I’m not having much trouble understanding how nascar & others believed a garage door pull noose was a hate symbol noose after two weeks of watching some of their fans scream about how important hate symbols are to them
— kilgore trout, a ramp with no steps (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 23, 2020
A noose found in a garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway had been there months before the stall was assigned to Bubba Wallace, federal authorities say. No charges are planned in the incident that rocked NASCAR and its only full-time Black driver. https://t.co/weoknflOtQ
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 23, 2020
I swear I’m not going to spend this day explaining to people that a NASCAR official was the one who found the noose, reported it and then NASCAR released a public statement. It wasn’t the media or Bubba Wallace.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) June 24, 2020
There’s layers of nuance (as with everything involving humans & politics). From Ms. Hill’s paper, the Washington Post:
The tumultuous sequence of events that followed Sunday’s discovery of a rope tied into a noose and used as a garage door pull at Talladega Superspeedway appears to have resulted primarily from one assumption and one massive coincidence…
On Tuesday, 48 hours after the noose was discovered, the FBI announced that no hate crime had been committed because its investigation, which involved 15 agents, concluded that the rope, which the FBI referred to as “a noose” four times in its statement, had been in that particular garage stall since at least October 2019, when the Cup Series last raced at the 2.66-mile Alabama track.
For that reason, the FBI concluded it couldn’t have been a hate crime because no one could have known that Wallace’s No. 43 Chevrolet would have been assigned that stall. It was a coincidence, in other words, and enough to consider the case closed.
NASCAR officials, however, remain sufficiently troubled to continue their internal investigation into why the rope-pull in one of its garages was tied in a noose. Was it simply to lower the garage door via the only knot someone knew how to tie? Or was it to send a racist message that was easily deniable, given the noose’s role as a door pull?
The former is benign. The latter is cause for concern for NASCAR and for any company attempting to project the value of inclusion, even it doesn’t rise to the level of a hate crime…
Wallace, 26, whose call for NASCAR to ban displays of the Confederate flag at its tracks this month was instrumental in Phelps announcing that long-discussed step June 10, issued a statement Wednesday saying he was “relieved” that investigators concluded that what had been feared wasn’t the case. And he vowed that the controversy would not detract from the show of unity by drivers and crew members at the start of Monday’s rain-postponed race or the progress stock-car racing has made to be more welcoming.
Racial tensions already were high when NASCAR’s Cup series turned to Talladega, one hour east of Birmingham, for Sunday’s scheduled race. NASCAR’s biggest and fastest track, Talladega is also the most muscular symbol of stock-car racing’s following in the Deep South, built on land donated to NASCAR founder Bill France in 1968 by his good friend and Alabama’s then-governor, George C. Wallace.
It’s also the track where the Confederate flag is most prevalent in the infield, flown by fans who view it as a symbol of a proud, defiant heritage and love NASCAR for much the same reason…
Much more detail at the link. Glass half full: NASCAR jumped on this story promptly, and told Wallace about the noose even before he’d had the chance to see it. Glass half empty: We took down the offensive icon, *voila*, no more racism!… turns out not to be a one-step cure-all. Which is not a surprise, frankly.
wow. how did anyone ever mistake this noose for a noose https://t.co/gG4eE8nHgm
— kilgore trout, a ramp with no steps (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 25, 2020
(Yeah, It’s the only knot the roadie really knew how to tie! doesn’t exactly seem like much of an excuse… )
I dunno this seems like the best case outcome. a thing that definitely looked like a noose was really there, people took it seriously and appropriately, and in the end it wasn’t as bad as it looked. so that’s all… good and healthy? I’m sure I’m supposed to be outraged somehow
— kilgore trout, a ramp with no steps (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 23, 2020
The worst assholes in the universe are gonna be waving ropes as a "joke" and the odds that those assholes include the President are not zero.
