A rumor that Bubba Wallace, the only Black driver in NASCAR’s top series, wants the organization to eliminate the white flag because of its apparent association with the Confederate flag circulated online in June 2025.
For example, The Patriot Oasis on X posted
BREAKING: Bubba Wallace, the only Black NASCAR driver, wants NASCAR to eliminate the white flag, which traditionally signals the final lap of a race. He says it is associated with the Confederate flag and has racist undertones.
(X user @ThePatriotOasis)
Variations of the rumor spread on Facebook in multiple posts with more 30,000 reactions as well as on TikTok.
Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, there was no evidence that Wallace wants to eliminate the white flag from NASCAR or that he believes it has racist undertones.
Rather, the rumor about Wallace and the white flag originated with Elite Gridiron — a Facebook page that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. Its bio states:
Elite Daily Dosage of Sports Parodies / Satire / Updates / For Entertainment / News & much MORE
In June 2020, during the George Floyd protests, Wallace called for NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag from its races. NASCAR had asked fans to stop bringing Confederate flags to races as early as 2015, but didn’t take the next step of banning the flag until after Wallace called for it.
The white flag, which is used in NASCAR to indicate the final lap of a race, is not typically seen as a Confederate flag. None of the Confederacy’s three national flags was a plain white flag. The Confederacy didn’t even use a plain white flag in its surrender to the Union; instead, it used a white towel with three red stripes along the bottom, according to the National Museum of American History.
Elite Gridiron has a history of making up stories for shares and comments. Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims stemming from Elite Gridiron in the past, including the assertion that sports commentator Skip Bayless referred to the University of Colorado’s football team under head coach Deion Sanders would be the “next Alabama dynasty.”
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.
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