During a Monday night appearance on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace said his sport’s governing body should issue an outright ban on Confederate flags at races.
Along with other top racing stars like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott, Wallace — the only Black driver in the NASCAR Cup Series — appeared in a video condemning racism and explaining how they plan to fight back against racial injustice.
I will listen and learn#BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/kP3BwDimNd
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) June 7, 2020
The 26-year-old was on CNN to speak with Lemon about the video when he brought up banning the Confederate flag during a response to a question about the steps he would talk to eliminate racism if he managed NASCAR.
“My next step would be to get rid of all Confederate flags,” Wallace said. “There should be no individual that is uncomfortable showing up to our events to have a good time with their family that feels some type of way about something they have seen, an object they have seen flying. No one should feel uncomfortable when they come to a NASCAR race. So it starts with Confederate flags. Get them out of here. They have no place for them. The narrative on that before is I wasn’t bothered by it, but I don’t speak for everybody else. I speak for myself. What I am chasing is checkered flags, and that was kind of my narrative.”
Following the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, NASCAR reaffirmed its commitment to disallowing the “use of the Confederate flag symbol in any official NASCAR capacity.”
That language falls short of an outright ban which is what Wallace, justifiably, is seeking.
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