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) June 23, 2020
ETA — It’s happening:
jfc pic.twitter.com/xHgPqZgKuK
— Adrenochrome Harvester (@ClenchedFisk) June 25, 2020
schrodingers_cat
Confession time: I don’t get NASCAR, what is the purpose of going round and round in circles.
OT: Are we ever going to discuss the visa issuance ban for long term work visas
Immanentize
Nice new rope on that noose, eh? Or maybe they just don’t open the garage much?
Misterpuff
Coming soon: Drumpf “Fake Noose! Fake Noose!”
White & Gold Purgatorian
Not really an expert, but would not have ranked “noose” in the top 5 easiest to tie knots. I can tie 6 or 7 different knots to fasten rope or string (or even make a pull handle) but have no idea how to make a noose. Maybe it is a cultural thing …
Good on NASCAR for making an issue of it.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: It isn’t just going round in circles, it is going round in circles counter clockwise. That makes all the difference!
Kropacetic
I’m glad NASCAR is still conducting their own inquiry. They know this appears off.
If that’s the only knot someone knows how to tie, why do they have to tie the bottom half?
Adam L Silverman
@White & Gold Purgatorian: It is not an easy thing to tie. I grew up on a sailboat – yes, we had a house, but it was Florida, we had a sailboat, and I was on the water a lot – and I can tie, or used to be able to tie a bunch of different knots and I think the one time I tried to tie a proper noose I couldn’t. It was for a haunted house, with a medieval dungeon theme, when I was in college. I was helping to set up the decorations for it and we had a faux gallows, so the committee that was organizing the decorations wanted a noose. I was just involved in the set up as a favor because I’m designed to pick up heavy things, move them, and put them down.
Martin
I’ll split the difference.
Bunch of yee-haw NASCAR crackers thought tying long, heavy rope into a noose was funny, and everyone wrote it off until someone realized that a person of color might be in their community (something they never considered) and might take offense (something else they never considered).
It should have been obvious from the outset that it would be offensive, but these guys didn’t care enough to have that thought.
Was it racist? Yeah. Was it deliberately racist? Probably not. We gotta be honest about how badly we’ve failed at this honor thy neighbor thing as a nation, and that applies to damn near everyone. Jenna Marbles leaving Youtube at least temporarily due to insensitive videos she made years ago. Lots of shows pulling down episodes for the same thing. Lots of actors pulling out of roles that really should have gone to an actor of color, etc. It’s starting to sink in a little bit.
Amir Khalid
@schrodingers_cat:
Perhaps you could talk to a frontpager about doing a guest post. You’re knowledgeable about this issue and it’s close to you, so you’d be the best person to write it.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: That’s just crazy talk.//
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat:
This is not about NASCAR.
Do you get lynching? Do get chattel slavery? Do you get killing other people because of the color of their skin? Do you get raping women without recourse because they are black? Do you get kneeling on someone’s neck for almost nine minutes taunting the helpless crowd of onlookers with your smug stare? Do you get selling children from their parents because you need to make some quick cash?
That is just the smallest piece of what this is about. But I am sure someone somewhere is addressing YOUR much more important concerns right now somewhere else.
Amir Khalid
@White & Gold Purgatorian:
It seems to me that any reasonably bulky knot would do.
Miss Bianca
@Misterpuff: Oh, that’s bad!
Kropacetic
Agreed, I would love an opportunity to learn more about this from someone with a grasp of the details I may not catch just reading the raw text of the policy or press releases.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: Isn’t that what we call “circling the drain” in the real world?
Mary G
@schrodingers_cat: That is terrible and I hope Biden reverses it on Inauguration Day, right after he lets the kids out of the cages. If immigrants weren’t allowed to come here to study and work, I would only have one doctor. His dad emigrated from Greece.
