By MONTE DUTTON

My opinion is grounded in most of a lifetime of sportswriting.

It’s not wrong to hope others like you do well. What’s wrong is to limit an activity, sport or career only to people like you.

Bubba Wallace’s victory at the Brickyard 400 made me ponder this topic.

I have little doubt that some fans hold it against Wallace that he is an African American, or Shane Van Gisbergen because he is from New Zealand.

People have a right to think what they want. Me, for instance. People can like or dislike me because I am white, Southern, fat, brown-eyed or Christian. People who live in Newberry can like or dislike me because I am from Clinton. Tarheels can like or dislike me because I am a Sandlapper.

It has been my experience of dealing with fans that their views are colored by their preferences. Two athletes can make the same comment word for word. A fan will see it as “telling it like it is.” A detractor will say he or she is “a loudmouth.”

They all have the right.

About 30 years ago, I heard the late comedian Jackie Mason ask why no one ever complains that there aren’t enough Jewish calf ropers in rodeo.

The reason most basketball players are black is that most basketball players are black. Go to a playground and see who’s playing. A growing percentage of baseball players are white because a growing percentage of baseball players are white. Check out high-school games.

It can work in reverse. My favorite country singer was the late Charley Pride. What made me love his music, at least at the beginning, was the odds he had to beat.

In one of my favorite albums, Charley Pride in Person, he told a story about a concert in Conroe, Texas. One of his fans was talking to an usher as she entered. He told her, “You know he’s, uh, black,” to which she said, “No, no, I have the records.” Pride walked onstage and sang the first words to “Just Between You and Me,” and she yelled, “It’s true! It’s true!”

People change. Jackie Robinson won people over. Muhammad Ali won people over. Charley Pride won people over. Barack Obama won people over.

Or not.

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