Hide the Negroes - NASCAR Is Coming Town!

That post title could have been the sub-head of a column which ran today in the Orange County Register in advance of next week's NASCAR weekend in Fontana. The columnist was bemoaning the fact that you can still find the Confederate Battle Flag (the Stars and Bars) among the spectators at NASCAR events.

This controversial flag waves in full color red, white and blue. It has stripes and stars and a place in our past but shouldn't be in our sports world's present or future.

History will tell us that the Confederate flag originally symbolized Southern pride, unity and courage in the Civil War. Soldiers of the Confederacy gave their blood for it. Our nation was born beneath it.

But since the 1860s, the "Southern Cross" has been hoisted to signify not the region's war effort but the black hatred and oppression that drove that era's slavery, segregation and racial ignorance.

The flag's meaning, sadly, has changed because of its misuse as it has been embraced by white supremacists and the white-hooded racists of the Ku Klux Klan. These groups soaked the flag with hate, turning it into a painful symbol for a shackled past for black America.

As it has come to be misunderstood, the flag deserves no place in sports, particularly because this part of our culture has thrived on black achievement.

Sports, as we have hopefully realized in this Black History Month of February, have become more competitive and revolutionized on the legs of Jesse Owens, the bat and glove of Jackie Robinson, the hook shot of Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, the drive of Tiger Woods and the Super Bowl coaching of Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith.

So how can anyone in America unfurl this flag today? Because, thanks to America's freedom of expression, they can. That doesn't mean they should.

But it happens. The Rebel flag still flaps above Winnebagoes in the NASCAR caravan that makes its way from Daytona, Fla., west to Fontana for this week's Auto Club 500 at the California Speedway.

It adorns hundreds of NASCAR-themed souvenirs ranging from decals stuck to fans' car bumpers and to belts fastening their Wranglers. A buckle with Dale Earnhardt's No.3 over the Rebel flag is on eBay ($16.99.)

Many racing fans don't see the shame stitched into this cloth. For them, the flag is as much a part of their sport's Deep South roots as the checkered flag but without regard to America's checkered past.

"You can't separate the historical politics of the Confederacy from the symbolism of the flag. It's all one in the same," said USC professor Todd Boyd, an expert in race and pop culture. "Honestly, the waving of the Confederate flag should be an insult, not only to black athletes, but to any open-minded, free-thinking individual who knows their history.

"Many years of history have exposed the politics of the Confederacy to be both racist and regressive. So to wave the flag now is to conjure all that back up."

Oh pul-ease. What is this "NASCAR caravan" that she's referring to? The 75,000 or more fans that will up this weekend aren't a bunch of drifters who float from race to race. They live here. They're your neighbors. Granted, the crowd from "Fontucky" may want to wave a flag or two, but it's all in good fun and in the spirit of Southern Pride. I don't anticipate more than the usual number of cross burnings and lynchings this weekend.