Anne Laurie
Wanna do a guest post? I’ve only been able to find a few generalized opinion pieces, plus a lot of both-sides bidnis-speak bafflegab, and some genuine tragic personal stories that I haven’t felt comfortable hanging a post on, so far…
Morzer
In news of the unexpected:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/504461-fiorina-planning-to-vote-for-biden
Immanentize
@Martin:
Who cares if it was deliberately racist? So many have fallen into the “intent” argument. It is racist. Period. We call out things that are racist as racist. Period. Call it education, call it shaming. I don’t give two nickels for their motivations. As one guy once said, “when someone steals my wallet, I don’t run him down to see if he is a thief in his soul. I run him down to get my wallet back.”
ETA Not calling you out — just using your true quote as a jump off.
Immanentize
I’m out. Catch you all later.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: In Scots it’s called widdershins. And if you go around 9 times you can open a portal to the fairy realm or hell. It depends on where you happen to be going round in the wrong direction.
dexwood
@Adam L Silverman: Left turns at high speeds! Look, ma, no hands!
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: I now have alarming visions of Nascar being sky-clad as part of the ritual.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, it’s not that hard. If you can tie a tie to the right length, it’s about that much skill.
It’s certainly not an obvious knot to tie, nor is it that useful, so in order to tie a good noose you need to practice with the intent of tying a good noose, which certainly raises certain questions (for me it’s a combination of going through a period where I learned how to tie several dozen different types of knots just because it seemed like a skill I should have, and me having a perhaps inappropriately dark personality that I didn’t skip over that one.)
So, what I’m getting at, the noose isn’t accidental, nor is it necessarily nefarious. Willing to bet my daughter who also has a dark personality could tie one, and she is the most sensitive, empathetic person I know. If she were stuck in a garage waiting for a rain shower to go over, she’s almost certainly tie one just to amuse herself (and then untie it so that nobody else saw it).
Adam L Silverman
@Immanentize: You are correct to point this out. It is like the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the museum in New York, which the museum has been debating replacing with a different TR installation. The issue isn’t Teddy Roosevelt, the issue is that the specific depiction in the statue, with a Native American and an African American flanking him, because of the way the Native American and the African American are sculpted and their relation to TR, is clearly a racist depiction.
Adam L Silverman
@Morzer: They should carry something made of pure silver in case they have to ward of the Fool or one of the members of his Unseely Court!
Kropacetic
It’s crazy how the kids in cages have kind of fallen off the radar. I don’t remember hearing about a policy change. Are they still there? Did we ever figure out about the ones where the government lost track of which kids belong to which parents?
There are so many immigrants in important jobs. Most of the immigrants I know are pharmacists. But, as this pandemic is teaching us, every job has worth. Our society disregards people working the food supply chain far too much and the market under-values their work.
They claim to worry about people not working and exploiting our…::clears throat::…generous public services. Then they stop issuing long term work visas.
MmmmmmmmHmm
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: Remind me not to upset your daughter.
frosty
I expect I’m going to get flamed for this, but … my Boy Scout buddies and I learned to tie nooses (on our own BTW) and did it occasionally, just to be macabre, the same way we bought the Aurora guillotine model that actually chopped off the poor plastic victim’s head. Not a single thought of lynching or race was in our fool heads.
It’s possible somebody in the garage tied it for the same reason. If so, he should have outgrown that impulse 10 to 20 years before.
It’s possible it was tied for a malevolent reason, too.
ETA Or what Martin said above, a little more eloquently.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: That seems … disproportionate.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
People don’t watch NASCAR to see the cars go around in circles. They go to see the cars crash.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: Paid for by Don Winslow, private detective and author of several detective novels.
Martin
@Immanentize: There are things that are bad that we point out and ask everyone to learn from and there are things that are bad and track down the perpetrator and punish them.
I’m guessing this falls in the former and not latter category. Intent does matter. Biden has supported a lot of legislation that we look back on as being racist, but that doesn’t put him remotely in the same category as Trump who supports legislation because it’s racist.
