By Terence Samuel, AOL Black Voices,
Posted: 2006-02-23 12:22:30
On the Fast Track
Wire Image
The Urban Youth Racing School in Philadelphia is a free program that seeks to get kids interested in learning by getting them interested in stock car racing.
PHILADELPHIA — In a bleak, industrial section of this struggling city, in the looming shadow of the Ben Franklin Bridge, is a tiny building on the banks of the Delaware where bright futures are being constructed out of hope, hard work and horsepower. This is the home of the Urban Youth Racing School, a free program that seeks to get kids interested in learning by getting them interested in stock car racing. “Our main focus is education,” says Michelle Kuilan, director of operations for the UYRS.
But the idea of a stock car racing school in the heart of industrial Philadelphia catering to mostly black and other minority kids is enough of an anomaly that is fairly quickly jumps out of the “main focus is education” box. And right from the first flag, everyone is willing to admit as much. “We are changing a mindset,” Kuilan says. “The first thing that parents say is, ‘Black people don’t race cars. And recent history and the current numbers support that position.
Why They Are Poised to Make History
As the interest in stock car racing continues to explode with the surging popularity of NASCAR on television and in the national consciousness, the issue of race has been a prominent feature of the discussion. The sport is working hard to overcome a perception that it is overwhelmingly white, Southern and male. Though considerably more muted, the debate about Confederate flags in the stands at NASCAR events has not gone away.
On the Pulse
In response, there is a NASCAR Executive Steering Committee for Diversity; there are NASCAR Diversity Scholarships, and there is the NASCAR Drive for Diversity program, started in 2004, which seeks to “develop;diverse and female drivers and crew members” to compete at the highest levels of the sports. As part of that larger diversity effort, members of the UYRS program last month taped a commercial for NASCAR that celebrated the slim history of minorities in NASCAR racing.
It wasn’t until 1991 that Willie T. Ribbs became the first African-American driver to compete in the Indianapolis 500. But many may have forgotten that black participation in racing reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century with the Indianapolis-based Gold and Glory Sweepstakes racing circuit designed for black drivers. Charlie Wiggins, the most celebrated competitor of the 1920s and ’30s, was the one of the early African-American heroes on the racing track. “Black kids don’t know that this is part of their history,” Kuilan, says, “They don’t know about the Gold and the Glory.’”
“I think they’re trying,” says Anthony Martin, founder and president of the Urban Youth Racing School, of NASCAR’s diversity efforts. And in the UYRS storefront, they are doing all they can to take to take advantage of these efforts. But it must do it one kid at a time. “Look, we live in Philadelphia,” says 14-year-old Jeremy Ortiz, who takes part in the youth program. “Don’t nobody know nothing about NASCAR.” The freshman at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science says that when he’s playing basketball or just hanging out with friends, he almost never mentions his racing life.
Prince of the Road
Jeremy Ortiz:
One of the stars of the Urban Youth Driving School program in Philadelphia.
“People think it is a white-people’s sport,” says Danny Colon, who at 18 has graduated from the program and is looking for a way to on keep driving. “It’s like the only sport I’m good at,” he says as he walks around one of the race cars one afternoon in late January.
The program not only teaches driving skills, but also how to manage a pit crew, develop sponsorships and how to keep their cars on the road. One team recently complained that its car did not have enough horsepower to handle the competition, and was dispatched to the engine room to figure out how to generate more.
Imitation of the Best Form of Flattery
Colon and Ortiz argue about who is a better driver and they argue about whose hero is the better driver: Colon says Mark Martin is his favorite. “He is just the man,” he says. Ortiz, a Jeff Gordon guy, is vigorous in his dissent. But Martin, the 41-year-old former sports agent who started the school eight years ago, clearly hopes that one day, his kids will be the NASCAR role models. His goal, he says, was to solve the problem of access. “There is no way for a kid from the hood to get involved in motor sports,” he says. Now he has them so involved that one new requirement of the program is that kids must completely disassemble an engine and put it back together again. “We are developing kids from this size,” Martin says, holding his palm face down a couple of feet off the floor. He thinks that out of these ranks, NASCAR will get its Tiger Woods. “It’s like anything else, you have to start young and you have to win,” Martin says.
The cars the kids drive are called super mini cups. And they are exactly like NASCAR stock cars, except they come in at a quarter of the original size.
Out of the Mouths of Babes
“It’s hot in these cars,” says Jade Gillis, 14, pointing to where the engine sits in the car. She says, “You have to wear the fire suit and the fire boots and the neck brace, which is what I hate the most.” Gillis thinks that maybe she wants to be a lawyer, but she loves being at the small tracks in the Poconos or in Delaware or in Upstate New York or racing high performance go-carts around the streets of the Art Museum section of Philadelphia, as happens once a year.
She loves the sport for a very basic reason, she says: “It’s fast.” All of them love the trash-talking and camaraderie that comes with being at the track even though it’s usually with older, white men. “We never ever see any other black or Puerto Rican kids when we race,” says Colon, “never.” In general, they feel as if they’ve been given a gift: “People don’t know about this stuff,” says Ortiz. “We are on the road all the time, and they don’t know how much fun it is. It’s sickening, sickening how much fun it is going that fast.”
