NASCAR, Nooses, FBI, and WTF?!

[Jimmy Higgins]

So, scandal! A "noose" is found in the garage of Bubba Wallace, the only black driver in NASCAR. Blacks in auto racing isn't common, probably something about washing hands issues. Regardless, Wallace overcame this and drives the number 43 car, which is partly owned by some guy named Dick... people call him a king. No idea what that is about..

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah! The "noose" <- notice the quotes, because some people lie about nooses. NASCAR had recently banned the Confederate Battle Flag from events. This made some white people angry. There was some thinking that people were very angry about this and lashed out at Bubba Wallace.

The FBI was on the way to deal with this. Meanwhile, NASCAR drivers show a moment of unity as they walk along with Bubba Wallace's car in a contrived act of I suppose unity. It wasn't particularly organic, but NASCAR, for some reason afraid that the "noose" was legit for reasons I can't imagine, wants to try and work on their image of a Southern Racing division that became obsolete over 10 years ago. It is better than nothing.

So pretty quickly, the FBI announces something great. It isn't a noose, it is a rope to pull down the garage down. *phew* No racism, just a misunderstanding.

The one thing that hasn't been really going around though... the "noose"... you know... the thing that actually cause all of this.

Well, NASCAR has confirmed that a picture that was leaked is what caused all this nothing. I report, I decide, you clicked the link, you can't unclick that link! Below is what caused all this silliness!

Show

Yeah... umm... I want to thank the FBI for looking into this so thoroughly. But based on my limited experience with knots, that seems a bit... overkill for a knot for a garage door. Now, the good news is this still might not be racism. This could have been Jeff Gordon's pit back in 1998 and NASCAR fans hated him too (from California).

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Yeah, it still doesn't explain why the hell it's a noose. It's not fashioned like a noose; it's a straight-up noose. It shouldn't be too difficult to find the guy who made it and hung it there and ask him why he made a noose for a garage pull.

And while it may have been sheer coincidence that the only black racer in the cup series was assigned that particular garage, it could still have been intended as a racist signifier. No matter which garage Wallace may have been assigned, he surely would have seen and/or heard of the noose hanging ominously in garage 4.

ETA: This just in:

Phelps said NASCAR conducted a thorough sweep of all the garage areas in all 29 tracks in which they race, which encompasses 1,684 garage stalls.

"We found only 11 total that had a pull-down rope tied in a knot, and only one noose - the one discovered on Sunday in Bubba Wallace's garage," Phelps said.

Phelps said NASCAR determined that the noose wasn't in the garage prior to the October 2019 race weekend, but it was unable to determine "with any certainty who tied this rope in this manner, or why it was done.

If it were innocent, then why hasn't the person who did it come forward to confirm that? It would be an exceedingly simple thing--particularly at this stage--to just step up and say what the purpose was of fashioning a noose. And wouldn't the racetrack have some sort of record of who was in that garage in October? It can't be more than a dozen or so people

Odd. I guess the question becomes, when was it announced that Wallace would race at the speedway? If it were prior to October (which was evidently the last time the speedway held a race, btw, so it would be the only time a member of a rival racing team, for example, would have had access), then, again, it may have simply been put there as a threat to Wallace no matter where he was officially assigned.

 

[blastula]

A very strange episode and very good fodder for talk shows and social media thirsty for any sports content.

It was nice to see the other teams out there supporting Wallace, which was initiated by drivers not NASCAR. Even earlier, when the confederate flag was banned, some of the older, bigger names were publicly behind him.

The knot was obviously meant to look like a hanging noose, but it's possible to make one without any racist intent. If it was put there right before Wallace got there, it would be doubtful that it was innocent, but since it's been there for months, that makes it an open question.

NASCAR did overreact, not in thinking it could be a hate crime and investigating it, but that their initial statement was so definitive that it was a racist act against Wallace with no qualifiers that it could be a misunderstanding or even a hoax. if they had only said they're going to investigate it to see how it got there, that would have lessened at least some of the subsequent backlash.

There would still likely be a lot of bullshit from the typical quarters claiming Wallace is another Smollett. I think he handled it well enogh, considering what he was being told about it. He was just relying on what his team and NASCAR told him. Though it would have been better if he did question it publicly.

The best outcome out of this is that it made me interested in watching that race on Monday and it was a very entertaining one to watch. Love the ubiquitous camera coverage they have nowadays.

 

[Politesse]

A very strange episode and very good fodder for talk shows and social media thirsty for any sports content.

It was nice to see the other teams out there supporting Wallace, which was initiated by drivers not NASCAR. Even earlier, when the confederate flag was banned, some of the older, bigger names were publicly behind him.

The knot was obviously meant to look like a hanging noose, but it's possible to make one without any racist intent. If it was put there right before Wallace got there, it would be doubtful that it was innocent, but since it's been there for months, that makes it an open question.