Amir Khalid
@Morzer:
Carly Fiorina has every right to speak her mind, of course, and she is quite right about Trump. But I find it amusing that, all these years after Hewlett-Packard sacked her for incompetence, she is still touting her tenure there as a credential.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: She just cries. She just wants good in the world and really struggles when the world fails. She’s struggling a lot right now.
aliasofwestgate
The chances of it being a ‘hoax’ are pretty slim. My roomie is a big NASCAR fan and it wasn’t Wallace that found the noose. It was his crew that did, and after all the unrest and reports of hangings going around, they were right to alert the NASCAR authorities about it and get the investigation going. The immediate dismissal by the FBI makes me raise an eyebrow. I know nothing about how it’s done, but there’s also the fact that they do not know who will be in what garage/bay until just before the race itself. Drivers are never first day people, crew, engineers, etc are. I’m very glad that NASCAR is delving into it in detail at the moment. They want details and with shit like that? I would too. I just saw a report that NASCAR is doubting the ‘it was there for months’ just because of the fact that of all of the stalls available in all the tracks, (which are quite a LOT!) the only knot tied as an actual noose was in Wallace’s stall that day.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Best for that purpose is a monkey’s fist. Somewhat harder to tie, though.
jayjaybear
My fellow white people’s default setting sometimes seems to be “If it wasn’t directed at a specific individual, it’s not racism.” It’s why racism seems to be an occasional, awful thing rather than something that’s baked into American society like the yeast in a loaf of bread. We are far too eager to dismiss obvious racism as not that bad a thing, no one was hurt, right?
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: I’m sorry to read that. We’ll keep good thoughts for her.
Kropacetic
Of course it is. What if your hands are busy and you need to open the garage door with your neck?
NotMax
Open thread? Down blogmaster’s way –
CarolPW
@Gin & Tonic: Disproportionate. Last thread and this. Interesting.
kindness
I’m willing to believe the rope was to pull down the garage door and that it might not have been intended for Bubba but….a noose is a stupid knot to tie. It will tighten up on your hand if you pull it wrong. Who ever tied the noose meant to tie a noose. It wasn’t a mistake. Doesn’t mean it was meant to scare black folk. Just that there are some sick people walkin’ around out there. Sadly we know that by now.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I haven’t tied out a noose since I was probably 12 or 13. The knot is kind of a pain in the ass, and there are dozens of simpler knots that do that job as well or better.
Do I think somebody did it months ago on a lark? Maybe, but unlikely.
Kropacetic
Ladies and gentlemen, we have today’s theme!!!
Gravenstone
Assholes are pivoting off of the noose, whether its intent was to be a threat or not. Saw an article about an asshole racetrack owner selling “Bubba rope” after news of the noose broke. Yeah, I’m sure he’s not a racist, not one little bit. //
TS (the original)
@Martin:
Racist seems racist to me. No idea how deliberate is part of the equation
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kindness: if it were just about a door pull, wouldn’t you want that rope to be untied so that different people could grab it however it was comfortable for them to do, according to their height, strength, dominant hand… whatever?
zhena gogolia
@aliasofwestgate:
Sounds very fishy. I’m with the people who say — why tie that kind of knot? It’s not the most functional or the simplest, is it?
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Well, ‘what’s the point’ rules out all sports, so I’ll just leave that part alone.
I will come to NASCARs defense in one respect. The race in question is Talladega which is a restrictor plate race – they deliberately reduce the power the engine can produce – so the way to get speed is to bump-draft. Basically, at 195 MPH you pull up to the car in front of you, touch their bumper, and push them around the track, through the turns, with another set of cars doing the same 18″ away from you on each side. When your car starts to overheat, you’re going to carefully slide over to the side of the bumper so your radiator can get some air, while not pit maneuvering the guy in front into the wall.
It’s really kind of amazing they can pull it off at all without everyone crashing and dying, but they do it for 500 miles with relatively few incidents.
