Of all the things I’ve thought the Harvick/Edwards fight represented — hilarity, a bit of unwisely expressed anger, the utter inability of white dudes to really go at it well — one thing I can honestly say I never thought it represented was a racial divide.

But this being America, race is on everyone’s minds. And NASCAR has become handy shorthand for white racism. You know the routine: "We all know NASCAR is racist. So, with that as a given, let’s just plow right ahead with our argument … "

One of my sworn missions at The Marbles — in addition to showing ridiculous pictures of drivers and making them say funny things — is to stamp out that kind of argumentative fallacy wherever it appears. And hoo boy, did it appear on Friday at Sports on My Mind, in a piece entitled "NASCAR and the Chasm Between Black and White."

I see these kinds of articles every so often, and I usually let them pass, because they’re at a small site or they’re written by people who aren’t professional writers. This one was done by a talented guy whose work I’ve enjoyed for quite some time, and it was picked up by several different websites and reprinted without comment. Until now.

Here’s the thing: DWil, the writer, makes some very important points in his article, but they get completely buried by the misconceptions, exaggerations, and half-truths herein. There is important, rational dialogue that has to take place about racism in NASCAR, but it will never take place in an environment where people work from the assumption that NASCAR has racism embedded in its DNA. (It’s the photo-negative of the assumption that the NBA is nothing but tattooed thugs, which I also take issue with, just as fervently.)

So, in the tradition of the great Fire Joe Morgan, I’d like to examine this article from a slightly different point of view. [Very important aside: My differences with DWil are with his ideas as expressed in this article, not with him as a person. Any personal attacks on the guy will be deleted. That's not what we're here for.]

So, let’s begin with our deconstruction of "NASCAR and the Chasm Between Black and White." Settle in, folks, this one’s going to take awhile:

Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards had an altercation in Harvick’s garage stall Thursday at the Lowe’s Motor Speewday in Concord, North Carolina. The fight between the two drivers is just the latest physical incident between NASCAR drivers in 2008.The beginning of the 2009 [sic] season began with Richard Childress Racing teammates Clint Bowyer and Jeff Burton fighting at Daytona

They had a heated conversation about strategy and miscommunication during a race. If that’s the definition of a "fight," then Terrell Owens gets into a fight every time he comes off the field.

and has continued unabated throughout the year. The following month [sic; it was actually several days before] Tony "Smoke" Stewart hit Kurt Busch in the NASCAR garage after a practice session for the Bud Shootout.

Allegedly, but yeah, it probably happened. But it was behind closed doors, like the fights that often occur in locker rooms when the media isn’t around. And it also (allegedly) happened because Busch called Tony "fatty." That warrants a beating, in my mind.

Later on May, again at Daytona [sic], Tony Eury, Jr., crew chief for the No. 88 Chevrolet driven by Brad Keselowski, along with JR Motorsports crew member Michael Sandlin, and Jordan Allen, another JR Motorsports crew member, were all suspended and fined after an altercation at the famous speedway.

Denny Hamlin and Keselowski fought at Lowe’s.

All of these were the same fight, and it was at Lowe’s, not Daytona.

Stewart was again engaged in shoving match with a USAC (United States Auto Club) official at famed Indianapolis speedway [sic; it was in Indianapolis but at another track].

True, but that’s not NASCAR. It’d be the equivalent of blaming the NBA if Kobe Bryant got into a fight while watching the team he owns in Italy. And Stewart got fined by NASCAR anyway.

Todd Bodine was penalized after a fight in New Hampshire.

Well, his crew was, not Bodine himself. But close enough. (Oh, and this event and the Hamlin one didn’t occur in the Sprint series; the equivalent would be tagging Major League Baseball for fights in the minors or the NBA for D-League fights. Just to put this all in context.)

The list goes on indefinitely.

Does ‘indefinitely’ mean ‘ends right here’? Because I cover NASCAR for a living, and that’s pretty much the end of it for ‘08. To sum up:

Fights between drivers in public view: 3

Fights between drivers behind closed doors: 1 (allegedly)

Fights involving NASCAR drivers, but not at NASCAR races: 1

Heated disagreements: 1

That’s four, maybe five real fights in nine months. That’s "unabated"? Come on. Baseball has more bench-clearing brawls than that in a decent summer.

Smoke Stewart has been in one more altercation (two) than he has wins (one) this season;

That’s pretty funny, actually.

and that win - at the most recent NASCAR Chase race at Talledega (the AMP Energy 500) - was a gift from NASCAR officials. Stewart has been fined so many times in his career for physical altercations and verbally abusing everyone from fans to officials that these incidents have become a running joke among NASCAR drivers and aficionados.

But they are no joke. And neither are any of the fights that occur in NASCAR.