NASCAR did overreact, not in thinking it could be a hate crime and investigating it, but that their initial statement was so definitive that it was a racist act against Wallace with no qualifiers that it could be a misunderstanding or even a hoax. if they had only said they're going to investigate it to see how it got there, that would have lessened at least some of the subsequent backlash.

There would still likely be a lot of bullshit from the typical quarters claiming Wallace is another Smollett. I think he handled it well enogh, considering what he was being told about it. He was just relying on what his team and NASCAR told him. Though it would have been better if he did question it publicly.

The best outcome out of this is that it made me interested in watching that race on Monday and it was a very entertaining one to watch. Love the ubiquitous camera coverage they have nowadays.

Well, you don't want to make a statement too late, either; it makes you look bad if the final consensus is "yes this was a hate crime" but you weren't supporting your driver until the consensus had already been reached. Media attention is brief and fickle.

 

[ronburgundy]

No matter the findings of no wrong doing, it was a classic noose that 100% of people would think "noose" when seeing, and it was highly unusual (no other garage had anything close to it). So, Wallace's team was correct to report it, and NASCAR was correct to act immediately.

The noose in Wallace's garage and the one below being dangled threateningly by a KKK member are identical, both tied with "hangmans knot" specifically designed to break the person's neck and thus makes zero sense as a "garage pull". IOW, if it has been there for years, then years ago some NASCAR person consciously decided to needlessly create a hangman's noose for a garage pull (which may have been a white supremacist gesture, the FBI investigation didn't look into that possibility).

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wood Bros were in same garage in 10/19 and there is a pic with it there. But yeah, noose knot.

 

[Politesse]

I have a hard time imagining any American accidentally making a hangman's noose. They aren't hard to tie, but it is slightly too complex a knot to accomplish without specifically meaning to produce it, and we are very over-saturated with the image in popular culture, both from the lynchings we study in history class and the TV Westerns we watch for entertainment and Halloween decorations come Octobers, etc, etc. There's no one who doesn't know what a noose looks like, and you really can't tie one by accident (if you disagree, watch this video explaining how, and then plausibly walk me through how someone would just happen to do this without any foreplanning). For instance, they did teach me how to do both of the above knots when I was in the Boy Scouts. But the hangman's knot was called a hangman's knot, everyone knew what it was and what it was used for, and there was much nervous giggling and cruel joking as a consequence of that (ie, "Don't teach Ryan that one, scoutmaster, he's looking depressed today, teeheehee!")

If you look carefully at the NASCAR photo you can see the closed loop that secures the rest of the knot; it is a classic hangman's knot, that the knot tier had at some point learned how to do from someone. It's not a Uni knot, and there's no practical advantage to using either in this case. It may be that it was meant as a "joke", it may be that the target of the original "joke" wasn't Black, insert excuses here, etc, but I do not believe for one second that the person who tied that noose wasn't thinking "noose" while they tied it.

 

[blastula]

Trump wishes the south won.

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1280117571874951170[/TWEET]

President Donald Trump attacks Bubba Wallace, NASCAR - Sports Illustrated

And of course,

Trump is wrong about NASCAR TV ratings - Yahoo! Finance

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

According to the White House, Trump was making a broader point about jumping to conclusions... by falsely accusing Bubba Wallace of a hoax.

NASCAR has been struggling because they continue to race on tracks they can't race full speed on, which sounds dumb and is boring. And this struggle has been ongoing for well over a decade, probably a couple decades.

 

[J842P]

I have a hard time imagining any American accidentally making a hangman's noose. They aren't hard to tie, but it is slightly too complex a knot to accomplish without specifically meaning to produce it, and we are very over-saturated with the image in popular culture, both from the lynchings we study in history class and the TV Westerns we watch for entertainment and Halloween decorations come Octobers, etc, etc. There's no one who doesn't know what a noose looks like, and you really can't tie one by accident (if you disagree, watch this video explaining how, and then plausibly walk me through how someone would just happen to do this without any foreplanning). For instance, they did teach me how to do both of the above knots when I was in the Boy Scouts. But the hangman's knot was called a hangman's knot, everyone knew what it was and what it was used for, and there was much nervous giggling and cruel joking as a consequence of that (ie, "Don't teach Ryan that one, scoutmaster, he's looking depressed today, teeheehee!")

If you look carefully at the NASCAR photo you can see the closed loop that secures the rest of the knot; it is a classic hangman's knot, that the knot tier had at some point learned how to do from someone. It's not a Uni knot, and there's no practical advantage to using either in this case. It may be that it was meant as a "joke", it may be that the target of the original "joke" wasn't Black, insert excuses here, etc, but I do not believe for one second that the person who tied that noose wasn't thinking "noose" while they tied it.

