189377/.

43 Donald Carr, “The Only Thing ‘Green’ About NASCAR's switch to Corn Ethanol Is the Cash,” Grist (blog), October 30, 2010, https://grist.org/article/food-2010-10-29-nascars-switch- to-corn-ethanol/.

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44 Yi Yang et al., “Replacing Gasoline with Corn Ethanol Results in Significant Environmental Problem-Shifting,” Environmental Science & Technology 46, no. 7 (April 3, 2012): 3671–78, https://doi.org/10.1021/es203641p.

45 Dillon Weber, “Of Corn and Climate Change: Ethanol in America,” Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, February 26, 2016, https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/policy-digests/corn-and-climate-change-ethanol-america.

46 Yang et al., “Replacing Gasoline with Corn Ethanol Results in Significant Environmental Problem-Shifting.”

47 Runge, “The Case Against More Ethanol.”

48 Cherise Threewitt, “Can Ethanol Damage Your Engine? | Howstuffworks,” HowStuffWorks.com, February 1, 2013, https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel- efficiency/alternative-fuels/ethanol-damage-engine.htm.

49 Tamra Johnson, “New E15 Gasoline May Damage Vehicles and Cause Consumer Confusion,” AAA NewsRoom, November 30, 2012, https://newsroom.aaa.com/2012/11/new-e15-gasoline- may-damage-vehicles-and-cause-consumer-confusion/.

50 Josh McCain, “Green Racing: NASCAR Switches to E15 Gasoline for the 2011 Season,” Bleacher Report, December 29, 2010, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/556252-green-racing- nascar-switches-to-e15-gasoline-for-the-2011-season.

51 Paul Stenquist, “Waving Goodbye to , NASCAR Prepares Switch to Fuel Injection - The New York Times,” The New York Times, July 20, 2011, https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/waving-goodbye-to-carburetors-nascar-prepares- switch-to-fuel-injection/.

52 Dave Newton, “Inside the Hauler: Bump Stops May Decide the Chase,” ESPN.com, September 13, 2008, https://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/cup/columns/story?columnist=newton_david&page=Inside TheHauler080912.

53 Newton.

54 Mike Hembree, “Digital Dashboards Aim to Improve Racing for NASCAR Drivers... and Fans,” USATODAY.COM, February 18, 2016, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2016/02/18/digital-dashboards-sprint-cup-teams- improvement-adjustments/80341170/.

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55 Alanis King, “NASCAR Is Officially Testing A Sequential Shifter In Place Of Its Four-Speed Manual,” Jalopnik, accessed September 24, 2020, https://jalopnik.com/nascar-is-officially- testing-a-sequential-shifter-in-pl-1841060692.

56 Tripp Mickle and Valerie Bauerlein, “NASCAR, Once a Cultural Icon, Hits the Skids, ” The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-in-victory-lane- nascar-hits-the-skids-1487686349.

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CONCLUSION

In the spring and Summer of 2020, the Coronavirus disrupted the sporting world much as it had done to many facets of life. The pandemic shut down nearly all forms of sport. One could argue that the cancelations forced many people to pay attention to things that they might not have if sports were working as the usual distraction. In this instance, there is potential that people began taking the racist practices in the US more seriously. A slew of events brought attention to the prejudices, biases, and violence that African Americans endure. The shortlist that sat atop the headlines includes the murder of Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through a neighborhood in

Georgia on February 23; the killing of Breonna Taylor when the police mistakenly raided her apartment on March 13; the fictitious assault by Christian Cooper, an African American birdwatcher, on Amy Cooper in Central Park on May 25; and what might be considered the most notable story, the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers on May 25 as they arrested Floyd. Taken as separate terrible incidents, they are problematic enough, but when placed together, the story they provide is one of horrible inequality with life and death consequences.

