It’s getting tough out there for the poor folks who have never faced systemic inequality but desperately want to feel oppressed. That’s why America First Legal — a conservative legal group led by Stephen Miller, a former adviser to former President Trump — is claiming that NASCAR is actually racist against white American men. That’s a first!
America First Legal (AFL) is asking the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate NASCAR and Rev Racing for “illegal discrimination against White, male Americans,” per a Bloomberg Law report.
If you’re unfamiliar with these programs, they’re efforts by America’s leading stock car racing series to offer greater opportunities to members of diverse communities. NASCAR founded something called the Drive For Diversity program back in 2004 where the whole goal has been to offer opportunities to marginalized communities. In its current form, NASCAR invites about 20 diverse drivers between the ages of 14 and 26 to participate in its “combine,” where NASCAR evaluates the various skills of their competitors, including race craft, physical fitness, communication skills, media aptitude, former experience, and more.
The program is usually composed of six to 10 drivers at any one time; NASCAR then provides those drivers with coaching, mentoring, and development. The real standouts are invited to compete with Rev Racing, which is essentially D4D’s competition arm that races in a handful of different NASCAR-affiliated series.
Drive For Diversity also inspired a handful of other programs, including a diverse pit crew development program, a diverse internship program, and diverse supplier program — all with the intention of elevating skilled candidates from marginalized positions to a sport that has historically been dominated by white dudes from the South.
Basically, AFL is asking the EEOC to investigate NASCAR for violations of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race or sex. Despite the fact that NASCAR recently changed the language of its diversity programs, claiming to seek people of “diverse backgrounds and experiences” as opposed to directly stating they seek women and people of color, the AFL is really upset that this could mean some mediocre white man may not fail upward into stock car racing.
If the AFL had done really any research whatsoever, it would know that D4D isn’t exactly a well-oiled propaganda machine pumping hordes drivers into the top level of NASCAR competition, the Cup Series. Since the introduction of the program almost two decades ago, exactly three of the countless combine winners actually made it to Cup full time: Bubba Wallace, Kyle Larson, Daniel Suarez. A fourth, Paulie Harraka, competed in a single Cup race in 2013.
Of course, that’s not the point for the AFL; this is, after all, the same company that has regularly accused entities like Morgan Stanley, Major League Baseball, McDonald’s, and Starbucks of also being racist toward white men, and it also believes that the youths are being indoctrinated by “critical race theory.” Actually learning anything about the problems you’re alleging would go against the whole premise of saying increasingly wild shit for clout.