Flag Rules
I said yesterday that today I'd be posting pictures I took in the NASCAR campground after the race of all the flags people fly. I actually took this picture before the race, but it illustrates the thing I want to show a little better than any of the pictures I took afterward, so here it is.
People who camp in NASCAR campgrounds really like flags, and they love flying large numbers of flags from giant poles they set up themselves. They're so haphazard with it that some tracks have to publish flag rules to keep people from raising flagpoles into the electric lines and frying themselves. These flags are for all sorts of things. There are flags for different drivers and different driver teams, flags for different tracks, flags for different car sponsors. There are historic flags for dead drivers or retired drivers. There are flags for different college sports teams or different professional sports teams. Some people put up state flags from their homelands. If there are Canadians at a race, you'll see maple leaf flags. And, of course, there are a million million American flags. And interspersed with these are flags announcing loyalty to the Trump cult and flags like the one you see here announcing loyalty to the traitorous Lost Cause. Which these days are just flags for racism, whether America's white folks want to admit that or not.
This also brings up a point that always preys on my mind for at least a little while when I go to a NASCAR race. NASCAR was a sport invented by hillbillies for hillbillies. They've spent the last 20 years or so trying to pretend otherwise (that's where I think all the dumb rules come in; real sports with non-hillbilly fans have rules), but the reality of the thing's still there. You can see it in all the flags. My voting bloc is a significant voting minority among the people at this campground, and a lot of those people have views about race (and women's issues, and LGBTQ issues, and immigration issues, and on and on ... ) that a sane nation would have made extinct a century ago.
"Say, Clint," some of these people might say if I talked about any of this while walking through a NASCAR campground. "Why does everything always have to be about race?"
My answer to that (other than to say that it's in the name of the event) is simple: Because whether NASCAR campers and all others who think this way are self-aware enough to see it or not, white people in North America have devoted pretty much the entirety of the last 500 years to making everything about race. So, yeah. There are consequences for that, and one of those consequences is that every once in a while, a half-millennium of institutional racism is going to come up in conversation. Suck it up and face it.
"Say, Clint," somebody else might ask when they look at all these hillbilly flags. "Why are you even a NASCAR fan if you feel that way? Why do you even go to these races?"
My answer to that is that like it or not, these are the people among whom I was raised. I don't consider myself a redneck, mostly, because I use the word "whom," but I think I do have strong redneck tendencies. I am a pretty decent duct tape mechanic, for instance, and I like to blow things up in a backyard whenever I have an opportunity. That's a thing I can't help, because you can't choose where you start your life out. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to escape a lot of the dark side of redneck culture, and I get very sad when I think about the people who didn't and all the horrible things they're willing to do. But I'm not going to cut off my past because of it. I grew up watching NASCAR. My grandfather was a huge NASCAR fan, and in his youth he even hung around the dirt tracks with Owensboro people with names like Waltrip. In later years, whenever I'd visit I'd always wind up talking with him about the races, and it's one of the few ways anybody was ever able to connect with him. When I was little, the races were always on the TV on Sunday afternoons, and the sound of those engines running in circles was the background noise for so many of my more pleasant childhood memories.
So I still watch the races, and I go to one every now and then. I'm sorry all these flags are here and wish they'd go away. But turning my back on these people won't make that happen.
Flag Rules
I said yesterday that today I'd be posting pictures I took in the NASCAR campground after the race of all the flags people fly. I actually took this picture before the race, but it illustrates the thing I want to show a little better than any of the pictures I took afterward, so here it is.
People who camp in NASCAR campgrounds really like flags, and they love flying large numbers of flags from giant poles they set up themselves. They're so haphazard with it that some tracks have to publish flag rules to keep people from raising flagpoles into the electric lines and frying themselves. These flags are for all sorts of things. There are flags for different drivers and different driver teams, flags for different tracks, flags for different car sponsors. There are historic flags for dead drivers or retired drivers. There are flags for different college sports teams or different professional sports teams. Some people put up state flags from their homelands. If there are Canadians at a race, you'll see maple leaf flags. And, of course, there are a million million American flags. And interspersed with these are flags announcing loyalty to the Trump cult and flags like the one you see here announcing loyalty to the traitorous Lost Cause. Which these days are just flags for racism, whether America's white folks want to admit that or not.
This also brings up a point that always preys on my mind for at least a little while when I go to a NASCAR race. NASCAR was a sport invented by hillbillies for hillbillies. They've spent the last 20 years or so trying to pretend otherwise (that's where I think all the dumb rules come in; real sports with non-hillbilly fans have rules), but the reality of the thing's still there. You can see it in all the flags. My voting bloc is a significant voting minority among the people at this campground, and a lot of those people have views about race (and women's issues, and LGBTQ issues, and immigration issues, and on and on ... ) that a sane nation would have made extinct a century ago.
"Say, Clint," some of these people might say if I talked about any of this while walking through a NASCAR campground. "Why does everything always have to be about race?"
My answer to that (other than to say that it's in the name of the event) is simple: Because whether NASCAR campers and all others who think this way are self-aware enough to see it or not, white people in North America have devoted pretty much the entirety of the last 500 years to making everything about race. So, yeah. There are consequences for that, and one of those consequences is that every once in a while, a half-millennium of institutional racism is going to come up in conversation. Suck it up and face it.
"Say, Clint," somebody else might ask when they look at all these hillbilly flags. "Why are you even a NASCAR fan if you feel that way? Why do you even go to these races?"
My answer to that is that like it or not, these are the people among whom I was raised. I don't consider myself a redneck, mostly, because I use the word "whom," but I think I do have strong redneck tendencies. I am a pretty decent duct tape mechanic, for instance, and I like to blow things up in a backyard whenever I have an opportunity. That's a thing I can't help, because you can't choose where you start your life out. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to escape a lot of the dark side of redneck culture, and I get very sad when I think about the people who didn't and all the horrible things they're willing to do. But I'm not going to cut off my past because of it. I grew up watching NASCAR. My grandfather was a huge NASCAR fan, and in his youth he even hung around the dirt tracks with Owensboro people with names like Waltrip. In later years, whenever I'd visit I'd always wind up talking with him about the races, and it's one of the few ways anybody was ever able to connect with him. When I was little, the races were always on the TV on Sunday afternoons, and the sound of those engines running in circles was the background noise for so many of my more pleasant childhood memories.
So I still watch the races, and I go to one every now and then. I'm sorry all these flags are here and wish they'd go away. But turning my back on these people won't make that happen.