Cam Newton wasn’t in regular contact with white people until he was a college freshman.
The podcaster and former NFL player recounted when he first socialized with white teammates on a recent episode of expediTIously with Tip T.I. Harris. The 36-year-old, who hails from Atlanta, first attended the University of Florida, where he played for the Florida Gators and apparently rubbed shoulders with white football players for the first time in his life.
Newton began by saying he attended college early at seventeen years old and was “experiencing so much.”
“That was the first time I was around Caucasians on a regular basis that we were in some way, shape, or form equal,” Newton explained. “Being in Atlanta, on the south side of Atlanta, the only time you experience or you come into contact with a Caucasian is because that Caucasian is in a in a senior position, a teacher, a coach, a officer.”
“So now I'm walking around white people as teammates. Like I don't know how to interact with [them],” Newton continued, calling the experience “weird.”
“So, it be crazy to me when people be saying ‘This this person is racist’ or this that and the third,” Newton added. “I'm saying that person just don't know because when you really talk to people and you start to say, ‘When was the first time you came into contact on a regular basis with a person that
didn't match your gender, your race, your ethnicity, your religion, all in the melting pot,’ you will be shocked at what you find.”
The conversation shifted to T.I., who said some of his earliest interactions with white people were in middle school, and that they were often “the butt of jokes,” although he wouldn’t tease them.
Newton caught flack while playing as quarterback for the Carolina Panthers by saying that America was “beyond racism” in a 2016 interview with GQ.