Bubba Wallace, NASCAR's only black driver, will race a car with a Black Lives Matter paint scheme while calling for a ban on Confederate flags

USA Today

Wallace will race in Wednesday's NASCAR Cup series at Martinsville Speedway with a black paint scheme featuring the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, a handshake between a black person and a white person and the message "Compassion, Love, Understanding." Wallace's announcement comes the day after he told CNN's Don Lemon NASCAR should ban Confederate flags. Wallace said his paint scheme was inspired by last week's Blackout Tuesday. "We knew the Martinsville race was open," he said. "We did not sell sponsorship for that, and it sparked and idea of: Why not run a blackout car? And I was like, 'Absolutely, that would be incredible.' Our team brought that idea to me, and I jumped all over it. And we had further conversations of, 'Let's make a statement behind it and run a foundation or a charity (on it) that's helping push the narrative and the initiative of what's going on in the world today, racial inequality. Let's find somebody that aligns with that.' And why not dive straight to the root and putting #BlackLivesMatter on the car? Most powerful hashtag going around, I feel like, especially these last couple days, last couple months really."