Tuesday night, Will Cain criticized NASCAR and the media for rushing to judgement on reporting a noose was found in Bubba Wallace’s garage. It was described as a hate crime against a Black driver, but an FBI investigation concluded the rope had been there since last year and was not an act of racist intimidation against Wallace.
Wednesday on First Take, Cain said NASCAR screwing up the noose incident moves society backwards and was an impediment to race relations in this country. It led Bomani Jones to call into Cain’s radio show and debate the sentiment.
Yes Jones called in and took Cain to task and yes it was an intense conversation, but more than a radio fight, it was a productive dialogue.
“The impediment to racism is white people not treating black people as being of equal levels of humanity, that’s the answer for all of time,” Jones said, “The reason I wanted to call in, it’s very important to note this especially considering the power dynamics. Me viewing you, for example, through the lens of just being a part of a group and not an individual, doesn’t have any negative effect on your life. You viewing others the other way actually does have a negative effect on their life. It’s not the same thing. We can’t do the both sides and human beings are judged like this because there has been a level of subjugation to people in this country that is uncommon and is not something that we can look at across all the world and describe all this necessarily as tribalism.”
“The problem I have is, when you say that what happened with Bubba Wallace is going to be an impediment to race relations,” Jones continued. “Nah, man, those people rolling on Speedway Boulevard before that race with those flags flying, those are an impediment to race relations. The person that had a flag, had a thing that said ‘defund NASCAR’ on Sunday over the track, that’s an impediment to race relations.”
Jones said those are far bigger impediments to race relations than what was found in Bubba Wallace’s garage. He also applauded NASCAR for checking out what appeared to be a noose, even though the FBI deemed it was only a rope pull.
“You can’t tell people not to overreact when you see what you think is a noose and then justify people overreacting on the backend to the idea that it did not go the way it appeared to have,” Bomani said.
“I feel very passionately about this fact,” Cain said. “I am not the one undercutting the idea of people’s ability to accept that racism takes place, false claims like this undercut that. That is what empowers those who think that things are hoaxes.”
“Let me tell you what empowers those people,” Jones responded. “Racism is what empowers those people. If this had been real and the next one is fake, they’re still going to jump on the fake one and ignore the real one.”
Jones noted there are so many examples of racism, yet people still fixate on the one that turned out to be false. We saw blatant acts of racism around Talladega Speedway as people defied and fought NASCAR’s decision to ban the Confederate flag. But instead of seeing outrage over those overt acts of racism, the outrage is directed at NASCAR for investigating what they believed to be a noose hanging in the garage of a Black driver.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