The Floyd murder served as a catalyst that would soon bring protests from athletes throughout the sporting world, but at the time, NASCAR was the only sport that had returned to action. Darrell “Bubba” Wallace, the lone Black driver, made a plea for the sport to ban the

Confederate Flag, moving away from its soft stance of subtly trying to push it aside. Wallace, in demanding that the sport prohibit the flag, asserted the Arbery murder changed his line of thinking, stating, “It shook me to the core to a point where it kind of flipped a light switch inside of me.”1 The sport responded by pronouncing the flag banned two days after Wallace spoke

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against it on June 8. This moment proved significant as the sport acted in one of its most definitive ways against its racist practices. As might be expected, Wallace and NASCAR both found backlash from a contingent of fans. These vocal fans inform much of this work through their perpetual efforts to preserve their position.

As White cisgender heterosexual Christian males, these fans adhere to beliefs and practices that are being interrogated and dismissed. That shift, however, does not mean that these fans, or even White males of the South, are willing to let go without a fight. When Bubba

Wallace brought about the change in the flag policy, he endured constant taunts and crowd jeers for the rest of the season. In conjunction, fans also felt the need to let NASCAR know of their opinion.

Before the Geico 500 at Talladega Speedway on June 21, a plane circled the track with a

Confederate Flag trailed by the words “Defund NASCAR.” The slogan represented a reproach to the “Defund the Police” memes and chants that had become a rallying cry during the protests against police brutality across the country. Locating such a proclamation that stood against progressive desires for equality in the South and at a NASCAR track emphasized the sport’s racist heart and proved to be another example of the extreme bigotry that persists. Untangling

NASCAR from this environment is improbable; it is grounded in White Christian hegemonic tradition.

The sport endures as a White space, one that Desiree Wallace recognized as her son built his NASCAR career. She told Bubba, “You’re in a white man’s sport and not everything is going to be easy for you.”2 While Wallace assuredly faces challenges because he is African

American, the modern political climate ensures that Whites shift their paradigm to encourage racist practices. The form that has taken shape under Presidents Obama and Trump is one of

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White victimhood, a concept that attempts to ignore their robust power in lieu of using scapegoats like immigration or queerness as encroachments on their world. Michael Kimmel’s investigation of masculinity in the 2010s used many Right-leaning platforms as a way to see how

White men were seeing the world. A clip from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show stood out:

“And how does one get ahead in Obama’s America? “By hating white people. Or even saying you do. . . . Make white people the new oppressed minority. . . . They’re moving to the back of the bus. . . . That’s the modern-day Republican Party, the equivalent of the Old South: the new oppressed minority.”3

Limbaugh’s use of the Old South as an oppressed minority would be considered comical if it were not a deplorable conceit that compares White people of today to Black people forced to ride in the back of segregated buses. The distraught reactions of many White people are replicated concerning their attitudes toward NASCAR.

The Confederate Flag’s banishment fueled the first wave of backlash in the sport, but a second incident, which drew Wallace into the spotlight again, spurred another wave of hostility.

This time, at the Alabama track where the plane circled celebrating the Confederate Flag, one of

Wallace’s crew members found a garage pull-down rope fashioned into a noose. Wallace was not personally involved as he never saw the noose, and NASCAR began an investigation that led to the Federal Bureau of Investigations taking over the case. Three days later, the FBI announced that the noose had been there since the previous race in the Fall of 2019 and that the noose had not been a symbolic threat to Wallace.

Before the FBI announced their findings, Wallace, with the backing of his peers, chose to make a statement against this perceived hate crime. All of the Cup drivers walked down pit road as a group, following Wallace and pushing his No. 43 car to the pit-road exit. Once there, they stood for a moment of silence. The gesture is arguably the most political and bold statement ever made by NASCAR drivers, showing their support of Wallace and against racism in the US. In

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comparison, when National Football League players Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid knelt in protest of police brutality in 2016 and 2018, respectively, they found themselves blacklisted, yet

Wallace has escaped this treatment. Instead, Wallace endured wrath from the White victimized fanbase when the FBI declared the noose not to have targeted Wallace.

Many of these fans claimed that Wallace was an attention hound, using whatever means he could to steal the spotlight; others pushed the idea that the noose was not even a noose; and in concurrence with the times, others saw the noose as part of an elaborate conspiracy that was meant to bring about the end of NASCAR. These frameworks all seek to undo any work that

Wallace may be trying to do by dismissing him and the circumstances that envelope him. These practices endeavor to disenfranchise the Black driver, reducing him to a storyline that racist

White fans find palpable. For these fans, Wallace is the contemporary “uppity negro,” failing to know his place and show deference to Whites.

