Cam Newton And His Unapologetic Blackness Is Right On Time [VIDEO]

This has been an extraordinary Black History Month so far. I can’t remember – and as a Black journalist, I’ve been paying attention for over a decade – a time when the month was so rich.

Instead of the certainly much deserved reverence of Those Who Have Come Before who in many cases died long before they could enjoy the appreciation, we have a host of young Black people making their own history this month. There was a triumphant Serena Williams who fell short of a victory but made it to her 21^st Grand Slam final at age 34.

There Black Lives Matters activist Deray McKesson running for mayor of Baltimore. There is the almost universal outrage over the water crisis in Flint, an American city that is 60% Black being poisoned by the very people trusted to look out for their interests.

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There is Beyoncè, dropping one of the Blackest videos of all time referencing Black Southern culture, Black queer culture, the natural hair movement, the Black Lives matter movement, and Hurricane Katrina and then “guest”performing at the Super Bowl with Coldplay and Bruno Mars while paying homage to The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and Malcolm X. And let’s not forget Sophina DeJesus, a Black/Latina gymnast at UCLA hitting four Black dance moves while pulling down a top score in floor exercise.

And then there is Cam Newton. The recent loser, along with the Carolina Panthers, of Super Bowl 50, a horribly called game with an officiating crew that has a 6-0 history of wins with the Denver Broncos. It was an NFL narrative for the ages, as NFL gunslinger “Sheriff” Peyton Manning, the product of his former NFL quarterback father’s football factory that includes brother Eli, winning a globally televised battle against an uppity Black challenger, riding off into the sunset before anyone can question him further about HGH allegations.

Newton’s O-line let him down hard as a swarming Denver defense, the league’s #1, did to him what they did to Tom Brady in the AFC Championship game and took him completely out of the game.

And after dabbing, celebrating and handing out game footballs to kids like they were Halloween candy, the man with the NFL’s brightest smile failed to shine under its brightest lights. In the post-game conference, Newton appeared not in a triumphant swagalicious outfit like the flamboyant Versace leopard and gold and black pants he’d worn off the plane from the Carolinas, but a plain black Panthers hoodie, hood up.

He spent seven minutes answering the usual inane questions about the loss and in a rare departure from politically correct sports speak said in not so many words he was frustrated, disappointed and disheartened by the loss. Then, after hearing the crowing from a Broncos player inexplicably answering questions within his earshot, he walked out.

The mainstream sports world ran with the Black quarterback narrative for the two weeks leading up to the game, as though Russell Wilson, Doug Williams, Colin Kaepernick, Steve McNair and Donovan McNabb, all who preceded Newton as Black Super Bowl starting quarterbacks, were Black by accident and Newton was the first to achieve the distinction.

They ran with it until Newton’s joy, present all season, seemed to drain with each question, implied criticism, and inane sniping at how ‘polarizing’ he was, until it abandoned him completely in the biggest game of his life, along with the once dominating but suddenly MIA Panthers O-line and the NFL officiating crew’s ability to discern a complete catch.

Newton’s subdued, or sullen, press conference, depending on where you stood, inflamed the mainstream sports media and the virulent racists on Twitter and social media who took it as the sign they’d been looking for that Newton’s reputation as a loser/crybaby/thug/nigger was now set in stone. The satisfaction was made viral by people as meaningless as Redneck #2341 on Twitter and IG and former NFL great Boomer Esiason who whined about Newton’s sportsmanship, conveniently forgetting that Manning once walked off the field at Super Bowl XLIV ignoring winning QB Drew Brees and by former NFL enforcer Bill Romanowski (sued by a former teammate for shattering his eye socket in a fight) calling Newton a ‘boy’ on Twitter before deleting the post after Twitter, both Black and white, handed him his ass.

It was generally conceded that this moment would eventually deliver a chastened Newton apologizing for his behavior and promising to be a better man and NFL player and a good boy, and sorry if he got out of line, he won’t do it again.

