Haley heirs put down some Roots in racing.

• Author: Richter, Chris
• Position: Tar Heel Tattler - Brief Article

The hoopla greeting the news of a wholly black-owned NASCAR team might have obscured a key fact: Don't expect change anytime soon in the lily-white roster of drivers in the sport's top tier. That's despite the intentions of the new team and of at least two affirmative-action efforts.

Alex Haley Racing--which will be co-owned by the estate of the author of Roots and by Sam Belnavis, majority owner of BelCar Racing--will be based in Concord. Startup costs for a NASCAR team run between $8 million and $10 million, but the estate isn't saying how much it's investing.

While Haley was never a racing fan, the writer's heirs view the investment as good business and as a way to open motorsports to more blacks, says Bill Bryant, a partner in Empire Sports Group, a Charlotte venture-capital firm working with the estate. And that's good for racing. Think Tiger Woods in golf or Serena and Venus Williams in tennis.

Mark Howell, author of From Moonshine to Madison Avenue: A Cultural History of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, says the sport doesn't deserve the redneck image that hounds it. A 2003 survey by New York-based Scarborough Research backs him up: About 9% of U.S. fans are black. But the highest level at which a...