Shalimar
I still don’t get it. Even accepting that the person who tied the noose didn’t know who would get the garage next, it still is an unbelievable coincidence that the one black driver got assigned to the one garage where a noose had been hanging for months.
Someone said earlier on twitter that the assignments were made based on previous rankings and Wallace was a middle of the pack driver so he got that one. It was garage #4. I don’t know how they are assigned, but I find it hard to believe it was coincidence.
Gin & Tonic
@CarolPW: If you have a better word I’m all ears.
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: This is not the first time or even the second time you have talked down to me and attacked me in a personal and a vicious manner.
@Anne Laurie: You can delete my first comment if you think it is out of line.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: I can lift over 300 lbs with my neck.
schrodingers_cat
@Martin: Thanks for the info I really did not know and was asking a question. Possibly should not have been the first comment.
Kropacetic
@Adam L Silverman: Well, hopefully the garage door has a design that obviates the need for that amount of force.
That must be a big head you’re carrying around.
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Doing so using the knot in the picture might be a bad idea, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I can eat 50 eggs.
UncleEbeneezer
Unless it is specifically for an African-American approved museum display of historical lynching, there is no need for anything resembling a noose, anywhere in 2020. Anywhere else, yeah it’s racist.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@schrodingers_cat:
While I much prefer road course racing to ovals, Monday’s race was actually pretty exciting. Pretty much every car was running on fumes by the end and it was high speed race to the finish. The personalities, rivalries, etc also play a role in the motorsport being interesting at times
Villago Delenda Est
Dear Mollie Hemingway: The vile racist fucks that are MAGAts (to include your loathsome self) have earned that reputation though speech and deed.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Nobody can eat 50 eggs.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: Nope, normal size. When I work shoulders, I also work my neck.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: Correct!
Kropacetic
Tell that to the dog who got all the deviled eggs at Thanksgiving.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: What did she do now?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Agreed. Even though some team member said they saw it months earlier, how do we know they’re not lying? Barr’s DOJ sure did drop this fast enough didn’t they?
Kropacetic
She has the last tweet in the OP.
catclub
@White & Gold Purgatorian: I was gonna ask how many other doors had a noose.
Bowline is easiest knot to tie to make a handle. Noose will slip and squeeze the hand, not the right knot.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid: I suspect that if even Carly Fiorina is willing to come out and say this, there are a lot more anti-Trump Republicans than the Very Stable Genie of the Ramp wants to believe.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Cool Hand Omnes?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Governor Injustice sure has a lot of fucking gall, doesn’t he? It sickens me to think this man was ever a Democrat. Does he honestly think this is a good look for him? That there won’t be consequences?
CarolPW
@Gin & Tonic: A perfectly good word, just found it interesting having it applied to my comment in the last thread (and because it was me I of course thought my comment was not disproportionate at all) and to that of Immanentize in this one, a comment I appreciated seeing. No bigger point, just figuring out where people are. And Kropacetic weighing in on it is particularly meta.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: An hour.
Adam L Silverman
@Kropacetic: Now I’m tracking. i scrolled right past that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
@NotMax:
“What we have here today is a failure to eggucate”
Calouste
@Amir Khalid: Well, she managed to turn her time running Lucent into the ground into becoming CEO at HP, so it’s obvious to her that’s the way things work.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Villago Delenda Est:
She has it in quotes, so I don’t think that’s her actually saying that…
Anne Laurie
@schrodingers_cat: Nope, I’m serious — if you don’t want to go to the trouble of a guest post, send me any good links you know about, so I don’t make a (bigger) fool of myself writing about it!
Ruckus
@Martin:
Like most everything else, it’s a learned skill. I used to road race motorcycles and sometimes there would be several bikes in a corner, inches apart, or going down a straight only a couple of inches apart next to each other. You learn to do this in a lot of ways but it never, ever looks the same as from the seat of the vehicle. And it helps dramatically that the vehicles are mostly going very close to the same speed. Which in racing is as fast as HP and traction allow.
