In recent weeks we’ve seen a real crackdown on racism and its symbols in global human culture, and the automotive community is obviously not immune to that. The murder of George Floyd has served as a tipping point for many Americans to sit and take stock of how we can make the world a more hospitable place. Even the little things matter, like banning racist iconography from a secessionist rebellion army fighting to uphold slavery from our racing video games.
Following in the footsteps of NASCAR’s confederate flag ban at in-person events last week, Turn 10 has announced a zero tolerance policy for the flag in its Forza series of games.
It’s such a sad day for man children everywhere who want to digitally cosplay as a character from a television show that ended 35 years ago. I know you won’t get to drive the General Lee anymore, but you’re just going to have to get over that shit. It’s two-thousand twenty. Grow up.
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The car community has historically been a typical good ol’ boys club, not very welcoming of anyone not male white and middle class or better. Thankfully progress has been made in recent years, but we still have a long way to go. This is immediately obvious by the number of so-called NASCAR fans still calling Bubba Wallace the N word on Twitter.
If we’re going to be the welcoming community that we really need to be, then it starts by looking within yourself and seeing what you can do to prevent others from feeling uncomfortable in your presence. That’s just common decency. It costs you absolutely nothing to refrain from putting confederate flags on your digital rides in Forza (and even less to do so in real life). Even more so now that the people who run the game have said they will ban you from their platform if you do.
The first Forza title was released 15 years ago, which means this game has lasted approximately 11 years longer than the confederacy did. Forza has been around for almost half my life. It’s my heritage. So get your hate out of here.