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.
Like BlackAmericaWeb.com on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
Cam Newton And His Unapologetic Blackness Is Right On Time [VIDEO] was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
