This is a tricky topic because like most things in life there are a lot of shades of gray to it.
Before I get to those gray areas here is what the Yankees told their players at start of Spring Training.
During the Yankees’ media training, the Super Bowl is being used to portray the right and wrong way to act. Part of a video shown to pitchers and catchers compares how Cam Newton handled his Super Bowl loss to the way Russell Wilson dealt with his defeat the previous year.
Let’s start with the less complicated of the two issues. If I had a kid competing in sports and I was giving an example on how to handle a loss, I’d give the Russell Wilson example. There are 100s of examples of athletes who lose and handle it better than Cam Newton did. It doesn’t mean the loss hurt any less, but they acted like professionals, they didn’t pout and sulk.
Cam said that is how he is going to handle things and he is a poor loser. At least he is honest, but that isn’t how I’d want a kid to handle losses. So, in that vein it makes sense that the Yankees would compare to the two as an example.
The much deeper complex issue and something I want to believe the Yankees probably didn’t think about is how black men are categorized by society.
The comfortable black man vs. the black man that makes them uncomfortable. Once again, I want to hope the Yankees just used them as an example because one pouted and the other didn’t.
A lot of people will see it though as Russell Wilson is the safe black guy you should aspire to be and Cam Newton is the bad black guy you shouldn’t try to emulate.
From reporting on both, they seem to be fairly decent guys. They are both black and while it is ok to disagree how one handles himself over the other, be very careful in making sure the reason you disagree isn’t because of their skin tone.