Race before the Face
It’s easy to forget as Newton wraps up his record-breaking rookie season, but less than a year ago several NFL draft experts looked past his obvious credentials — 14-0 record as a starter at Auburn, 2,854 passing yards with 30 touchdowns — to decide that he wasn’t even the best quarterback available. While Mel Kiper looked at Newton and saw Akili Smith 2.0, others labeled Blaine Gabbert the true cream of last year’s crop of quarterbacks. And Pro Football Weekly‘s Nolan Nawrocki? He said Newton’s glaringly tangible assets didn’t outweigh a laundry list of “intangible” liabilities.
Many of us, including NFL Hall of Famer and Newton mentor Warren Moon, saw strong racial overtones in the knee-jerk comparison of Newton to first-round busts like Smith and JaMarcus Russell. But in a cover story for the latest issue of ESPN Magazine, Newton himself says racism isn’t to blame for the inability of numerous scouts and sportswriters to recognize his potential. “But I can’t sit up here and look at it like, oh man, my critics are racist,” Newton says. “I blame JaMarcus Russell and to some degree Vince Young. If you have the opportunity to make that kind of money doing something you love to do, why would you screw it up? I’m trying to be a trailblazer. If Baylor’s Robert Griffin decides to come out, I want people to say ‘He can be the next Cam Newton’ instead of ‘He’s gonna be the next JaMarcus Russell.’” Again, if Newton is trying to show us that his will to succeed is stronger than racism I’ll grant that his heart is in the right place. But behind his tortured logic lies an unavoidable truth: In denying the role racism played in last year’s criticism Newton in fact confirms how profoundly racism has shaped people’s perception of him, and how he perceives himself.
Otherwise, why blame Russell and Young for the failures of scouts and sportswriters to judge Newton objectively? After all, it’s not like Newton said “I blame myself because bad decisions I made at Florida might have tainted people’s opinions of me.” He said, “I blame JaMarcus Russell and…Vince Young,” as if their failure to fulfill their NFL potential somehow reflects on him. Which it does, if you’re racist (and there’s still plenty of racism to go around in 21st-century sports media).