Gin & Tonic
@CarolPW: I get that things escalate. I’ve been around a while, and I’m not a prude. It just seems that “fuck you” coming out of the gate, as a response to somebody’s first comment in a thread, is seldom warranted. YMMV.
Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: The thing about anti-Trump Rethugs is that what they’re pissed about is that Trump is trashing their brand, “conservatism”, with all of his ignoring of the rules against saying things out loud that should not be said out loud. The main goal is to protect the American parasite overclass from the consequences that the Bourbons and Romanovs experienced. Donald complicates that goal because he’s creating the sort of chaos that allows revolutions to happen.
Villago Delenda Est
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): She means every word of that. She’s not joking. No more than Donald is.
namekarB
@White & Gold Purgatorian: When I was a dumbass kid in the late 50’s early 60’s my best friend / neighbor and I spent hours practicing knotting the perfect noose. Oh yeah, my best friend was Mexican American and we didn’t have any blacks in school or the neighborhood or any interactions with blacks. We did, however, watch a lot of cowboys on TV and in movies so yeah, we knew about nooses used for hanging the bad guys.
Starfish
How many racist memes have you seen from Southern racists with regards to this? If the number is zero, I envy you.
CarolPW
@Gin & Tonic: I’ve been around a while too even though I rarely comment (and should probably just go back to that). I have no problem with you calling me out on last thread’s fuck you but this was just an observation on when you intercede. Should have kept my mouth shut.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t follow the right yappers that closely, but it seems to me I used to see Mollie Hemingway referred to as one of the serious intellectuals of post-Bush (or whatever the buzzword du jour was) right.
Omnes Omnibus
@namekarB: Most fisherman can tie that knot as it is a fairly common way to tie a hook or lure onto a line.
Ruckus
@Gin & Tonic:
He didn’t say he did it in one session. I’d bet that unless you are allergic, you’ve eaten 50 eggs yourself. I have. Easily. Sure it took a while.
I’m on a use of language kick as of late, because we all use shorthand or phrasing that sometimes really isn’t appropriate usage of the words but the usage of the phrase has changed the overall meanings of the words. Sometimes the misusage is intentional and sometimes it’s just common usage that has taken on a meaning of it’s own.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She writes for The Federalist. Apologists for Donald.
John Revolta
@Gin & Tonic:
My boy says he can eat 50 eggs, he can eat 50 eggs!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@CarolPW: For the record, I thought your “fuck you” in the last thread was on point
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: no, that brought out information I didn’t know either. Thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: I was quoting Cool Hand Luke. G&T quoted the reply to my line.
Mike in NC
Just rent the movie ‘Lucky Logan’.
MobiusKlein
@schrodingers_cat: The Visa thing scared folks at my tech company enough that they’re advising visa holders to not leave the country. Period.
No telling what the xenophobe assholes running this country will do.
satby
This thread is full of win.
Fair Economist
@Martin:Yeah, anybody can learn to tie a noose with practice but it’s still one of the hardest knots to tie. I’ve never seen anybody tie a noose for a practical purpose, only as gallows decor. That’s a pretty serious noose, too.
Fair Economist
@catclub:
None. All the others had simple and practical, or improvised knots, or nothing at all.
Geminid
Nascar has been declining in popularity for over a decade, so they have good business reasons for banning the treason rag , but the show of support for Wallace before the race looked earnest and sincere, and I thought it was a good thing. A just deity would reward them with some dry race days but I don’t think that’s how it works.
Delk
It’s (k)not that tough to tie but if I was going to tie one it would have 13 turns.
James E Powell
@White & Gold Purgatorian:
I have seen arguments on twitter about whether it was a noose or some other knot – the names vary – that are just like the “It’s not a magazine, it’s a clip, libtard!” arguments.
Gvg
I think the FBI is wrong.