The reactions surrounding what some called a “noose hoax” reached beyond the sport and its fans. The discovery of the noose made national headlines, and with it, pundits offered their take on what it meant and whether or not it mattered. That a noose is an overt gesture of violence frequently was omitted from these discussions. As the topic became part of the discussions of race and the protests taking place, President Donald Trump offered his thoughts regarding Wallace and the noose on Twitter. He wrote:

“Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX? That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!”4

Trump’s assertion that the noose discovery was a hoax relates to the inundation of conspiracy theories that have circulated in Right-leaning circles. This practice is another method of asserting victimhood, and with Wallace and the noose, the issue is not how an African American

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might be affected by the noose’s finding but rather how the people that supported Wallace have become victims in an elaborate ruse. Trump’s attack on the sport’s ratings, even though they were stable through the 2020 season, is another way to show how Wallace has victimized

NASCAR.

These reactions to an African American driver trying to find success in the sport amid difficult circumstances illustrate a point regarding viewership. A Marist poll performed in the

Summer of 2020 sought to examine viewership patterns during a curious time. A new surge of protests against racism and police brutality followed the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shooting

Jacob Blake seven times in the back. In conjunction, the presidential election neared its conclusion. With the addition of the pandemic, which altered viewing habits, TV ratings became an intriguing topic. The Marist survey focused on sports, with one of the portions focused on whether or not protests and political outspokenness affected ratings. The data presents what can be seen as a null argument, that viewership fluctuated only marginally.5 The notable exception in the data came with NASCAR, where 44 percent of NASCAR fans said that political outspokenness did make a difference in their willingness to watch, a result that supports one of the backbones of this work.

The racism in NASCAR has historically curtailed the success of African Americans who join the sport. Wendell Scott, Bill Lester, Mauricia Grant, and Bubba Wallace have all encountered hostile resistance. Some have thrived as members of a pit crew, but the stories of

Black NASCAR personnel are rare. Bubba Wallace may re-write the narrative, but he will require superb financial backing and top-level engineers to provide the resources he needs to compete with drivers at upper-echelon teams. His partnership with , which came about in the Summer and Fall of 2020, may proffer one aspect of the backing Wallace needs, but

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Jordan is a novice as a NASCAR team owner, and it is legitimate to question how long he will spend money on a sport where the returns may be modest in the early stages. Even as Wallace has secured sponsorships that will assist with financing, little has been announced that details how his team will be built, other than as an alliance with well-established .

Even if Wallace and Jordan have the makings of a super-team, fan reactions will still be a challenge. The fans at the track will continue tormenting him; the online fans will try to do worse.

The online world has become a troubling bastion of inhospitable reactions and outright hate. Combined with social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, that go relatively unchecked, people are free to voice their opinions as they see fit. Jurgen Habermas et al. noted that in the public sphere where access is granted to all citizens, and people can “confer in unrestricted fashion,” they turn into a public body and develop a public opinion.6 In the online sphere, public opinion is often skewed, and the voices that are heard are often not the majority or the rational. Klein recognized that the new technologies have meant that “the internet has democratized the public square,” meaning that groups can meet online with no restrictions and connect with like-minded individuals.7 What has occurred is that public opinions have diverged into various groupings, echo-chambers that frequently proffer racist and violent commentary against people battling for justice and change. The power of social media and other platforms has been amplified during Trump’s presidency.

The online world may be powerful, but it also suffers from a lack of nuance and works to regurgitate topics and voices. Donald Trump is an example of this routine as he returns to slogans and quips to gain his desired reaction from people. His use of Twitter typifies life in the society of the spectacle. “We surrender ourselves to the spectacle.”8 The images, soundbites,

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memes, bluster, tweets, posts, and arguments are all meant to be heard, seen, and felt, then dismissed. In NASCAR, the Confederate Flag held the position of spectacle in an environment already built on the spectacle. For NASCAR, there is a need to go beyond the spectacle, to address fundamental problems. The flag issue in NASCAR exemplified how “The spectacle proves its arguments simply by going round in circles; by coming back to the start, by repetition, by constant reaffirmation in the only space left where anything can be publicly affirmed.”9 The banning of the Confederate Flag is itself a spectacle, but the resonance should have a lasting effect.

