What do you know about that? Hell has this way of continually freezing over.

NASCAR, the Southern-based sports giant that features cars that roar around race tracks, has decided to ban the display of Confederate flags at its events.

It’s a response to the Black Lives Matter movement that has erupted around the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. What’s more, Floyd’s death is just the latest involving the death of African-Americans at the hands of police officers.

Race car driver Bubba Wallace, one of the few black drivers active with NASCAR, called on the sports giant to ban the flag. NASCAR heard Wallace’s demand and, by golly, acted on it!

In some way, this isn’t all that surprising. NASCAR has sought for years to expand its fan base beyond its Deep South roots. It conducts races at tracks all over the nation. It’s big in California, in New England, in the upper Midwest, in the Rust Belt, all along the Atlantic Seaboard, in the desert Southwest.

The Stars and Bars to some represents a symbol of Southern heritage. To others it represents slave ownership, repression of human beings, disloyalty to the United States … given that the Confederate States of America went to war with the U.S. of A. to preserve their right to continue slave ownership.

It’s no coincidence, of course, that the Confederate flags fly during Ku Klux Klan rallies or those events sponsored by neo-Nazis and assorted white supremacists.

NASCAR did what it had to do. I am delighted to see this news. I am glad Bubba Wallace’s demand did not go unheard. It remains to be seen, of course, how NASCAR will deal with fans who come to these races in the future carrying the Confederate flag or wearing it on t-shirts.

Striking the Stars and Bars colors from NASCAR events, though, is a constructive start in the effort to rid the nation of a symbol that means divisiveness and hatred.