Among Rednecks & Others at the NASCAR Race

Sitting in section ME, row 22, seat 14 at the Taladega Superspeedway Racing Track I am supposed to be in the middle of Redneck culture. At least so goes the stereotype: among conservative white beer drinking men and southern racists who hate everything associated with black culture, feminists, LGBTQ activists and sober coastal elites. When I look around, I see indeed many white men of a certain unkempt description, but also middle-class families, small groups of African Americans and some people who could easily be on the board of some medium-sized company, all enjoying themselves together under the already blazing Alabama sun. NASCAR racing has been described as a battlefield of class and culture wars where Confederate flags are flying, and Republican politicians visit to show their real or fake Southern conservatism. We will see. 

The recurrent and infernal noise when the highly tuned pack of stock cars passes the audience on the 2.66 Miles long oval track at a speed of 180 Miles an hour makes any conversation difficult. But at his return to a NASCAR race after 30-something years, John Schleicher to my right seems to be a bit disappointed and nostalgic. This race is not like it used to be, he says. The crowd is smaller, the cars are too sleek and uniform, the young drivers come from California or somewhere far and couldn’t even fix their own cars anymore, as could their forerunners when he was here last time. 

Indeed, stockcar racing and the NASCAR organisation have undergone many changes, particularly since the sport’s most revered hero Dale Earnhardt died crashing into the outer wall of the banked oval at the Daytona Speedway track at the hight of his sport’s popularity in 2001. What had started with bootleggers trying to evade police and the taxman during and after prohibition, what later became an expression of Southern pro-segregationist pride has been turned into another highly commercialised American sport when “the suits came in”, as the magazine “Politico” described it. They changed the cars and the rules, closed small racing tracks in the Southeast and angered the traditional fanbase. 

This fanbase in the southern states of the former Confederacy resides predominantly in regions which were hard hit by globalization. Where factories were closing the local racetracks often suffered the same fate under a NASCAR management in search of profits and new markets with a higher-income clientele. But it is still difficult to find somebody at Taladega Superspeedway who voted Democrat at the last election. 

“I guess 9 to 1 for Trump”, says Sheriff Shawn McBride from Shelby County when you ask him about the political affiliation of the spectators at this race.  “We are the South”. But he and his colleagues have also seen better days at the race track when none of the 100.000 seats was empty and tens of thousands more camped inside and outside the oval. Still there are about three million viewers watching the Talladega races on TV this afternoon. And there are those who have also come for the big party with country music tonight. 

Pals like Mike, Steven and Richard drinking beer behind the pickup on the grassy parking lot. Two of them are with the army which has strong links to NASCAR culture and in the past has co-sponsored the races. One of their friends has already passed out in his director’s chair. The ensuing conversation about politics and voting is zigzagging between the lines of logic like the Chevrolets, Fords and Toyotas did earlier on the racing track. Some intellectual crashes here, too.  

Mike, who works in IT, has checked out of politics. “It’s all about money. You have no say. It fucking doesn’t matter what you think and do. Everything is rigged”. His friend Steven starts with the beauty of Trump’s tariffs and ends with the badness of communism which he knows about since he was stationed in Germany in a town whose name he can’t remember. It’s not quite clear, what this has to do with Joe Biden, but the arguments are wild, to say the least. For all three of them the Democrats are just hell, although Richard is still in favour of both sides talking to each other. And off they go to find some “chicks” by which they seem to mean the young ladies in bikini tops, short skirts and high cowboy boots who are easy to find among the Taladega crowd.  

So how much Southern conservatism is left in the NASCAR crowd? Well, there was the long prayer asking God to safely steer the drivers all the way to the checkered flag when everybody lifted the baseball cap before the national anthem. Yet we also heard the positive reaction of the crowd when Catherine Legge was declared the first woman driver who ever held a lead position at the sport’s largest racetrack here at Taladega, if only for one round. She was mostly feted by “soccer moms” who have joined the “NASCAR dads” over the last years in a new mingling of cultural stereotypes. And yes, we also saw the occasional Confederate flag being driven around outside of the gates because they have been forbidden on NASCAR grounds since 2015.

But we also met Charles who has come from Charleston where he works for Boeing. Charles and his black friends will tell you “the three months of hell with the idiot in the White House who doesn’t know what he is doing are bad for Boeing and bad for America.” And how do they feel as African Americans among the crowd of alleged rednecks at this stock car race? Charles has been coming here for years “giving a shit about the confederate flags”. He was born here in Alabama. “Those people are idiots”, he says jauntily, “but we are having a good time at the races, and I just don’t care”.