Demitrius Pickens was wearing his
Jeff Gordon T-shirt and sipping a can of
beer. It was warm out. He was feeling
good.
This was in 2015, when Pickens and his
friends took a road trip from Durham,
N.C., to Alabama see their first NASCAR
race at Talladega Superspeedway, one of
the most spectacular tracks in the coun-
try.
They were walking near the venue,
buzzing about the event, when some-
thing stopped them short: a large, inflat-
able monkey next to another attendee’s
camper van and a hand-drawn sign that
read, “Monkeys Lives Matter.” This was
the year after protesters in Ferguson,
Mo., decried the shooting death of an un-
armed black teenager, Michael Brown,
by a white police officer. The Black Lives
Matter movement was gaining promi-
nence around the country.
As a black man, Pickens was not naïve
about his surroundings. To an extent, he
was ready for this. And still it felt like a
punch in the stomach.
“It was like an empty gut feeling, one
of those moments where anger immedi-
ately rushed over my body,” said Pick-
ens, who wanted to pop the balloon but
thought better of it after considering how
“outnumbered” he felt and what might
happen next. “I knew where I was. But
you still never want to be blatantly
smacked in the face with overt racism.”
Pickens, now 26, clamped his emo-
tions. He took a picture next to the mon-
key, middle finger up, and moved along.
He still looks back on the weekend
warmly.
NASCAR this month was thrust into
the national spotlight after its lone black
driver on its top circuit, Darrell Wallace
Jr., began speaking out about the racism
he perceived in racing. Directly respond-
ing to a request by Wallace, who is nick-
named Bubba, NASCAR banned the
Confederate battle flag from its venues
and promised to do more to battle injus-
tice. The moves were widely praised and
seen as a potential olive branch to wel-
come potential new minority fans.
But the ensuing conversation in many
ways has overlooked the experiences of
black fans who are already committed to
the sport. They are relatively few —
joked about sometimes as veritable uni-
corns — but they are indeed there, often
executing delicate balancing acts to
function in environments that until now
have done little to embrace or accommo-
date them.
Being a black fan of NASCAR, they
say, means having fun while never feel-
ing 100 percent at ease. It means jokes
from friends and family members. It
means watching the sport religiously on
TV but having reservations about seeing
a race in person. It means keeping your
head on a swivel at the racetrack and, at
the same time, diverting your eyes from
various discomfiting sights, like fans fly-
ing the Confederate battle flag.
This month, for some, the fanhood
means something new: a cautious sense
of pride.
Jason Boykin, who started a Facebook
group a few years ago for black NASCAR
fans (“Yes we exist,” its description
reads), said he felt his emotions swell
when he saw Wallace wearing an “I can’t
breathe” shirt at Atlanta Motor Speed-
way on June 7. The phrase, the dying
words of Eric Garner in 2014 and of
George Floyd last month in Minneapolis,
became a rallying cry for the Black Lives
Matter movement.
“I was like, ‘Wow, we’re actually doing
this!’ ” said Boykin, 45, of Orange, Calif.,
who attends races around the country
each year with his wife, Rochelle, notic-
ing but trying to ignore the Confederate
imagery everywhere. “I was excited. I
was proud. And NASCAR took it seri-
ously.”
Fans like Boykin now want to see what
comes next. They hope what has hap-
pened over the last few weeks repre-
sents a real turning point in racing.
Many of them are long accustomed to
feeling like outliers among their friends,
forced to reconcile their love of the high-
speed action and charismatic driverswith the stigma and stereotypes that the
sport is only for white people.
“What if I rock a Tony Stewart hat?”
said Ricky Smith, a television writer
from Cleveland. “Am I not a good black
person? Am I a bad example? Am I that
black guy at a Trump rally?”
Smith, 39, said he spent the past 15
years “embarrassed” to be a NASCAR
fan. But he said Wallace’s new outspo-
kenness, and NASCAR’s surprising re-
sponse, has quelled some of those old in-
securities.In a similar vein, Noah Cornelius, 20, a
college student from Charlotte, N.C.,
called NASCAR a “guilty pleasure,” a
pastime with which he had developed a
“love-hate relationship.”
The love came first at his predomi-
nantly white elementary school, where
NASCAR was a popular topic of conver-
sation in the lunchroom. Dale Earnhardt
Jr. and Jimmie Johnson became his fa-
vorite drivers. But at his high school,
where the student body was more di-
verse, he began to understand why his
fellow black classmates viewed the sport
so differently.
“I’d still watch the races,” said Cornel-
ius, who is studying music, “but I wasn’t
vocal about it anymore because I was
just afraid of the stigma.”
Noting that NASCAR was struggling
with a diminishing audience and spon-
sorships, Cornelius said he hoped the or-
ganization’s actions this month symbol-
ized a deeper change that might revive
the sport.
Leila Brown, 29, has gotten used to be-
ing the only black NASCAR fan she
knows in Montclair, N.J. That has not
stopped her from dragging friends and
family members to races in nearby
states, touting them as “like Coachella,
minus music, plus cars,” with mixed suc-
cess.
