Keywords: NASCAR, discrimination, race, racial discrimination, lawsuit, legal, diversity, Indy, racing, Drive for Diversity

NASCAR's public-relations staff has been extolling the virtues of its Drive for Diversity efforts for the past five years. But NASCAR now finds the spotlight rather glaring, since it is the subject of a $225-million lawsuit alleging racial discrimination.

Consider this when evaluating NASCAR's diversity initiatives: NASCAR has never been willing to open up its data to scrutiny by participating in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^® survey. Remember that 352 companies and organizations did this in 2008, up from 317 in 2007. But not NASCAR.

The lawsuit, as documented in articles on Indystar.com and in The New York Times, was filed on June 11 by Mauricia Grant, a Black former technical inspector. She alleges 23 incidents of sexual harassment and 34 incidents of racial and gender discrimination before she was fired in October 2007. She said she was called "nappy-headed ho" and "Queen Bee," according to The New York Times. NASCAR's CEO and chairman, Brian France, whose family owns the auto-racing series, said policies were violated, but he indicated her charges were less than credible. However, two officials were placed on administrative leave right after the lawsuit was filed, according to The New York Times.

Click here to read the full Indystar.com article. Click here to read the full New York Times article.

Is NASCAR's culture welcoming to women, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, LGBT people and people with disabilities? There's nothing written anywhere on efforts to include LGBT people and people with disabilities, so that's impossible to assess.

As for efforts to reach out to women and non-whites, NASCAR has made a minimal effort but touted its progress loudly. The company funds Access Marketing to run its diversity program but won't say how much it pays or what exactly it's doing. And its efforts have produced no women or non-whites as drivers in its three major series.

NASCAR says it has 75 million fans and that 8.6 percent are Black and 8.9 percent are Latino, according to Scarborough USA research. NASCAR has had great difficulty producing successful Black or female drivers and, according to an article on NASCAR.com, it lags behind other racing series. NASCAR admits that it is the "whitest sport in the country" but says it is developing non-white talent.

Click here to read the full NASCAR.com article.

"From talking to many in the African-American community and even to white females, many say they see [NASCAR's programs] as window dressing. They're not really and honestly attacking the issue of diversity and inclusion," said Wayne Clapp, founder and executive director of the Association for Diversity in Motorsports and a member of NASCAR's Diversity Council, in the Indystar.com article.

Marcus Jadotte, NASCAR's managing director of public affairs who "oversees" the diversity department, says in the NASCAR.com article that it takes time to develop drivers and change the culture. Since DiversityInc can't evaluate NASCAR's diversity programs, it's impossible to see if they are even making minimal best-practice diversity-management initiatives.

A New York Times article in November 2006 quoted Joe Henderson Jr., whose son, Joe Henderson III, was used for "diversity publicity" but was given poor equipment and was not even provided a racecar. "The program is not designed to be successful because, No. 1, it's not properly funded. They claim that it's a pipeline. Well, nobody came out the pipe," he said, calling it a "smoke-and-mirror program."

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