It’s no surprise that Warren Moon’s claim of racial bias against Cam Newton got a lot of attention.
There is a news vacuum in the NFL right now, and race is always going to be a hot button topic. (When race isn’t a controversial topic, then we’ll know serious progress has been made.)
Moon has taken his share of criticism for the comments, but didn’t back down when addressing the issue Friday morning on Twitter.
“4 those of u that don’t like my opinions, it’s 2 bad u feel that way,” Moon wrote. “I answered the questions asked and know what I said. Unless u have been a black QB, u have no idea! #CamNewton”
Are we past race when discussing athletes or, well, anything? Of course not. The amount of disturbing comments we have deleted on PFT over the years is a good reminder.
(Sometimes I think that the word “thug” has replaced other pejoratives for folks with deap-seated emotions that want to come out.)
On the other hand, I agree with Florio’s take on Newton. Could race be a part of the Newton criticism? Sure. In this case, however, the majority of professional criticism leveled at Newton does not seem abnormal for a high profile quarterback with a pair of famous scandals in his past. We’ve seen very similar criticism at quarterbacks leveled over the last few years.
You can argue we dissect the personality traits of quarterbacks too much publicly in general.
In Newton’s case, the discussion seems to say more about a culture obsessed with football than it does race.