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NANCY ARMOUR
Aaron Rodgers

Armour: The real reason behind criticism of Cam Newton

Nancy Armour
USA TODAY Sports

The quarterback runs into the end zone, spikes the football and does his patented touchdown celebration. You know, the one we see over and over on replays and commercials — even YouTube videos, because people love to imitate it.

Cam Newton was right when he said Wednesday he 'may scare a lot of people because they haven’t seen nothing that they can compare me to.'

And yet Aaron Rodgers doesn't get called a showboat.

Surprised, aren’t you? It sounded a lot like Cam Newton, and, depending upon how you feel about him, you maybe rolled your eyes or gritted your teeth at the thought of him dabbing and dancing, enjoying himself on the field.

But why?

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Rodgers, J.J. Watt, Johnny Manziel, Chris Long, every member of the Green Bay Packers who still has the energy to hoist themselves into the stands after scoring — I could go on and on. They all draw attention to themselves after making big plays, yet it’s Newton who is bringing about the ruin of sportsmanship and civilization.

If we’re brutally honest with ourselves, the criticism of Newton comes from somewhere ugly and mean, based more on prejudice than a wish for proper decorum.

"It’s almost impossible to prove because you’re never going to get someone to admit it. It’s very difficult to get someone to say, 'I don’t like him because he’s black,' " said James Rada, an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College who has studied how black and white athletes are described in broadcast media.

"But when the things they’re critiquing fall in with preconceived stereotypes, then you do have to ask the question."

Newton critics will surely protest. After all, few people would consider themselves racists, let alone willingly admit that. Even the suggestion of intolerance was off-limits until Donald Trump started advocating it on a daily basis.

That’s the real danger of bias and bigotry, however. They are deep-seated, embedded so far down in our consciousness we don’t even realize they’re there.

Until someone like Newton comes along to expose them.

"It’s the 'illusory correlation' theory. When you have a minority or somebody that stands out, you tend to make correlations that are usually wrong ... because it fits in with our typical stereotypes," said Cynthia Frisby, an associate professor of communications at Missouri who has studied stereotyping of black athletes.

"So if you already think blacks are showy or entertainers and then we see Cam dancing, we think that" he’s showing off, Frisby said. "Whereas I can excuse the white player because that doesn’t stand out."

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Robert Livingston, a lecturer on public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, examined this idea in a 2012 study called The Hubris Penalty: Biased Responses to "Celebration" Displays of Black Football Players.

Livingston and Erika V. Hall found that, despite black players making up 65% of the NFL in 2010-11, they received 91% of the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties called after touchdowns that year.

The study further found that when white and black players were put in the same, fictitious scenarios of celebrating after a touchdown, they were viewed as equally arrogant.

But black players were punished for their arrogance or thought less of because of it.

"(Minorities) are expected to do their jobs quietly, without making a fuss," Livingston said in an email.

Compounding the prejudice is that Newton plays quarterback, Livingston said, a position that until 25 years ago belonged almost exclusively to white players.

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"This challenges whites’ perceptions that they are and should be in charge," Livingston wrote. "These perceptions and feelings often operate at an implicit or subconscious level. However, it is the black player who ends up getting blamed, rather than whites’ implicit bias.

"What is clear, however, both in our data and in many real-world scenarios, is that it’s perfectly fine for white males to show a lack of humility," Livingston added. "People not only tolerate it, they often celebrate it."

In other words, Aaron Rodgers can do his championship belt dance and get a national ad campaign out of it, but God forbid Cam Newton dance a little.

Never mind that Newton is, by all accounts, as solid a role model as Rodgers. The 26-year-old freely acknowledges instances of immaturity in college and even his first few seasons in the NFL. But he has grown up, and has never had even the slightest hint of off-the-field trouble in Carolina.

He fulfilled a promise to his mother by earning his sociology degree from Auburn last spring, and draws praise for his work with kids and charities in and around Charlotte.

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And he is more than giving the Panthers their money’s worth. After going an NFL-best 15-1 in the regular season, Newton has the Panthers in the Super Bowl for only the second time in franchise history.

But that’s not good enough for some people and, sadly, might never be.

"I’ve said this since day one: 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," Newton said Wednesday.

"I’m doing exactly what I want to do, how I want to do it and when I look in the mirror, it’s me," Newton added. "Nobody changed me, nobody made me act this certain type of way and I’m true to my roots. It feels great but yet, people are going to say whatever they want to say."

Say it they have, often with self-righteous indignation. But what the critics don’t realize is that their disdain says more about them than it does about Newton.

And what it says isn’t very nice at all.

Follow columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.

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