Bill Romanowski said Monday he was sorry for an earlier Twitter post calling Cam Newton "boy," and said it meant the Carolina Panthers quarterback acted childish during a post-game Super Bowl news conference on Sunday.
Newton briefly appeared at the Super Bowl 50 news conference where he gave short answers and eventually walked out on the media, said the
San Francisco Chronicle. The Panthers lost to the Denver Broncos 24-10 for the NFL title.
ESPN's Stephen A. Smith also chided Newton.
Newton's departure led Romanowski, a former NFL linebacker with the Broncos and several other teams, to tweet: "You will never last a minute in the NFL with that attitude. The world doesn't revolve around you, boy."
The tweet was later deleted, according the Chronicle, after Romanowski was criticized for it.
Romanowski explained himself in two following Twitter posts.
Black activist Shaun King charged Monday in the
New York Daily News that he believed Romanowski used the term "boy" racially, leaning on historical references.
"Racist white men, for hundreds of years, have found power in calling grown black men 'boy,'" said King. "Age has nothing to do with it. Throughout history, black men who were decades older than white men have been called 'boy' by them. It's meant to belittle and dehumanize. It has deep roots stemming from slavery, all the way through Jim Crow, and, as we now see, into modern America."
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