It sounds so innocent when it's called "minority outreach," doesn't it? One would never guess the intimidation and coercion that lies behind this noble-sounding term. Several years ago, when I first learned about the moves being put on stock car racing's NASCAR by the usual suspects of black elites, I wondered how long it would take that organization's officials to succumb. It hardly took a South Carolina minute.

Already bent on de-southernizing this sport, whose roots are deeply embedded far below the Mason-Dixon line, Nascar's chiefs now express their determination to join the multicultural big leagues. With a "Diversity Initiative" in place, to recruit black drivers especially, and a battery of newly-hired blacks to guide the mission, they've set off to chase the Rainbow.

In a Nascar.com feature (2/6/06), we learn from Anthony Martin, director of the Urban Youth Racing School in Philadelphia (conceived of and run by blacks with Nascar money), of the urgent necessity for blacks to participate in this sport. Not only is it urgent that there be high-profiled "African-American" drivers, "it is vitally important for them to be successful," he claims.

Martin explains, "It will have a huge impact. If the driver is finishing 35th every week and is unsuccessful, it will be counterproductive." Of course, it goes without saying that all Americans of good will are supposed to concern themselves with the image of blacks. Is there a stranger in the room who might dare ask why anyone should give a nanosecond's care about whether blacks are among the highest winners in this or any other sport? Hold that un-American thought.

Martin is among those "social justice" seekers who have pressured Nascar officials for years to sponsor such novelties as his "urban school." Other "outreach" spin-offs are forming, as still more careerists smell blood in the Nascar water. Waving the civil rights banner in the faces of accommodating whites, they position themselves to profit off yet another "victory over segregation."

This sport does pose a problem, however, which even Martin admits. Citing the obvious, that men who go on to succeed in football and basketball "have been playing since they were six years old," Martin insists that something like this must now happen with car racing. Younger and younger blacks must be inducted into a sport, whose founding, for a host of indigenous reasons, came as naturally to southern white males as do city sports to urban blacks.

There is no rational explanation offered for why these targeted young people must be steered towards this end -- only the unspoken, irrational sentiment that there simply must not be one field or sport of any kind in which whites dominate. Not one. [See "Still not enough blacks," about "civil rights" in films and TV.]

Pressure, intimidation, threatened lawsuits are now the norm, as Americans are encouraged to sing the praises of yet another racial barrier overcome. The fact that such irrelevant barriers are worn down due only to biased, unconstitutional laws, which remove the civil liberties of one set of citizens for the benefit of another, is to be ignored. Hold that second un-American thought.

About the indifference to racing of black youth, whose sports interests lie elsewhere, Martin explains, "Kids see cars going in a circle, and they don't want to watch that." But, if Martin and his steadfast vanguard have their way, there will be no rest in black communities until those kids are clamoring to watch cars go round and round.

Observing this Nascar story unfold is to understand how so many irrelevant crusades were accomplished by this country's adamant integrationists, as they pressed their Holy Cause on everyone for everything. Jesse Jackson's foray into the Nascar saga in 2003 tells much. When officials began dumping money into Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH organization and a specially contrived division of his "Citizenship Education Fund," he was off on his newest integration campaign. He and his loyal clique set to work to convince the black masses of the importance of stock car racing -- importuning them to see as their obligation and duty the need to put an end to yet one more impediment to liberation that has been maliciously erected by the "white racists" of the land.

For Josh Moon, writing in the Montgomery Advertiser (2/10/06), reaching out to blacks is just "not nearly enough." If Nascar is truly serious, it must alter what he calls the "Nascar environment." According to Moon, most blacks don't disdain car racing due to a lack of interest, but due to the fact that the events are not particularly "inviting."

Whites must change the "atmosphere," so that blacks will feel comfortable in the midst of all those white folks. Needless to say, Moon makes clear, this means that the tradition of some fans carrying and waving Confederate flags must be excised. For the sake of harmony with the multi-ethnic newcomers, the old crowd must reign in its long-indulged enthusiasms.

Like the good white liberal he is, Moon is ever eager to pamper whiny blacks. He admits that for many southerners, the flag is symbolic of nothing more than heritage and regional attachments. However, such sentiments should give way -- in fact, must give way -- to the sensibilities of blacks who, one presumes from Moon's paternalistic coddling, are incapable of accepting the legitimacy of cultural symbols other than those they consider their own.

He worries that, for the majority of blacks, walking into a stadium "filled with 100,000 white people and hundreds of Confederate flags" could not be "a great way to spend the weekend." Of course, it would be totally un-P.C. to ask why such tender-natured blacks should go out of their way to bring discomfort to themselves in the first place. Yet another un-American thought.

If we extrapolate from Anthony Martin's remarks, Nascar must set up a structure of some kind that is conducive to black drivers winning. Then, according to Josh Moon, Nascar must forbid a tradition that is as old as the sport itself and actually embodies a great deal of its essence -- that is, the bold manifestation of "rebel," as represented by the battle flag. As ever, in the game of racial one-upmanship, it is the white man who must concede, until the black man feels "welcome."

And, now, leading the newest drive for "inclusiveness" is former newsman Bryant Gumbel. His caustic criticisms of the "whiteness" of the 2006 Winter Olympics might already have set some wheels in motion. Gumbel's intimation that the lack of black athletes invalidates a sports event probably spells the beginning of dozens of major "outreach" programs.

Expect to see, first, charges of "racism" directed towards the appropriate sniveling powers that be. Next, watch as manufacturers of hockey, skating and ski gear fall over one another to finance the nurturing of black hockey players, black figure skaters and black skiers. Who knows? The day might come when the witty Gumbel lives to retract his lament that the Winter Olympics "looks like a GOP convention."

Elizabeth Wright
Editor
http://issues-views.com/