In this day when fans and the sporting press yearns for positive role models NASCAR drivers have become an anathema on the sports landscape. Forget all the football, basketball, and baseball players who have had run-ins with the police for DUI or speeding. Forget all the steroids and HGH abusers. Forget the potheads.

What the –? You can’t DO that! You can’t just throw out the worst examples of other leagues to make your point! That’s like saying, "Forget murder! Forget theft! Our worst criminals are the people who steal gummi bears from bulk food bins at grocery stores! Therefore, Jay Busbee is worse than Hitler!" Check the arrest records, check the drug test results. NASCAR is far cleaner than most other major sports. Long as we’re making sweeping generalizations, I’d rather see two drivers throwing each other around than a drunk NFL player careening toward my family’s car any day of the week, how about you? (Though I am down with forgetting the potheads.)

When Carl Edwards takes Kevin Harvick and slams his head into the hood of Harvick’s car hard enough to dent it and must be put into a headlock to be restrained (according to ESPN’s Marty Smith), there is something fundamentally wrong with the white world of NASCAR.

And indeed there would be - if there was anything even remotely accurate in that retelling. Read it yourself – here’s what Smith wrote:

According to reports Harvick then shoved Edwards in retaliation, forcing Edwards onto the hood of the No. 33 Chevy. No. 33 crew chief Rick Ren pointed to a dent in the hood where he said Edwards landed.

Does that sound like "slammed his head into the hood" to you? It was Edwards who hit the hood, not Harvick, and it sounds like he hit it with his ass or back, not his head. But "slammed his head into the hood" sure does make it sound worse, doesn’t it? Long as we’re creating stories out of whole cloth, let me try:

"Carl Edwards pulled a knife AND a gun on Kevin Harvick! Harvick responded by ripping the head off a puppy, drinking its blood, and throwing the corpse at a busload of visiting orphans! These NASCAR drivers MUST be stopped!"

And if the fights, the verbal abuse of fans,

Who’s abusing the fans? These are my people! Let me at these abusers!

the continuous cheating in garages in an effort to illegally make cars faster,

Bad NASCAR. Nobody else in any sport ever cheats. Nobody tries to steal signs or throw an elbow when the ref’s not looking or shoot themselves up with bull semen to hit balls to Kyoto. Bad, bad NASCAR.

and the constant attempts to spin opponents out at 180 miles per hour and send them careening into a wall

It’s not real tough to spin somebody into a wall if you want to. If these guys were "attempting to spin opponents out," they could do it. It’s also a great way to end your own career. Again, it makes for a good soundbite … but no connection whatsoever to reality.

aren’t enough, when minorities attempt to enter the world of NASCAR they are met with racist treatment reserved for the America of the 1800s.

See, this is where things really go off the rails. NASCAR has a horrible image problem. I will be the first to stand right up and say NASCAR has to get its act together, racially speaking, and fast. But tarring the entire sport with language like "racist treatment" from "the 1800s"? Come on. I won’t even demean the honor of those who suffered in that era by making jokes, but I think we can all think of a few ways that NASCAR is most definitely NOT like the 1800s. This is the kind of approach that makes people dig in their heels, not look for common ground.

This isn’t the "good ol’ days" of stock car racing; the days of Cale Yarborough and Richard Petty, This is 2008. This is an auto racing association that is a multi-billion dollar business, complete with a CEO at its helm. Yet the white men of NASCAR run around the United States like it is the Wild West of shoot em’ up lore instead of conducting themselves like professional athletes in every other major sport - including golf - are expected to carry themselves.

Wait, golf is a sport now? (Kidding, kidding!)

In every other sport it is a must that athletes conduct their affairs, from on court or field or course behavior, to postgame interviews, to their private time, with aplomb.

And yet thank heaven they don’t, or there’d be no reason for Deadspin to exist.

Those who do not act in compliance with their leagues’ and association’s desires and mandates are fined and suspended, and regularly raked through the coals by the sporting press.

And lionized as franchise saviors, too. Don’t forget that.

Yet Brian France, NASCAR’s CEO decided this year to relax the rules regarding fighting:

With television ratings slipping for a second consecutive year, NASCAR chairman Brian France announced in January that stock-car racing officials wouldn’t be so quick to punish drivers for bad behavior in 2008.

The time had come, France conceded, to loosen the grip on a rule book that many felt was squelching drivers’ personalities and encourage them to vent their emotions, giving fans new reasons to cheer or jeer.

What?!

Imagine the uproar if NBA Commissioner David Stern decided to allow on-court fights to go unpunished, or to give warnings to the participants instead of automatic fines and suspensions because ratings are down in the post-Michael Jordan NBA era. Imagine the response by the media if NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told NFL players that as long as the helmets come off first, a la gloves in hockey, it is fine with him if there’s a scuffle or two to help further grow ratings.