I mean, the whole situation could come down to just some person who maybe remembered how to tie a hangman's knot and it was the only functional knot they could remember to tie when they were trying to fix the issue with the garage door. I think that is the most likely situation.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I have a hard time imagining any American accidentally making a hangman's noose. They aren't hard to tie, but it is slightly too complex a knot to accomplish without specifically meaning to produce it, and we are very over-saturated with the image in popular culture, both from the lynchings we study in history class and the TV Westerns we watch for entertainment and Halloween decorations come Octobers, etc, etc. There's no one who doesn't know what a noose looks like, and you really can't tie one by accident (if you disagree, watch this video explaining how, and then plausibly walk me through how someone would just happen to do this without any foreplanning). For instance, they did teach me how to do both of the above knots when I was in the Boy Scouts. But the hangman's knot was called a hangman's knot, everyone knew what it was and what it was used for, and there was much nervous giggling and cruel joking as a consequence of that (ie, "Don't teach Ryan that one, scoutmaster, he's looking depressed today, teeheehee!")

If you look carefully at the NASCAR photo you can see the closed loop that secures the rest of the knot; it is a classic hangman's knot, that the knot tier had at some point learned how to do from someone. It's not a Uni knot, and there's no practical advantage to using either in this case. It may be that it was meant as a "joke", it may be that the target of the original "joke" wasn't Black, insert excuses here, etc, but I do not believe for one second that the person who tied that noose wasn't thinking "noose" while they tied it.

I mean, the whole situation could come down to just some person who maybe remembered how to tie a hangman's knot and it was the only functional knot they could remember to tie when they were trying to fix the issue with the garage door. I think that is the most likely situation.

A hangman's noose is actually a very complicated knot to tie. The far easier version would be the simple noose.

That's this:



If you know how to tie a hangman's noose, then you know how to tie a simple noose. It's just the first step, basically, so why go to all of the additional steps unless you deliberately and specifically wanted to make a hangman's noose?

Now, that could have been done for gallow's humor purposes, certainly, but it's a pretty dark joke to have a harbinger of death prominently displayed in a race car garage on a race track where drivers have been--and may soon to be--injured and killed.

 

[Politesse]

I have a hard time imagining any American accidentally making a hangman's noose. They aren't hard to tie, but it is slightly too complex a knot to accomplish without specifically meaning to produce it, and we are very over-saturated with the image in popular culture, both from the lynchings we study in history class and the TV Westerns we watch for entertainment and Halloween decorations come Octobers, etc, etc. There's no one who doesn't know what a noose looks like, and you really can't tie one by accident (if you disagree, watch this video explaining how, and then plausibly walk me through how someone would just happen to do this without any foreplanning). For instance, they did teach me how to do both of the above knots when I was in the Boy Scouts. But the hangman's knot was called a hangman's knot, everyone knew what it was and what it was used for, and there was much nervous giggling and cruel joking as a consequence of that (ie, "Don't teach Ryan that one, scoutmaster, he's looking depressed today, teeheehee!")

If you look carefully at the NASCAR photo you can see the closed loop that secures the rest of the knot; it is a classic hangman's knot, that the knot tier had at some point learned how to do from someone. It's not a Uni knot, and there's no practical advantage to using either in this case. It may be that it was meant as a "joke", it may be that the target of the original "joke" wasn't Black, insert excuses here, etc, but I do not believe for one second that the person who tied that noose wasn't thinking "noose" while they tied it.

I mean, the whole situation could come down to just some person who maybe remembered how to tie a hangman's knot and it was the only functional knot they could remember to tie when they were trying to fix the issue with the garage door. I think that is the most likely situation.

Not logical in the slightest.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It is a noose knot, it was a noose knot. Was there back in October, so had nothing to do with Wallace, but it is a noose knot.

It wasn’t a hoax, it was a door pull knotted with a noose knot.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

It is a noose knot

No, it isn't. It is a hangman's knot, which is actually a far more complicated version. See my previous post for a clear and unmistakable differentiation between a hangman's knot and a noose knot.

Was there back in October, so had nothing to do with Wallace

Wallace didn't become a race car driver after October. Most such races are planned far in advance, so it's not just possible, but likely that it was known back in October who would be racing at the track in the next upcoming race (which is the one in question). These racetracks don't operate every day; they operate periodically. So far as I have been able to find, October was the last scheduled use and then this latest upcoming race was scheduled next, so, again, it could have been something someone did back in October with the intent being that the person who did it knew that Wallace would be scheduled to race at the track next.

It could also have been placed there, not because they thought Wallace would be assigned that garage, but just as a general placement knowing that it would be found by any subsequent crew, who in turn would tell others and the word would get to Wallace pretty quickly--being the only black race car driver at the event--that someone had fashioned a hangman's noose.

We're clearly not talking about very intelligent people. It could simply have been like putting up a particular cross on a hill (as was done in my home town of Eugene, Oregon back in the 30s), knowing that black people would either see the cross on the hill as they passed by it--and know it's importance--or hear about it being up on the hill by others pretty quickly.

To the average white guy, seeing that cross on the hill would just denote Christianity and they--like myself in the seventies/eighties--wouldn't think twice about it, but a black person likely would have seen it very differently (particularly in the 30s onward).