Cam Newton did an interview with GQ magazine and, well, it’s interesting. It starts off like any other run-of-the-mill sports story in which the subject talks about the importance of winning. Then he hits on the topics of concussions in the NFL and race in America, which apparently aren’t a big deal.
There’s an exchange between writer Zach Baron and Newton that reads so oddly that each person had to misunderstand the other, like when two people think they are talking about the same thing when they are not. Chosen is the name of Cam’s son.
What about the parents who won’t let their kids play football anymore? Would you let Chosen play?
“Of course. Why wouldn’t they let them play football?”
I’m incredulous that he’s so incredulous.
Concussions. Brain damage.
“But they don’t talk about the joy it brings! Super Bowl Sunday trumps every TV rating known to man.”
It’s weird, right? Exclamation pointing a response to a question about his son potentially having brain damage with joy and Super Bowl ratings makes no sense to me. Was the statement phrased differently than what we see in the text? Did Cam hear it wrong because he was trying on a pair of $3,000 leopard-spotted leather pants at the time?
Then there was the part about race, in which Cam gave another strange answer.
In January, right before the Super Bowl, you said: “I’m an African-American quarterback that may scare a lot of people because they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to.”
“I don’t want this to be about race, because it’s not. It’s not. Like, we’re beyond that. As a nation.”
There is evidence that contradicts the notion we are beyond race in this country. For example, according to Real Clear Politics, about 40 percent of Americans want to vote for Donald Trump, who has accepted (or at least, hasn’t condemned) an endorsement from former Klan leader David Duke.
America has a population of about 240 million people when only those older than 18, the voting age, are counted. Forty percent of 240 million is 96 million. Let’s imagine half of Trump voters are racist. That’s about 48 million racist people in the United States today. Slice it in half again and it’s still 24 million people.
Of the people that get mad online or write a letter to the editor whenever Cam does his Superman celebration or gives a ball to a kid after scoring a touchdown, how many come from that 24 million? All? Just about all?
In the state in which Cam plays football, we’re not past gay and transgender issues, so I’m going to make the intuitive leap that we’re not past race, either.
