Two days after Bubba Wallace called for NASCAR to ban all Confederate flags at racetracks, the organization did just that.
NASCAR communications put out the following statement today:
“The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry. Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.”
Wallace, the circuit’s only black full-time driver, had said Monday: “My next step would be to get rid of all Confederate flags. 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.”
[READ: NASCAR statement on Confederate Flag]
Wallace, who drives the No. 43 car for Richard Petty Motorsports, recognizes his position will not sit well with some people.
“There’s going to be a lot of angry people that carry those flags proudly, but it’s time for change,” he said. “We have to change that, and I encourage NASCAR — we will have those conversations to remove those flags.”
Wallace, a 26-year-old native of Alabama, said he wasn’t always bothered by seeing Confederate flags.
“What I’m chasing is checkered flags, and that was kind of my narrative,” Wallace said, “but diving more into it and educating myself, people feel uncomfortable with that, people talk about that — that’s the first thing they bring up.”
When asked whether he thought his opinion on the Confederate flag was unpopular, Wallace said he sees it as something on which the sport must take a strong stance.
“We should not be able to have an argument over that,” he said. “It is a thick line we cannot cross anymore.”
NASCAR’s next race is tonight at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. Richard Petty Motorsports announced Tuesday that Wallace would drive a car with a Black Lives Matter paint scheme in the race to promote racial equality.
NASCAR’s new outright ban comes more than two weeks after a black man, George Floyd, died when a white Minneapolis police officer named Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, even after Floyd repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe.”
The incident ignited protests nationwide.
It also triggered demands for the removal from public places of symbols of the Confederacy, the group of southern states that started the Civil War in 1861 by seceding from the United States in a doomed, bloody effort to save the institution of enslaving black people.