Part of racism is intimidating the others into keeping their heads down and never feeling safe. Such as putting the 10 commandments on courthouses so that people of other religions doubt they can get a fair trial. I think nooses hanging around are meant for all blacks, to intimidate.
It’s possible there is some other reason, including someone having thoughts of suicide, but they aren’t nearly as likely. I would be suspicious of any noose maker except maybe the fishermen mentioned above. I would not even exempt Halloween displays in the current riled up climate.
lamh36
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…Looks like a noose to me.
If it has in fact been there for so long and no one thought anything of it, that says something about the comfort too many folks (majority white folks) have with the connotation and racial imagery that it brings forth.
I can tell you that probably most Black folks, like me, would have seen that noose as a threat or just feel VERY uncomfortable working in a garage with a noose-like knot just willing nilly hanging. Which makes me wonder how many of the crew are Black folks. Because I can almost guarantee you that any Black person on the crew would see that and feel mighty uncomfortable in that garage with a majority white crew and driver.
Imagine being the SOLE Black person in that garage and seeing that hanging. I suspect even if they didn’t want to rock the boat and report it way back when, they’d at the very least find a way to take it down.
It’s obvious though that NO ONE thought to do so, even when the SOLE Black driver was assigned the garage
Kropacetic
Do we know how many witnesses stated or could corroborate this?
Patricia Kayden
@Immanentize: Ouch. A little harsh. I think SC was just expressing an opinion on the sport itself. I’m sure she understands all those things.
lamh36
@Kropacetic: IDK. I am going by reports that the FBI said it had been there since October of last year??♀️
Patricia Kayden
@lamh36: Good point. I don’t understand why that noose isn’t seen as a threat regardless of how long it was up. I’d be horrified if I saw a noose in my workplace.
Kropacetic
I get that. I just wonder at how they arrived at that conclusion.+
Even without the racial connotation. What if one of your coworkers was planning to kill him or herself?
CarolPW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks, helps a lot.
CarolPW
@Patricia Kayden: Yes, that was harsh. But sometimes it’s good to point out the problem when the very first post on a Black Lives Matter thread is What About Visas.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Adam L Silverman: The irony is apparently that statue was considering outrageously progressive back in the day when they put it up, but damn does it look weird now.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
Just curious: is your real-life name Gaston?
frosty
@Ruckus: Road racing motorcycles? We learn a lot about our fellow commenters. Congratulations on making it so many decades!!!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It sounds like the kind of joke a bunch of young stressed out men do, you know, guys working around machines that might just kill them at any moment if they make a mistake. Even if it wasn’t racist it’s the kind of thing NASCAR should rightly push back against.
Uncle Cosmo
File this under “context is important:”
The last time (& IIRC the only time) I have ever seen a noose on display was as an installation on a pillar behind the bar in a favorite hangout, the closest thing (in spirit if not decor) to an Irish pub Baltimore has ever known. It was labeled
Having known the Irish-American proprietor** over many years, I am morally certain this referred specifically and solely to the gallows where, at the behest of their British overlords, patriotic Irishmen all too frequently concluded their time on earth:
(from the Irish folk song “The Outlawed Rapparee”)
As Dr Freud may once have remarked, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
——–
** After whose untimely passing some years ago the place was converted, sans rope art, to a nondescript restaurant – a loss from which the once-flourishing local Irish traditional music scene has never recovered.
cliosfanboy
It was up in October? I’m thinking macabre Halloween’s decoration.
Cheryl from Maryland
The image of the noose isn’t very clear, but the rope looks like hemp or sisal or manila to me, not a modern rope material. Aside from stretching and being hard on your hands, that suggests an intent to have a period look, which indicates a racist message. What materials are all the other ropes? Also, I would like to think that Mr. Wallace isn’t the only person of color who could have seen it – the pit crew, other mechanics, set up crew, maintenance, etc.
frosty
@Delk:
Of course. That’s the way it’s done, or at least the way us kids thought it should be done. We probably read it in the back of a comic book, along with the muscle-building ads and the recipe for gunpowder (honest – charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter … 5-5-7?)
frosty
@lamh36: Very good perspective.