"Venting emotions" is a long way from "fighting." LONG way. There’s a huge difference between saying, "You won’t get fined for speaking your mind" and "Whip somebody’s ass whenever you feel like it! Carte blanche!"

Can you say, ‘Congressional hearings?’

I can. I can also say "irrelevant," "straw man," "fallacious connectivity," and "different organizations are entitled to run their operations as they see fit, for good and for ill."

But in the case of NASCAR, most people outside of the sport have no idea France relaxed the rules. In fact, it was only last year that ESPN.com Page 2 writer LZ Granderson challenged fans to be more sensitive of people in NASCAR and attempted to equate the term "redneck" as used to describe fans of NASCAR and NASCAR insiders, with the word "nigger."

And Granderson is black.

Hell of a good article. Highly recommended reading.

Do you think you’ll ever hear of a white NASCAR writer fight for the opposite of Granderson’s wishes? Only if he never wants to be welcome in a garage again he will.

Wait, what? This one confused the hell out of me. So, a white NASCAR writer would actually fight for NASCAR fans to be LESS racially sensitive? What rational human being would do that? I’d call for his (or her) head in a heartbeat. (And by the above "NASCAR is racist" rationale, wouldn’t such a hypothetical race-baiter be welcomed into the garage with confetti and cupcakes?)

Knowing NASCAR as we do now,

Superficially.

it must be surmised that more than a few white men involved in the sport have been witness to, or know of people who engage in that backwoods country affair called dogfighting. They must still know where to get the best illegally distilled moonshine in the Southern counties in which they live. They probably know some local farmer who is an inch from bankruptcy who took to growin’ a little chronic to make ends meet; they might have even bought a pound or two for them and their homeboys. They more than likely know where the meth labs are in those dense country road forests. They still know somebody who shot somebody in the midst of an argument. Hell, they might have, in anger or in a drunken rage of a stupor, pulled a rifle or pistol on a friend themselves.

Whoa. Whoa whoa whoa. Turn this one around. If anybody started saying, "it must be surmised that more than a few black men involved in the NBA have been witness to … " and then unfurled a list of clichés like this, they’d be eviscerated. Slagging a sport because of stereotypes about its base? Not fighting fair, not at all. That’s like saying Obama is evil because of his connections to William Ayers, or McCain is responsible for the idiots that shout "kill him" about Obama.

Oh, and from a Falcons fan, two words: Michael Vick.

Surely if their fists fly so readily in front of cameras telecasting the incidents potentially to every home in America, they have done worse in private.

"When did you stop beating your wife, Senator?"

But I bet their local law enforcement officials let them off the hook with a wink and a nod and a pat on the back and a nice piece of NASCAR memorabilia.

You know, the whole South isn’t like Smokey & The Bandit. We do have indoor plumbing. And there’s rumors about some "eye-pods" showing up ‘round these parts someday …

To get to the brass tacks of the situation, these white boys are running crazy all around the country and nobody seems to give a damn.

I dunno…I had one of the best Sundays of my tenure here yesterday as a result. People seem pretty darn interested, but not up in arms, because they know the context.

And when the news of a fight is disseminated to the public, it is reported flatly and often with that same wink and nod given by that local sheriff or deputy.

Links would have been invaluable here.

Imagine if a black athlete was teed off to the point of fighting for what ticked off Carl Edwards; he took exception to being portrayed as a "pansy" by Harvick. We all know what the pundits at ESPN would say. We all know what every columnist around the country would write.

I don’t disagree with this part one bit. The old-white-boy tut-tutting of black behavior is rampant. But this article is doing the exact same thing here — snap judgments, jumping to conclusions, connecting dots that don’t connect in order to fit a larger agenda.

These men need year-long suspensions from racing. They need to be automatically dropped from their racing teams. They need mandatory anger management classes. There needs to be a local law enforcement presence in every garage and all around the the pits and assault charges need to be pressed with each incident of a physical altercation.

The repeat offenders among these men need to spend some time in jail or prison and need to be banned for life from NASCAR.

Again, substitute "MLB," "NFL," or "NBA" for "NASCAR" and see how well these same paragraphs would be received.

Because if they are not punished as are black athletes, it means racism is alive and well and acted out in our faces each and every day in the world of sports; acted out in the garages and the halls of Brian France’s office; acted out on the courts and fields and in the offices of the commissioners of every major sports; acted out in the editorial offices of every editor and producer of sports news content in every corner of America.

That can’t be true — can it?

Again, there are so many issues conflated here at once that the real ones — racism in NASCAR, racism in the media — get completely buried under some kind of everybody’s-in-it-together conspiracy theory. There is good discussion to be had about NASCAR and race, but coming at it from a presumption of guilt isn’t the way to go.