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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Arts / News Max Siegle's Family Affair
Posted By Cheris Hodges on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Growing up as the child of a Jewish father and an African-American mother, Max Siegle has lived in two worlds all his life. In the recently published anthology Family Affair: What It Means to be African-American Today,
Siegel, currently the highest-ranking African-American NASCAR executive, writes about his life and how his early sense of self shaped him into the man he is today. Sharing his story in the anthology, he said, is another dimension of what he does personally.
“I constantly do a lot of introspection of where I am in my life. It’s a great time for the book because of everything that’s going on in the world, it kind of evaluates where African-Americans are as a people,” said Siegle. “What I’ve found is that if you focus on the things you have in common with people, you’ll find that we have more in common than what we have different.”
In his essay, “Calm within the Storm,” Siegel writes about how is father moved him and his sister from place to place after telling them that their mother died. When he was 11, he learned the truth — that his father had lied about his mother’s death and was dying himself of lymphoma.
As the illness turned his father into a shell of himself, Siegel writes that his father told him he had to become a man sooner, rather than later. “I was fortunate enough that despite my dysfunctional household, my parents instilled a lot of self-confidence. I never really had any self-esteem issues,” he said.
The dysfunction that he says surrounded him as he grew up, prepared him for life. Siegle — president of global operations at Dale Earnhardt Inc. — never expected to work in NASCAR, a business that employs only a few African-Americans, he writes in his essay.
“I have approached life pretty open-minded, but I’m also very realistic and very deliberate. I didn’t come [into NASCAR] thinking that I would be treated a certain way,” he said about his success in the sport. Siegel said he was aware of the stereotypes typically thrown around about NASCAR, but he approached his job with an open mind.
And in his essay, he says this about what his job has taught him.
“Living in Charlotte, N.C. has been an ideal situation for my family, and I can honestly say that this position has forced me to use every skill I have ever developed — marketing, business, law and leadership. It’s a win-win situation. Having confidence in my abilities is the primary reason why I am where I am today.”
According to Siegel, NASCAR itself is committed to diversity and including women and people of color in the sport. And he said the he can see his impact on the sport because he knows that people are watching what he’s doing.
“You’re under such a microscope, but it’s great to see the impact that you have, touching one life or two lives and an organization.”
Family Affair editor, Gil L. Robertson IV, writes in the preface of the book: “If America is ever to engage in a real conversation about race, all of its citizens must be mentally and spiritually prepared to take part.”
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