Morzer
@Ruckus: Real egg-eaters eat 50 eggs in one mouthful.
NotMax
@delk
X-ray specs!
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Dear god, no.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh I know. Paul Newman is a favorite in movies. I can’t recall a bad one, ever.
Kent
It’s like the old adage. If a confederate flag flies in the forest and no black people see it, is it racist?
A lot of white folk would say “no” because it wasn’t targeting anyone in specific.
MobiusKlein
@CarolPW: The thread is marked Open Thread, so folks will be OT on Open Thread posts
Ruckus
@frosty:
Trying to be good and not worrying a lot about winning (OK I wanted to, but it wasn’t the most important part) does make it a bit less dangerous. My record is no crashes in racing, although in one endurance race in the rain I gave it a number of good solid tries. And in over a half a million miles on the road, only one crash. In all the years involved in racing, really bad stuff didn’t happen to very many, as often as one might assume it does. Not saying I don’t have some vivid memories. Sort of a dark humor type of sport, it’s not like you wanted anyone to crash but some times the spectacular is just that.
Ruckus
@lamh36:
Extremely good point. As person who has been to a lot of racetracks in this country, some of them also ran Nascar races, I can tell you that I never saw a lot of black people. And having been there I can tell you that in a lot of places you likely wouldn’t feel welcome. With that in mind, I seriously doubt that this noose was anything other than a racist comment, no matter the actual use of the rope. And on that note, a noose is supposed to decrease in diameter as you put weight on the loop, so how is it supposed to work as a door pull down? Yeah I’m not convinced it was a joke or in any way intended to be funny. Other than to a stone racist.
aliasofwestgate
@Ruckus: There are more POC in the pit crews and all of the racers themselves than most of the audience. I can tell you that from experience, as my roomie has dragged me to no less than two NASCAR races. It was a generally welcoming atmosphere, but i was also there with friends which helped. They also didn’t mind that i spent most of the race reading rather than watching it. I’ve been happy with the initiative to get more actual diversity among the racers. Which should be easier, especially after this stand with Wallace and the BLM endorsement before that as well. NASCAR is not putting up with that bullshit, and continuing to investigate when the FBI shrugged and gave up, point in their favor too. I know very little details of the inside stuff, my roomie is the lifelong fan. *grins* I’ll stick with my music, anime, and tokusatsu.
Jay
@Gvg:
Fishermen don’t tie noose knots. The closest we come is a Cinch Knot or Improved Cinch Knot,
And it’s still not a fucken noose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Uniknot.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
still, not a noose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay: Pray explain the difference.
Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
there are over 3200 knots where the line, rope, thread is wrapped around its self to make a functional knot, from fastening to making netting to making a handhold,
nooses are for executing people, ( or in rare cases, animals), either sort of quickly, through a broken neck, or very slowly, through strangulation, like Saddam, or as a racist threat.
but I know, clip, magazine. Racists gotta racist.
cwmoss
@CarolPW: In addition to a BLM tag, it’s also labeled “Open Thread” and “Sports” so seemed like a fair comment to make. I don’t comment much, so it’s possible some of the more subtle customs and practices of commenting etiquette escape me.
Jay
@cwmoss: It’s kinda a privileged thing. It’s subtle, but the visas thing, in a time of Covid, is a magnitude different than “murdered by cop”, should have it’s own thread.
some people here get real pissy about a bunch of little stuff to justify their privledge. It’s a way of excusing the “larger meme”, to chase nitpicking.
Here, there be trolls.
fancycwabs
Yes, and the plane flying the confederate flag over Talladega was a collective hallucination or something. Or maybe Wallace hired the plane himself?