Cam Newton is not the first black quarterback to lead his team to a Super Bowl. Cam Newton will not be the final black quarterback to lead his team to a Super Bowl.
Cam Newton is not breaking any media-made barriers or lighting any new trails. He is not a civil rights hero. He is a human being paid large sums of money to play a child’s game, and he is very, very good at it.
So why, then, does the Carolina Panthers’ quarterback have to talk about his skin colour during the biggest week of his career?
Because a reporter asked him about it. Because if that reporter didn’t, another reporter would have. The American sports media is nothing if not predictable.
Newton’s reaction thus far has been perfect, his tone spot on. In response to an especially determined reporter on Tuesday’s Super Bowl Media Day — an annual journalistic endeavour that every year proves to have little actual journalistic value — Newton did his best to keep his blackness off the table.
He could not have been clearer to the reporter: “It’s not an issue. It’s an issue to you. We shattered that a long time ago.”
That should be that. But of course, that isn’t that.
Sadly — and you will have to take this from a white dude from Alabama, one of the most racist areas of an often-racist nation — there will be living rooms rooting against Newton because he is the black counterpart to the white knight Peyton Manning.
And there will be plenty of thirsty writers begging for Newton to make a racially based quote so it does not look like it was actually the writer making race the issue.
America has plenty of men and women of colour who are willing and able to discuss the issue. Let Ta-Nehisi Coates educate you about the nation’s embarrassing racial history. Let Kendrick Lamar wax poetic on the struggles growing up in Compton. Johnetta Elzie, Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, Deray McKesson — all leaders of the black-American community, all authorities whose voices should be heard.
Newton absolutely has this stage, should he choose to take it. But that is his prerogative, and if he wants the focus to be on his game alone, we should respect that.
Race does not have to be an issue laid upon an unwilling sports figure. It is actually OK for games to just be games.
Newton is going to be the NFL’s MVP and possibly a Super Bowl champion. He is an entertaining and enigmatic personality. That is conversation-fodder enough, right? Unfortunately, for too many it’s not.
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