LONG BEACH GRAND PRIX : COMMENTARY : Racing Gets to Where It Should Have Been

Willy T. Ribbs, a black man, competed in Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, becoming, by most accounts, the first of his race to drive in a sanctioned Indy car event.

Seems a little strange, doesn’t it, that here, in 1990, that is a remarkable event? Ten years from the end of the 20th Century and we’re still counting black firsts in sports.

The obvious question is: “Good heavens, what took so long? We’ve had blacks in baseball, basketball and football for years. We’ve had blacks in tennis and golf, figure skating and ice hockey. Racing, where have you been?”

And the convenient conclusion is that Indy car racing, maybe just racing in general, is more than mildly prejudiced at best, downright racist at worst.

Is it? Is racing racist?

It’s not prudent to make blanket judgments. And as easy as it may be to condemn nameless, faceless “racing,” that’s hardly fair to the thousands of people, the multitude of sanctioning groups, the myriad sponsors--all of whom are “racing.”

And yet, few of those people, groups or sponsors have taken pains to present to the world a different image. With the exception of drag racing, which has always been something of a maverick when it comes to acceptance, racing has a lousy track record.

In fact, racing, at least at its highest levels, still likes to pass itself off as a tough dodge for tough men, and you’d better not be too different.

That, in many ways, is a terribly dated image. But racing keeps on using it and stumbling over it.

In the early 1960s, at the dawn of the rear-engine revolution in Indy car racing, some of the world’s finest drivers were sneeringly referred to as “foreign sporty-car drivers” whose manhood was in question. Even Dan Gurney, as American as apple pie, was considered suspect because “he runs with them.”

In the South, where stock car racing was in flower, it really didn’t pay to be different. Still doesn’t, apparently, judging from the recent Tim Richmond case. Richmond, “a long-haired hippie-type,” was suspected of drug use, and when tests failed to confirm that, they were falsified.

To NASCAR’s credit, the South had a black driver back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. To its shame, it rendered Wendell Scott a token. In an era of rich factory backing and lucrative corporate sponsorship, he scraped along, trying to get by on prize money alone. Of course, NASCAR always pointed out, there were white drivers in those same circumstances.

In the ‘70s, at Indianapolis, Janet Guthrie, a better driver than some men who figured on making the world forget Parnelli Jones, became the first woman driver to make the 500 field. Obviously, there were some around willing and able to help her but, generally, she was given a rough time. It seems her manhood was in question, too.

It’s interesting to note, too, that despite the pioneering of Wendell Scott and Janet Guthrie, minorities remain ultra-minorities in racing.

Still, there has been movement. In the mid-’60s, Mel Leighton, a welder for the city of Los Angeles, took his vacation in May each year so he could go to Indianapolis as a mechanic with A.J. Watson on Bob Wilke’s Leader Card team. Leighton, a black, was such an oddity that reporters wrote stories about him.

Today, there are half a dozen or so black mechanics in Indy car racing. And in Sunday’s race, in which Ribbs became the first black to drive a CART race, Hiro Matsushita became the first Japanese to do it--maybe the first Oriental driver in Indy car racing.

So, now does racing decide to show us a different, a better side?

There are, truly, some marvelous people in racing--people marvelously talented, marvelously intelligent, marvelously spirited, marvelously rich. There are people able to make this a smooth transition, a truly noble gesture.

Will racing do it? We shall see. So far, so good. There obviously are people helping Ribbs, just as there are people helping all the white drivers, and he seems to have been quietly accepted.

Ribbs, normally flamboyant and outspoken, is low-keying it. Going into Sunday’s race, he described it as “the most important of my life.” But he also said that, significant as the race was to him, he was not in it to make a statement, that he was simply a professional trying to move up in his chosen field.

His debut was hardly spectacular. Driving a Lola-Judd, he ran back in the pack until suspension problems took him out after 71 of the 95 laps. And there is no guarantee that if Ribbs eventually makes it, others will follow him. Big-time racing is a big-money sport, and sometimes talent just isn’t enough.

Matsushita, for instance, had a solid record in Formula Atlantic competition, but it certainly didn’t hurt that he brought to his team a sponsorship deal worth about $2 million from Panasonic, a firm founded by his grandfather.

Still, the race is not always to the swift or the rich, and in this Long Beach GP, there might even have been multiple winners--Al Unser Jr., Willy T. Ribbs and Indy car racing.