There is, of course, a lot wrong with Tagg’s statement. It’s factually dubious, for one thing, and its heart is in the wrong place, for another. Breonna Taylor wasn’t rioting, and she still ended up dead. Whom does Tagg want to shoot, and why? How about a world in which nobody’s allowed to shoot anybody?

Some folks will defend Tagg on the grounds that he’s entitled to have, and express, an opinion. No question: both are true, and let’s hope nobody’s trying to change that.

Others will say they prefer their horse racing without a side of politics, whatever those politics may be. But that’s no longer a tenable position.

Perhaps no other sport is as political as racing. The day before the post position draw, representatives of Churchill, Keeneland, and The Jockey Club, among other racing grandees, just about broke their arms patting themselves on the back for having convinced Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to support legislation federalizing racing’s medication rules. And, of course, virtually all racing states nowadays have purses “enhanced” by other forms of gambling – which is an indirect way of saying, “subsidized by the state.”

More to the point, silence in the face of the protests and the legitimate grievances they raise is not neutrality; it’s assent to the status quo, to avoiding reckoning with the issues of race that have bedeviled the country past and present.

Churchill Downs issued a statement September 3 acknowledging as much.

“We are not doing enough, quickly enough,” the company wrote. “That is true in our country, in our city and in our sport… We are committed to taking real, concrete action to address institutional roadblocks to progress and playing our part in advancing the changes America so desperately needs.”

The statement, if vague and not as strong as it should have been, is at least something. A start, perhaps.

A stronger statement could have included language specifically disavowing Mr. Tagg’s comments; “he’s a great horse trainer, but we don’t agree with what he said about the protests, and he doesn’t speak for us” shouldn’t be all that hard to say.

And a stronger statement might also have said that it’s time to leave “My Old Kentucky Home” for a better future. That song and “Maryland, My Maryland” may have sentimental value for some, but both are relics of a time when it was acceptable to romanticize slavery and the Confederate cause. Both are long past their sell-by dates.

Adding in these steps might have put a little meat on the bones of Churchill’s statement. Sure, these are merely symbolic – but symbols matter. That’s why we fight so hard over them.

Days before the Derby, The Jockey Club, which to my knowledge has said not a word about the protests or issues of race, announced the election of five new members: four White men and a White woman. The more things change…

The Stronach Group – err, 1/ST (the slash is silent) – often refers to horse racing as a “legacy sport,” which is a corporate way of saying “old and hidebound.”

The company is right, of course, and there is much racing needs to do to modernize. Leaving a romanticized past that never existed to begin living in 21^st century America – a multi-cultural, multi-racial society that’s becoming more multi all the time – might be a good place to start.