Why NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace says he’ll take embarrassment over the alternative

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Why NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace says he’ll take embarrassment over the alternative The 43 car driver thanked NASCAR and FBI for taking threat seriously.

After "an emotional few days," NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace addressed his followers on Twitter Wednesday after the FBI investigation concluded that he was not the direct target of a hate crime.

"First off, I want to say how relieved I am that the investigation revealed that this wasn’t what we feared it was," Wallace said after NASCAR initially reported a noose was found in his team's garage at the Talladega Superspeedway on Sunday. "I want to thank my team, NASCAR and the FBI for acting swiftly and treating this as a racial threat. I think we’ll gladly take a little embarrassment over what the alternatives could have been."

"Make no mistake, though some will try, this should not detract from the show of unity we had on Monday and the progress we’ve made as a sport to be a more welcoming environment for all," Wallace added.

The FBI completed its investigation Tuesday and announced it is not filing any federal charges.

The noose in question from the incident had been in the garage since as early as last fall, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp.

Wallace spoke to ESPN's "First Take" on Wednesday to discuss the findings as well as his perspective of how things have unfolded.

"Are we hypersensitive to everything that's going on in the world now? Absolutely," Wallace told ESPN. "But if you were in my shoes -- and I doubt anybody could walk in my shoes, especially at this moment -- you would go down that route time and time again."

"Yes, it was a garage pull for our stall at Talladega, but that was in the solid shape of a noose," Wallace continued. "And when my guys seen that, when my crew member had seen that -- who happened to be African American -- he did his research first, and I was very proud of that. David Cropps -- a guy I'll stand by in any trenches, any day -- walked up and down the garages to make sure he wasn't overreacting. And when he seen that the other garage pulls were basically just a solid piece of rope, no knots in them, and we had a knot that was in the shape of a noose -- yeah, that calls [for an investigation]."

Since the incident was reported and investigated, Wallace, who is the sport's only top full-time Black driver, received an abundance of support from his team, competitors and the racing community, as well as on social media.

In a press call with media on Tuesday, NASCAR President Steve Phelps said the result of the investigation was "fantastic" news.

"There is no place in our sport for this type of racism and hatred," Phelps said. "It's not who we are as a sport."

Phelps said that NASCAR will be continuing its own investigation to determine "why there was a rope fashioned into a noose." He said the noose was present in the garage during a race in October. On Sunday, a member of Wallace's crew found and reported it to his crew chief, who then brought it to the attention of NASCAR Cup Series Director Jay Fabian, he said.

Bubba Wallace, driver of the #43 Victory Junction Chevrolet, and team owner, and NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty stand for the national anthem prior to the NASCAR Cup Series GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on June 22, 2020 in Talladega, Alabama. Chris Graythen/Getty Images

"To be clear, we would do this again," Phelps said. "The evidence that we had, it was clear that we needed to look into this."

Some people have criticized NASCAR's handling of the incident after the FBI concluded that the rope was a garage door pull rope, which some racing fans have said is common in the garages.

Others, including Wallace's team, Richard Petty Motorsports, have responded that it was better to treat the incident as a threat and deal with the backlash.

The team behind Wallace and his 43 Chevrolet have been supportive of his efforts to stand up for social change in the sport.

He has been a leading voice in the sport amid calls for justice following the death of George Floyd and ran a Black Lives Matter paint scheme on his own car at the Martinsville Speedway in Virginia two weeks ago.

Wallace also helped push NASCAR to ban the Confederate Flag from all events and races and celebrated the sport for enacting real change.

"I said a couple weeks ago, that something changed inside me to be an activist. My mother said, 'Did you ever believe you would be an activist?' I said, 'No, not really.' But I just felt in my heart that I needed to step up and be a leader in the forefront," Wallace said Tuesday on "The View." "These times kind of bring back that positive light of love and passion and solidarity and unity, to unite together and show that love is way stronger than hate."

etr4807 on June 24th, 2020 at 22:53 UTC »

My main takeaway from this entire thing is that everyone comes out of it looking good.

The person who reported it did so out of a legitimate concern that someone was targetting Bubba.

NASCAR took the allegation seriously and put out a very strong statement denouncing it, and reported it to the proper authorities for further investigation.

Bubba responded with more civility than a lot of us would have managed to do if we were essentially told that someone had committed a hate crime against us.

The other drivers immediately rallied around Wallace to support him.

The FBI throughly investigated the incident and found no wrongdoing, but also made it clear that it was a legitimate complaint by repeatedly calling the rope a noose.

Why people are trying to turn this into a negative story is beyond me. Everyone involved handled themselves perfectly.

EDIT: Most of the pushback I’m getting is the idea that this whole thing was over a pull rope and therefore was a huge overreaction. The thing that stops me from going down that road is this; out of everyone who saw the rope - the person or persons who reported it, officials from NASCAR, the FBI, etc - not a single one of them thought “that’s just a pull rope, this is nothing.” That leads me to two logical conclusions:

The rope really was fashioned into some sort of a noose. The noose style rope was likely only in that one stall.

If you want to get all conspiracy theory about it, you do you, but I have no reason to believe everyone involved wasn’t acting in Wallace’s best interest.

LiberalConservative4 on June 24th, 2020 at 22:40 UTC »

Glad it was not a racist incident.

glkerr on June 24th, 2020 at 21:33 UTC »

All this talk of "noose" and still there isn't a goddamn photo of the pull cord anywhere. Was it just a severed pull cord, or did someone actually take the time to tie a noose knot in said pull cord?