Cam Newton made a mistake. Part of the job is to absorb the needling. No matter how badly your body is beaten and your ego bruised, the job description doesn’t list contingencies. The Super Bowl Loser heard something from someone he didn’t like and, deciding he’d had enough for the day, stood up and walked out.

In context the offense was small. It wasn’t an outright refusal to show and it wasn’t an infamous ‘I’m just here so I won’t get fined’ performance. It was short but not contentious, he was annoyed but not callous. However, the premature end to Cam Newton’s suffering seemed to bother a lot of people a lot more than it should.

The act was perceived as offensive, a sign of immaturity, and the revealing of a brazen egomaniac not developed enough to bare the taste of his comeuppance. How dare he, this was their moment. They didn’t just want to see him squirm, for reasons as twisted as it suggests — they needed to. So those who wanted to be offended by his exit, were; and those who wanted to lord over it, did. High on the validation of their disdain, dusty fans sportswriters tapped their veins in search of ways to feel a broken Cam Newton as deeply as they could.

People like Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post began her pre-Super Bowl flinging of word darts with some arranged as follows, “It would be a little easier to admire Cam Newton if he wasn’t so relentlessly admiring of his admirable self.” Meanwhile, after the Super Bowl, on the sports media conglomerate, Tumblr, Jason Whitlock wrote, “The Broncos humbled Newton and instead of standing before the cameras like a grown-ass man, Newton sulked and then abruptly walked away.”

Wanting to see Cam broken, disheveled, and low is discomforting enough. Feeling entitled to it is as sinister as it is telling.

Cam Newton was good — no, great — throughout 89% of the NFL season, but he wasn’t so in the Super Bowl. That had more to do with Von Miller and Demarcus Ware than karmic interference. Still, not a dab was done by #1. That’s sport, and, as much as Roger Goodall wants to #BanDefense, a dynamic one still wins more top-tier tilts than it loses. Cam was beaten, completely. The Regular Season MVP was 18-for-41 with an interception and two lost fumbles, amassing a QB rating of 55.4 — his lowest of the season — in the biggest game of his life. In the moments after, Cam was human.

The man who invokes a transformation into Superman by placing his fists on his chest, slowly pulling them apart while powerfully screaming at the sky, was hiding. Hoodie on hood up without a drop of rain on the local doppler radar, he was anything but Super. Losing hurts. Selectively, we even empathize with it. Media will ask questions in a tone similar to one used to decline a breath mint at a funeral. Fan reaction varies most, but even it’s more frequently somber than it is willing to align itself with feigned offense at press conference “disrespect”.

So naturally, vitriolic responses were about as discrete as a drunk person’s bathroom announcement.

My good friend Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun Times wrote, “Sunday’s postgame performance made him look like someone who handles success well and failure like a petulant child.” And Michael Powell of The New York Times came from the top-rope with this flying elbow, “Newton, 26, an ebullient, intelligent, gifted quarterback, decided to act in his moment of truth like a 13-year-old.” As if the true test of Cam Newton’s character was answering questions, rather than him—after an otherworldy beating at the hands of the Broncos defense—doing the thing a 33-year-old Peyton Manning wanted no part of as a Super Bowl losing quarterback in 2010.

Confident black athletes who assume game-altering responsibilities are deemed egotistical, brash, and immature.

These “divas” needing to learn their lessons before being worthy of accolades is a journalism trick as old as the collective age of all who use it. This shtick, sadly, crosses sport and geography. Zito Madu wrote a defense of Neymar Jr’s flamboyant style; something which really shouldn’t require defending, except that mixed-race Brazilians are also the target of ‘monkey’ chants and other racial abuses. Allen Iverson was tirelessly ridiculed for his attitude and immaturity. And now Dabbin’ Cam Newton was feeling things so many needed him to feel. Not for his growth, but their lustful scorn.

Being wholly human means being flawed. Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, and Peyton Manning weren’t required to attain a media-manufactured level of worthiness via subservience before karma, fans, and sportswriters all agreed to roundly celebrate them. Newton is no more conceited than Tom Brady, far less discomforting than Ben Roethlisberger, and no more flawed than his Super Bowl counterpart Peyton Manning (ask the guy who had goons sent to his home or the woman whose face he sat his naked ass on while at the University of Tennessee about Peyton’s mischievousness).

In fact, the biggest difference between all of the aforementioned and Cam Newton isn’t that they’ve won Super Bowls and he hasn’t, it’s that when they failed it wasn’t labeled a result of needing to “grow the f**k up.”

Newton could have handled it differently and, in a fairer world, he should have.

But is it possible for Cam, or any other black athlete in a position of responsibility, to just be who/what he/she is; worthy of both criticism and praise, without the former being held ransom until the latter is sufficiently stifled to appease jaundiced sensibilities?

Paternalism of confident black athletes robs them of the space required to grow.

Part of growth is succeeding, more of it is failing. Without the room to fail understandably, the burden of perfection works alongside the law of averages to ensure the bigot’s enjoyment of failure is eternally well-fed. Cam didn’t suffer in the game because he’s been found out as a fraudulent talent, and the outcome, on that night, wouldn’t have been any different had Cam displayed the humility some demanded.

The freedom to make mistakes is important. Nuance and attention need to be afforded to the individual. Labels, such as ‘diva’, strip humanity and create a dumpster in which people can be discarded. He’ll never get it, they’ll shout. Kid has a lot of growing up to do, they’ll say dismissively. And he’s forgotten, lost in a sea of criticism and critique that would break and bury any of us.

But failure — even on that bright a stage, even with so many watching, and yes even with Superman being not all that super — doesn’t validate dehumanization. Cam Newton’s opponent was the Denver Broncos. He congratulated them. The postgame opponent of some fans and media members was Cam Newton. He chose not to play their game. So?