Bubba Wallace has been the most outspoken person in NASCAR when it comes to racial and social issues. And while he admits the organization has made strides the last six months, he knows there’s still a lot of work to do. Wallace, who is NASCAR’s only full-time Black driver, talked about race during an installment of the Coca-Cola series Together We Must: A Conversation in partnership with The King Center, The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Civic Dinners and Equitable Dinners. Jill Savitt, president and CEO of The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, talked to Wallace about diversity and inclusiveness in NASCAR.
“I remember saying in previous interviews throughout the NASCAR’s diversity initiative is at the top,” Wallace said. “That’s what they want to focus on. But you aren’t seeing much progress. This isn’t me ragging on NASCAR. …I don’t know if we have the right people in place to help move those initiatives and help move along the progress.” Wallace went to reveal the one thing everyone in NASCAR can improve when it comes to inclusion.
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“We’re having a lot of diversity training meetings and seeing things from a different perspective,” he stated. “That’s one thing that we leave out is understanding other people, getting to know each other, understanding people’s problems.”
Wallace also mentioned NASCAR’s next step, which is mandating “sensitivity and diversity training throughout every team, every employee who works inside the sport. They are going to be going through that to learn more about different cultures, different backgrounds and how to handle different situations. There’s a lot of progress that’s been done but we still have a very tall mountain to climb.”
Wallace got things rolling back in June when he said he wanted NASCAR to ban the Confederate Flag at races. The league approved, and while it led to some backlash, Wallace continued to speak out on racial and social injustice. He even caught President Donald Trump’s attention during the noose incident at Talladega Superspeedway in July.
“There were so many things I wanted to say, but I would’ve been stepping down to that level,” Wallace said on Steve Harve’s show STEVE on Watch after Trump calling the noose a HOAX. “Think about it – stepping DOWN to the president’s level.”
