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NASCAR embodies a brave and futile rejection of Benjamin Franklin's famous aphorism, "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." In this way, it is a gospel sport, because while the rest of America lives in denial of death and has made peace with cultural conformity, NASCAR fans instinctively know that we are made for more. This is, I believe, one of the subconscious reasons for NASCAR's broadening appeal in American life.

Take taxes. NASCAR's story begins with young bootleggers in modified cars outrunning the law in the back hills of Georgia. We're not just talking about the Prohibition era, but decades following it, when avoiding heavy federal and state liquor taxes—a key tool of state power—was the engine that drove the business. Such bootlegging was partly about poor Southerners finding a way to make a living. Yet it was also about evading a creeping federal government still resented by Confederate holdouts. It was a defiance of the Constitution of the United States by otherwise good and law-abiding citizens, even churchgoers.

NASCAR blossomed just as the country was increasingly conformed to Northern mores, especially to the suburban culture that swears allegiance to Sobriety, Safety, and Security. NASCAR would not bend the knee, and we still see residual outlaw resentment in T-shirts and bumper stickers sported at NASCAR events: BEERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS, GUN CONTROL MEANS USING BOTH HANDS, AND DRIVE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT. It's enough to make well-to-do suburban parents tremble—and cover their children's ears and eyes. The ubiquitous presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR races signals this continued defiance of the larger culture, or as another T-shirt slogan puts it, IT'S A BUBBA THING; YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND.

But NASCAR, like every subculture in America, is a conflicted culture. While mocking Madison Avenue with T-shirts that say TOMMY HELLRAISER, there is no sport that has so conformed itself to capitalist, corporate America. The cars and firesuits are littered with company logos, and drivers speak without irony about winning a championship for their sponsor. The only flag displayed more than the Confederate is the Stars and Stripes. NASCAR is unabashedly patriotic, and its theme song is clearly "God Bless the U.S.A." by Lee Greenwood, with the refrain, "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free."

In other words, the NASCAR fan knows something of the experience of Hispanics in America celebrating Cinco de Mayo, or African Americans honoring their heroes during Black History Month. It is not easy to be intensely loyal to one's subculture and to the American experiment. But it is the American experiment that makes possible the freedom we have to express loyalty to our subcultures. NASCAR is merely the white, Southern version of this great American reality.

In fact, NASCAR is one of the few major sports in America (with tennis and hockey) that remains overwhelmingly white. Blacks are now the clear majority in professional basketball, and in some ways, basketball is now America's black sport. Golf's megastar is Asian and black, and while down in the ranks blacks are few and far between, Asians have become increasingly major players, especially on the women's tour. Football is a thorough mixture of black and white. And baseball has a rainbow collection of blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians (in this respect, it is the truly American pastime).

NASCAR's unashamed whiteness in fact may signal a new phase in our nation's multicultural philosophy. Racial discrimination, to be sure, will be with us always, and sadly there are too many instances at NASCAR events that speak more to lingering racial tensions and less to pride in Southern culture.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8