>>59639
Why are you so mad about the fact that other races exist.
Remember that Lewis is not fully black, he's only half black - I think a lot of fully black people would reject him.
Also I think you're wrong - he wants validation from people he cares about, but not from any random pleb.
I think it's a shame people hate on him just because he's half-black - I mean I'm white, and sure I don't fully relate to everything about him (I've not grown up half-black), but I still relate in a lot of ways. He had a pretty humble upbringing, came from a complicated family let's say (since his parents split up very young), and he's an aspirational guy, wears his heart on his sleeve, likes to live a baller lifestyle.
In that way I can relate to him more than I can Seb (who I sort of relate to, but I get the impression he comes from a relatively stable family - he just is a bit more self-assured in that way that kids of stable families are, and I'm pretty sure his parents are still together), and more than someone like Nico who grew up in relative wealth.
I watched a BBC thing about Lewis though and it featured his dad Anthony, and it was interesting.
Like it says in that article, they were (literally) the "black sheep" at the race track, since they were the only black people there. But they stuck to it. But then also Anthony says at one point "did we use the fact that Lewis is black when trying to get sponsorship? Yeah, of course we did - that's an appealing element of his story, and why wouldn't we use it?"
So I do think there probably is an element of sponsors getting behind him - and McLaren being very keen to put him on their young driver programme - because he's black. Because that makes a good marketing story, and remember, F1 is essentially just a marketing vehicle - if the sport isn't a medium for advertising things, then it can no longer exist, because there will be nothing to finance it.
But of course you can't get ahead on your ethnicity alone, there's no doubt Lewis is a great driver. I do wonder though, maybe there was some white driver who was maybe even a little bit better than Lewis in those early days, but the white kid missed out on the sponsorship because he didn't have a "story". Maybe that's the case. I doubt Lewis would care. He would think "well who cares, I got mine".
There's some of my thoughts, you can see I have thoughts from both sides of the issue on race, I wonder what you guys think.