Here’s the script from a recent Sports at Large commentary, slightly altered to reflect recent events.

The shooting deaths of eight Black church-goers and their pastor in a Charleston, S.C. church three weeks ago has given millions of Americans an opportunity to examine their feelings regarding race relations in this country.
On a far less important, but still significant scale is the level of self-examination that sports figures and leagues are undertaking in the wake of the shootings.
Those shootings were allegedly carried out by a 21-year-old White man who displayed symbols interpreted by many to be racially insensitive.
One of those insignias was that of a Confederate flag, a symbol that adorns the tops of many infield campers driven by NASCAR fans.
To the degree that there is a racial divide among fan bases, few sports organizations face a larger chasm than the one that exists in NASCAR.
Actually, you could say that there is no real split in NASCAR audience level because to have a split, you’d have to have an appreciable number of Blacks watching stock car racing.
There’s precious little evidence that African-Americans are into NASCAR.
An NPR story from last year indicated that NASCAR’s fan base is 60 percent male and 80 percent White. A Nielsen survey from 2013 placed the percentage of Black NASCAR fans at 2 percent. That’s worse than the NHL, golf and soccer.
To NASCAR’s credit, the powers that run the sport have tried to bring Black drivers and, hopefully, fans into the tent.
Last year, the organization began a Drive for Diversity program, seeking to identify potential drivers of differing ethnic groups, including African-American.
The program attracted 26 people of color to either drive or man pit crews in the sport, a solid first step.
And there’s a prominent car owner, former NBA player Brad Daugherty, who was a NASCAR analyst on ESPN before buying into the sport.

Just this week, NASCAR chairman Brian France strongly backed South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call to take the Confederate flag down from the state house grounds in Columbia.
But it seems that for every mile NASCAR goes forward to bring in Black fans, the sport goes into reverse for two or three.
People still talk about the November, 2011 incident where first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, were booed before a race in Miami.
Allowing for the idea that sports fans routinely boo politicians, the crowd seemed to go out of its way to target Obama and Biden.
The biggest evidence of the long road NASCAR must travel to win Black fans has little to do with on-track performance, but rather what happens in the stands and parking lots before races.
There, Confederate flags dot the landscape, spreading a message, intentionally or otherwise, that people of color are not welcome.
Daugherty has said that seeing the flag “makes my skin crawl,” adding “that flag, to any African-American person, does not represent any type of heritage. It 100% represents hate.”.
Ten years ago, France told “60 Minutes” that the Confederate flag was not “a flag that I look at with anything favorable. That’s for sure.”

Again, this week, France got NASCAR track owners to issue a communique asking racing fans to leave their Confederate flags at home.

Let’s give France credit for coalescing his track owners and drivers to take a bold step. Too bad it came 10 years after he first condemned the idea and three weeks after nine people were gunned down by a man who saw that flag as inspiration to hate.

As always, if you’d like to hear the original, dial in to WYPR 88.1 FM each Monday at 4:45 p.m. or during the 9 a.m. hour on Tuesday, same station.