NASCAR and the “Southernization” of Sporting America

Abstract

In his bestselling sojourn, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tony Horwitz¹ (1999) offers a timely journalistic anthropology of a contemporary U.S. South still wrestling with the last vestiges of an antebellum-borne, Jim Crow-era-refined, and segregationist-practiced cultural and racial history. Making use of sharp prose and an exhaustive sociological fascination, Horwitz guides his readers through the negotiations and contestations of everyday life within the region—stopping along the way to meditate on both the enchantments of a charming regional vernacularism and the specters of recalcitrant racism and (hyper)patriarchy that still haunt the life experiences of many Southerners. Perhaps most importantly, Confederates in the Attic offers inspection—and to some degree, introspection—of the ways in which the spaces (many of which remain segregated), symbols (such as the Confederate flag), identities (located in the discursive disgorges of terms such as “redneck,” “nigger,” “hillbilly,” and the like), and histories (both recovered collective memory and revised traditionalism) of the Old South incontrovertibly constitute the region’s current cultural and political economies.

NASCAR is a breakout sports sensation. It is also—let’s just come right out and say it—the Whitest sport in America. The drivers are White, the pit crews are White, and it has become a cliché to note that at most races, Confederate flags outnumber African American fans. For good or bad … at a time when professional sports seems to be embracing hip-hop culture, NASCAR is heading in precisely the opposite direction.

—C. W. Nevius (2003, p. CM12)