Full Throttle

Forgive the too cute by half headline, but when someone files a discrimination lawsuit against NASCAR’s Diversity Program claiming he’s “too white” to be in a sport pilloried for being “all white” it brings out the best, or worst in me take your pick.

A blond, blue-eyed Puerto Rican driver claims NASCAR excluded him from its “Drive for Diversity” program.

Michael Rodriguez’s lawsuit claims a NASCAR or Access Communications employee stated that he was “the poster boy for the Ku Klux Klan” during the 2005 combine where drivers compete and during the 2006 selection process.

Rodriguez who’s of mixed Puerto Rican and European heritage, says he was unanimously chosen by a NASCAR selection committee to drive in a Combine at South Boston Speedway in Virginia, a two-day event to assess driving skills and train driver for media exposure.

He alleges that at the 2005 combine, he said he felt “unwelcome because of his racially identifiable characteristics,” that he hit his head on a safety bar in the car and then was not allowed to drive despite being cleared by a doctor. The 15-year-old was never invited to the combine again.

But when he arrived, he says, he received nothing but disdain and scorn from event officials, most of whom were black, and he was barred from participating.

“[Rodriguez] was not chosen because defendants believe that [his] racially identifiable characteristics appear too Caucasian and do not fit defendants’ stereotyped and preconceived notion of how [he] should look,” the lawsuit states.

The first and most obvious question is why did it take four years to fill this suit, forgive me but I smell a rat.

Granted the kid was only 15 at the time of the first alleged incident but he must have had parents or some other adult supervision at the time to intervene on his behalf.

Let me go out on my Traditional Thin Limb of Prognostication: The kid is twenty now and his career as a stock car driver has been in the tank and completely unconnected to any real or imagined discrimination on the part of NASCAR or the Diversity Program.

Pure unadulterated speculation that, but possible.

It should be noted this isn’t the first charge of discrimination leveled at NASCAR’s Diversity Program and interestingly enough it occurred in the same 2005/2006 class of candidates Rodriguez took part in.

Joe Henderson III of Franklin, Tenn., was one of the five original Drive for Diversity drivers selected for the program in 2004.

Joe Henderson Jr. said his son, Joe III, was under contract to MB2 Motorsports from 2005 to 2006 and was used for publicity but was given poor equipment in 2005 and not even provided a racecar in 2006.

“It’s a sham,” Joe Henderson Jr. said in a telephone interview Friday. “The program is not designed to be successful because, No. 1, it’s not properly funded.

“Nascar’s not trying to develop nobody,” said Henderson Jr., who is considering a lawsuit against MB2, Nascar and Access Marketing. “They have nobody ready to move up. It’s a smoke-and-mirror program.”

Two points, 1. I find no record any lawsuit was ever filed by either Joe Jr. or son Joe Henderson III in his home of Tenn, NASCAR’s home state of Florida or in Charlotte N. Carolina (more bluster than substance I suspect) and 2. it’s hardly surprising MB2 Motorsports didn’t provide a competitive car assuming that’s true.

MB2 first came on the scene in 1997 and owned by Read Morton, Tom Beard, and Nelson Bowers from 2001 to 2005, later became Ginn Racing in July 2006 and finally merged with Dale Earnhardt Incorporated in 2007.

From 1997 through the end of the 2007 NASCAR season the team had exactly 2 wins with such notable drivers Sterling Marlin, Mark Martin, Ken Schrader and Ernie Irvan.

I think you see my point MB2 may have given uncompetitive rides to Henderson III but it was more likely due to a team that was underfunded and uncompetitive at all levels of the sport and not because of any underlying discrimination or racism.

Not to say it’s not present then or now, racism is at all levels of American society and NASCAR isn’t immune, it just wasn’t part of the equation in Henderson’s case and the lack of a lawsuit seems to bare that out.

Whether that’s true in Michael Rodriguez’s case remains to be seen the court and a jury will decide.