There was no act of hate committed against Bubba Wallace at Talladega this weekend. The conclusion of 15 federal agents is that the “noose” was a loop tied in the end of a pull rope for a garage door, and that it significantly predated the Wallace team’s presence in the stall.
It seems reasonable to assert at the end of all of this that NASCAR overreacted to a questionable potential manifestation of a real problem. A loop tied in the end of a rope for an obvious practical purpose is not a noose, and cooler assessing heads would have been useful.
There’s a brewing backlash against Bubba Wallace himself now, about which I have mixed emotions. I dismiss any hoax claims outright, because it was reported repeatedly that a team member removed the “noose” before Bubba ever saw it. So he was operating with the same information we all were.
And that same information led to the lovely show of support for Wallace at the beginning of the race on Monday:
However, Bubba’s subsequent media appearances seem a bit muddled. He still insisted it was a noose on CNN, for example.
I’m not questioning Bubba Wallace’s integrity. However, insinuations that there was any racist intent here, whether this weekend or in 2019, are unhelpful. Clearly, there was not. A federal investigation found there was not.
Whether and to what degree there is racism in NASCAR, these events of this weekend were not ultimately an example of it. Bubba Wallace, you are an obviously important potential agent for change here. Please don’t diminish your credibility by continuing to traffic, implicitly or otherwise, in that which has been found to be false.
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