ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: October 4

Bubba Wallace wins a major NASCAR race / fights racists

The name Bubba makes me think of the shrimp afficionado from Forrest Gump. I know more about cooking crustaceans than I do NASCAR, but this Bubba sure understands driving around in circles. Or ovals. Whatever. On October 4, 2021, William “Bubba” Wallace became the first Black American to win a major modern NASCAR race. Of course, bigots gonna bigot.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: October 4, 2021--

Fuck da police! That’s where NASCAR found its roots. During prohibition, moonshine runners out of Appalachia used small and speedy cars to evade the po po while delivering their illicit method of killing brain cells. The bootleggers became adept at modifying their vehicles for greater speed and handling. Alongside providing the product that people still wanted no matter what the gubmint said, a culture around fast cars was born.

During prohibition, Daytona Beach in Florida became the location of many land speed records. NASCAR was founded in the area in 1948 and now there are over 1,500 races a year at over a hundred tracks worldwide.

Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1993, “Bubba” was a nickname given him by his sister, Southern slang for “brother.” And it helps us distinguish him from another famous William Wallace because we don’t want people imagining the bigoted Mel Gibson wearing an anachronistic kilt when discussing the racecar driver. He began racing when he was nine years … Wait. The fuck? Nine? Yeah. Holy shit. I’m learning about this thing called Bandolero racing which is basically a nuclear-powered go-kart for kids that hits seventy miles per hour and Bubba began racing those at the age of nine holy fucking asscrackers. I mean I guess nine-year-old kids also play football to get an early start on the CTE so … okay?

Anyway, Bubba started winning. And winning. But that’s not all he did. In May of 2020, Black man George Floyd called out for his “mama” while he was being murdered by racist white police officer Derek Chauvin. That prompted Bubba to become vocal in his support of Black Lives Matter.

In 2015, a racist piece of shit murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. Afterward, said piece of shit’s website revealed photos of him posing with the Confederate battle flag. After that came to light, NASCAR said to its fans pretty please can you stop waving those flags at our races? And the flag-waving fuckwipes said you’re not the boss of me.

Two weeks after the murder of Floyd, Bubba said fuck this it’s time for things to change. He publicly called on NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at their races, and two days later, they actually fucking did that. On the same day NASCAR officially banned the flag, Bubba raced the Martinsville Speedway in a car with a Black Lives Matter paint scheme and bearing the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and the phrase “Compassion, Love, Understanding.”

And racists lost their fucking minds.

After the flag-banning decision, outside the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, a parade of vehicles drove around waving the Confederate flag, and there was even an airplane flying overhead towing that hey-we-lost-the-fucking-war-and-we’re-proud-of-it flag. Bubba soon needed security protection at the races, and only a few weeks after the decision to ban the flag at NASCAR Donnie Danger Yam was slagging Bubba on Twitter.

Then, in May of 2023, as Bubba was headed to a second-place finish at a race in North Carolina, some piece of shit hacked his team’s radio, yelling, “Go back to where you came from you a [n-word].” Adding “You suck and you’re not wanted in NASCAR.”

Wallace remains uncowed. “People say I’m doing this all for attention ... that’s not true,” Wallace said. “This is who I am. I’ve gotten (fined by NASCAR) for saying what’s on my mind, my wallet has been hurt because of that … This is me. I feel what’s right, I say it, and that’s it.”

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