Even while proselytizing the joys of
the sport, she acknowledged a moment
of unease. She recalled a recent experi-
ence at Pocono Raceway in eastern
Pennsylvania, when a white man called
out to her group of friends as they walked
by: “I thought we had a whitewash rule
around here,” his tone unfriendly, moti-
vating them to hurry away.
At another race, she said, Brown and
her friends camped next to a group with
a Confederate flag. Brown tried to wave
hello, but the people never acknowl-
edged her presence and avoided eye con-
tact all weekend.
It reiterated what she always felt the
Confederate flag communicated to black
fans at races: You are not welcome here.
“I can honestly say the majority of my
experiences with race fans have been
positive,” Brown said. “But you always
have that guard up.”
That explains why Susan Reynolds, a
die-hard fan from Baltimore, was moved
to tears when she heard the organization
was banning the Confederate battle flag.
Reynolds, 40, has worn a Tony Stewart
bracelet almost continually since 2002.
The only time she took it off for any sig-
nificant amount of time was at her wed-
ding in 2007 — and even then she had it
pinned to the inside of her dress.
Reynolds has gotten used to feelingsomewhat alone in the sport. “I’m a black
chick,” she said. “Everybody’s like: ‘You
like NASCAR? That’s weird.’ ”
The first race Reynolds attended, she
played a little game with herself, trying
to spot any fellow black fans. She could
tally the number on one hand. “There
were black people there,” she said. “They
were working.”
So this month she felt relieved to think
that perhaps one day she might not feel
any cognitive dissonance while enjoying
a race weekend.
“I’ve put my head down and ignored or
turned a blind eye to a lot of things, but
this is one of those things that simply
represents the oppression of black peo-
ple,” Reynolds said about the Confeder-
ate flag. “We have a flag. It’s the United
States flag. I’m cool with that one.”
NASCAR’s change of tune on the flag
has not been well received by a segment
of its fans.
Darian Gilliam, 22, a fan with an up-
and-coming YouTube channel called
“Black Flags Matter,” learned this first-
hand. After speaking in support of Wal-
lace, he woke up on Monday to a threat-
ening email — “I think it’s time you’ve
got a taste of your own medicine,” it read
— that included his home address. Un-
nerved, he alerted local authorities.
“I was like, ‘Since when is canceling
racism a bad thing?’ ” Gilliam said. “This
guy was upset because I was speaking
up.” He added: “I’m not going any-
where.”
NASCAR’s longtime black fans have
not been surprised by the backlash to its
new initiatives. Or by the unfounded
skepticism of Wallace after his team re-
ported seeing a rope in their garage at
Talladega that was tied into the shape of
a noose.
Federal authorities determined it had
been there since at least October, months
before Wallace was assigned the stall for
the race this week. NASCAR on Thurs-
day released a photo of the noose follow-
ing criticism that racing officials had
overreacted. The organization’s presi-
dent, Steve Phelps, said sensitivity train-
ing would be required for NASCAR em-
ployees to prevent any similar episodes
in the future.
“It just shows you how many people
out there are so closed-minded and don’t
want to see change because it doesn’t
benefit them or makes them uncomfort-
able or reveals their flaws,” said Jae
Bradley, 22, a college student and racing
fan from West Monroe, La., who follows
Chase Elliott. “NASCAR’s trying to go in
one direction and a large portion of the
fan base doesn’t want to go in that direc-
tion. But most of us know it’s for the bet-
terment of the sport.”
It remains to be seen how far NASCAR
travels along this path.
Derrick Crutcher, 45, of Athens, Ala.,
has enjoyed racing for decades (“I’d
watch guys race lawn mowers, man”).
But even though he lives just two hours
by car from Talladega Superspeedway,
he has never attended a race there.
“I’d love to go,” Crutcher said, “but I’m
not going down there until I feel safe.”
Brown and Reynolds both said they
would not feel comfortable going to Tal-
ladega, either.
This was NASCAR’s predicament per-
sonified: longtime, loyal fans who re-
fused to visit one of the sport’s premier
venues because they could not imagine
feeling welcomed there.
But could NASCAR’s steps this month
signal a cultural transformation that
might alter Crutcher’s stance? He
paused to consider the thought.
“It could happen,” he said, finally. “It
could. Someday, if we get the feeling the
wind is blowing in the right direction,
we’ll try. Who knows?”Fans cheering for Bubba Wallace at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama last week. A request from Wallace led NASCAR to ban the Confederate battle flag from its venues.CHRIS GRAYTHEN/GETTY IMAGESAzi Paybarah contributed reporting.
For Black NASCAR Fans, It Can Be Lonely at the Track
By ANDREW KEHJason Boykin and his wife, Rochelle, top, attend races around the
country. Demitrius Pickens, above right, in 2015 at Talladega, where
he saw a racist display that caused “an empty gut feeling.”A hashtag supporting Wallace at Talladega, where his team saw a noose-shaped rope in their garage.JOHN DAVID MERCER/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERSSUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 33
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