But this is where Newton, Super Bowl 50 loser to the world, earned his true Superman stripes, at least to his supporters in the Black (and to be fair, the Panther Nation as well) community. He said “Aww, hell naaaaah,” to any of that. He was interviewed again today by reporters in the Panthers locker room and he said “I am who I am and I ain’t sorry for shit.”

OK, I’m paraphrasing. He didn’t curse. But he basically told the room, the overall sports media, his fans, his haters and everyone else, that the Cam Newton you came to whip isn’t bending over for the lash. In a six-minute Q&A session, his non-apology recalled the most heroically defiant moments of Black athletes like boxer Jack Johnson, NFL player Jim Brown and of course Muhammad Ali, now the most beloved former athlete in the universe.

When reporters asked him about why he didn’t recover a now controversial fumble, (footage shows a hesitant Newton not throwing himself on the ball) he answered honestly. He said he thought about the position his leg would have been in had he dropped on the ball. When that led to a question about how that play and the loss impacted his teammates felt about him, they literally SANG his praises. (Watch the video above if you don’t believe me.)

For many mainstream sports journalists, (who are essentially a fraternity of white males who have never played NFL football, white males who have and a smaller crew of Black men who are some of the former and some of the latter) Newton is difficult to fit into an already constructed Black male athlete box. He is not like Russell Wilson, a likeable guy to be sure, but one that doesn’t court controversy and writes pandering tributes to Peyton Manning. Other Black quarterbacks from Williams to Randall Cunningham to Donovan McNabb to Michael Vick to Warren Moon, a Newton advisor, either didn’t have the personality or the luxury to be as exuberant or as unafraid as Newton is.

The fact that he played a successful NFL season with unrestrained joy is only controversial to those who are used to seeing Black male athletes in public who hide that exuberance behind corporate restraint, defensiveness, defiance, eccentricity or anger. Newton must have greatly shaken their paradigm. The implied constraints on Black male emotion restrict them from being able to express a full range of them the public eye. The Jordan crying face meme is an example. As funny as it is, it diminishes the very real and complex emotions Jordan must have felt at his 2009 Hall of Fame induction, which is where it comes from.

Newton, like the Mannings and the Williams sisters, is from a family where a strong and present father provided a bar for achievement. Archie Manning was himself a quarterback, though he never played on a winning team. His NFL legacy has been assured through his sons, both now with 2 Lombard trophies apiece.

Newton’s father Cecil and his mother Jackie can boast of two sons making the NFL, although Newton’s older brother Cecil, Jr., has not has as successful a career. Their younger brother Caylin, a high school quarterback, is on his way to being at least an NFL prospect. Newton’s intact, Christian family deserves the same reverence the Manning’s enjoy for raising sons into men who should be respected for their character and athletic abilities on the national stage. But has that happened?

Acknowledged or not, those family bonds have created an educated, faith-based, unapologetic Black man. That is why some people want to reduce him to a nigger and a thug because they fear a Black man who won’t be cowed and won’t kowtow. (I always wonder how avowed racists manage to still watch the NFL, which wouldn’t exist without Black players, who take the brunt of its now documented destruction of Black, and white, bodies.)

Cam’s press conference today will likely not follow him like the one that generated the criticism in the first place. For those who already hate him, he just added a few more reasons. Certainly, Cam has his white supporters and diehard fans as well. And there are plenty of little white kids who watch this superstar superhero of a man and with awe and reverence – until they grow up to become sports reporters, apparently.

But for the young Black men watching him, many of whom don’t have the father that Cam does, many of whom are used to their favorite athletes asking them to buy shoes and jerseys but not speak up about the racism and poverty that impact them, some of which those very athletes know firsthand, or that hide their political leanings or activism behind smoothly crafted corporate facades to shill more products instead of reaching out to the youth or neighborhoods that sustain their careers, Cam IS a superhero. He’s a revelation. He’s a Black man who physically and figuratively stands tall. And like many superheroes, he will be tried. But he’s unbreakable.

As N.W.A. once said about their music:  ‘You have witnessed the strength of street knowledge.” Well, now America, you have witnessed the strength of a Black man who stands up for himself, his right to his emotions and his will to win. You’ll just have to deal with it.

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