During the Summer of 2020, other spectacles became part of a narrative of change.

Several Confederate statues were removed from places of public prominence. The state of

Mississippi removed the Confederate Flag from its state flag. In doing so, Mississippi stood as the last state to make such a change. These changes suggest that the protests of the Summer may bring about meaningful adjustments to societal systems and practices. The scope, however, needs to include protections for women, children, LGBTQ+ persons, immigrants, and minorities.

The sport of NASCAR has been barricaded by Christian White male attitudes that practice prejudice against groups other than themselves, and the changes in its systems require further attention.

That change requires leadership that is willing to comprehensively examine how the sport is managed but NASCAR faces organizational challenges in doing so. As team owners are their own corporate entities, the culture of each can vary. In addition, drivers are the equivalent of independent contractors and have evaded punishment over time. However, Kyle Larson’s suspension by NASCAR in the Spring of 2020 for using the N-word during an I-Racing event signals that the sport is beginning to take socio-cultural matters more seriously. Larson, a

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popular and talented driver, missed the rest of the season, lost his ride, and was forced to pass through a sensitivity training course. The severe penalties showed NASCAR taking a stand and offering an idea of the punitive measures that may befall anyone involved in such a transgression. That Larson was reinstated for 2021 and also landed a spot at one of the best teams in the garage illustrates that it is possible to move forward after such a problematic transgression.

The sport of NASCAR and, by extension, the South both defend themselves through practices of exclusion, violence, denial and subtle hatred. The changes the South needs to enact regarding racism, sexism, and anti-queer behaviors and attitudes seems to be on the horizon.

Samantha Allen, a transgender woman, offered optimism in 2019 by writing: “America is a deeply queer country — not just the liberal bastions and enclaves, but the so-called real America sandwiched between the coasts. I was once terrified to be transgender in Utah and queer in

Georgia.”10 Her statement offered a vision of more inclusivity in the future while recognizing that the South is a magnifying glass and a mirror toward the rest of the country, that the

Americanization of Dixie is the “Dixie-ification” of America. Similarly, the racism, sexism, and conservatism of NASCAR is the product of the South’s customs and policies.

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CONCLUSION – ENDNOTE

1 James Doubek, “NASCAR Driver Bubba Wallace On Confederate Flag Ban: ‘A Long Time Coming,’” NPR.org, accessed December 9, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates- protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/12/876347528/nascar-driver-bubba-wallace-on-confederate- flag-ban-a-long-time-coming.

2 Juliet Macur, “Why NASCAR’s Only Top Black Driver Finally Took on the Confederate Flag - The New York Times,” New York Times, June 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/sports/autoracing/bubba-wallace-nascar-black-lives- matter-confederate-flag.html.

3 Michael S. Kimmel, Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era (New York: Nation Books, 2013).

4 Donald Trump, “Donald J. Trump on Twitter,” Twitter, July 6, 2020, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280117571874951170.

5 Marist Poll, “Marist Center for Sports Communication/Marist Poll Results & Analysis | Home of the Marist Poll,” October 14, 2020, http://maristpoll.marist.edu/marist-center-for-sports- communication-marist-poll-results-analysis/.

6 Jurgen Habermas, Sara Lennox, and Frank Lennox, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964),” New German Critique, no. 3 (1974): 49, https://doi.org/10.2307/487737.

7 Adam Klein, Fanaticism, Racism, and Rage Online: Corrupting the Digital Sphere, 1st edition (New York, NY: Nature America Inc, 2017).

8 Robert Zaretsky, “Opinion | Trump and the ‘Society of the Spectacle,’” The New York Times, February 20, 2017, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/trump-and-the- society-of-the-spectacle.html.

9 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, Reprint (Detroit, Mich: Black & Red [u.a.], 2010).

10 Samantha Allen, Real Queer America: Lgbt Stories from Red States. (New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2019), 9.

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