Racism Is Bigger than Racing

I don't follow as many sports now as I did when I was younger and I didn't follow all that many when I was a wee slip of a lad. I drive an automobile but not competitively (that's been proven in traffic court, by the way) so I'm not a devotee of either the Formula One style of racing or the NASCAR-just keep-making-left-turns-for-five-hundred-miles-racing. 

All that counter-clockwise scratching makes me itch. But there are many folks around the world who are fans of auto racing though in this country the NASCAR variety seems to be more popular. I'm not sure how that will work out in the wake of the announced ban on the display and use of Confederate flags at NASCAR races.      

I could be wrong about this, but I don't think since 1946 they have ever flown the Blutfahne while conducting the German Grand Prix, not even when they raced at AVUS in Berlin, so I'm not sure I can grasp the anger reflected in the reaction of Ray Ciccarelli, who is a NASCAR Truck Series racer (learn something new every day) who has seemingly spent his career so far watching the exhausts of every other racer disappear around the next (left turn bend) in front of him.

I'm from the swamps of Jersey and have my own prejudices and stereotypes, and to be honest, Ray seems to check all the boxes for me especially when his outrage mangles his syntax as he announces he's quitting the sport after this season precisely because of the flag ban "and I ain't spend the money we are to participate in any political BS!!" (I ran that through my spellchecker on the computer and the CPU threw up and then blew up).

Ray, and all the other Rays out there (and Rayettes I guess, too): the Confederate flag is hatred, not heritage and celebrates not only losers of a war against the United States (that killed hundreds of thousands of American soldiers) but also a war they started against the United States, making them traitors. Learn some history before you become it.
-bill kenny