We Like Our Heroes Noble: Erasing The Wildly Ugly Racism Of Muhammad Ali
I've read all these tweets and pieces in recent days of how Muhammad Ali wasn't really a racist.
Actually, he was.
Jeff Jacoby writes:
When Ali was in his prime, the uninhibited "king of the world," he was no expounder of brotherhood and racial broadmindedness. On the contrary, he was an unabashed bigot and racial separatist and wasn't shy about saying so.
He was particularly against interracial marriage and even said so at a Klan rally. And by "against" it, that is, he thought interracial couples should be lynched.
In 1975, amid the frenzy over the impending "Thrilla in Manila," his third title fight with Joe Frazier, Ali argued vehemently in a Playboy interview that interracial couples ought to be lynched. "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman," he said. And it was the same for a white man making a pass at a black woman. "We'll kill anybody who tries to mess around with our women." But suppose the black woman wanted to be with the white man, the interviewer asked. "Then she dies," Ali answered. "Kill her too."Ali was contemptuous of black boxers, such as Frazier or Floyd Patterson, who didn't share his racist outlook. His insults were often explicitly racial. He smeared Frazier as an "Uncle Tom" and a "gorilla" whose inferiority fueled stereotypes of black men as "ignorant, stupid, ugly, and smelly."
Ali was many fine things, but a champion of civil rights wasn't among them. Martin Luther King at one point called him "a champion of segregation." If later in life Ali abandoned his racist extremism, that is to his credit. It doesn't, however, make him an exemplar of brotherhood and tolerance.
It feels good to have heroes, but it's better if they're actually deserving of our respect.
I didn't know this about Muhammad Ali, but now that I do, I see him as a guy who was really great at a sport but whose championing of truly ugly and horrible thinking was, as Jacoby calls it, "grotesque" and an example of exactly how not to be.
via @Mark_J_Perry
Remind me: how many times did he get punched in the headbone?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 8, 2016 9:18 AM
Seventy percent too harsh. He was still a kid when all this was happening to him. The weaknesses in his life were always plain for everyone to see, and he certainly had a clear view of the weaknesses of a lot of people. I'm not sure he was actually all that bright, per se... Perhaps he presumed that that was how it's done.
He beat guys up: Maybe you ask too much of his job description, as America herself did.
Crid at June 8, 2016 9:18 AM
Ali was a great champion who could be used by one and all to highlight their causes, whether equality (see? we're just as good as you), supremacy (see? we're better than you), pacifism (see? America's greatest rejects the Vietnam quagmire), racism (see? a world-class black man rejects miscegenation), and probably any other ideological silliness that could be taped to his back like a "Kick Me" sign in high school.
I always liked the guy but it was obvious that compared to other black public figures (Malcolm X comes to mind) he wasn't the go-to guy for current thinking on race relations.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 8, 2016 9:43 AM
☑ Goggles June 8, 2016 9:43 AM
Crid at June 8, 2016 10:23 AM
I'll admit I was shocked when I opened the paper earlier and read Jacoby's column. (Even though I HAD heard about Ali's separatism on the PBS News Hour, earlier.)
But I'd say the commentators make very good points too. (There are more than 100 comments by now.)
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no-name-06/07/16 04:21 PM
This guy who so admires william buckley who advocated that segregationists resist the law and preached that they were right to deny afro-americans the right to an education or to vote, criticizes an Afro-American who reacts to living in a racist, segregationist society by adopting separatism.
this guy, who supports the israeli regime's imposition of apartheid on Palestinians, who considers netenyahu soft on palestinians, calls ali indecent and grotesque.
this guy who admires Reagan, the prez who kicked off a presidential campaign in Philadelphia, MS because it is a national symbol of KKK lynchings, attacks ali as a bigot.
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CMHopkins06/07/16 04:58 PM
Jeff, Walk a mile in his shoes. In 1968 he was banned from boxing, primarily because he had converted to Islam. Proof, how many other athletes in other sports had to give up their prime to serve during the Vietnam war? Not many. He grew up not being allowed to vote, not being allowed to eat in restaurants, stay in hotels because of the color of his skin. Resentful and angry, he should have been far more than he showed. Then that government, who treated him as a second class citizen, wanted him to go fight a war to preserve the way of life. To preserve segregation and bigotry. I wouldn't have gone either.
That said, he evolved and do some homework, long before he had Parkinsons, he became a global ambassador, loved worldwide. But you feel the need to attack him right after his death. Really beneath you.
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no-name-06/08/16 08:40 AM
...as the supreme court pointed out, he didn't break the law. it was the government that broke the law by not granting him conscientious objector status and by attempting to imprison him for invoking his right to CO status.
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whippersnapper06/08/16 09:09 AM
Exactly. The government only allows you to beg out of going to war if you believe really really really strongly in an imaginary invisible sky fairy that doesn't want you to kill people. If you yourself don't want to kill people for moral reasons, you're screwed. You need the magic god to rubber stamp your refusal or off to prison you go.
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user_109640306/08/16 12:43 AM
Jacoby has mistaken part of the story as the whole. For a period, Ali was a racial separatist, which is no great surprise considering America's racial history. But like Malcolm X he grew out of that and became a generous humanist and anti-racist. That's the whole story. If Jacoby were to be judged by his worst words and worst moments, it would not be impressive, and it would not be fair to him. He has not been fair to Ali.
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Jeanne35706/08/16 08:19 AM
If we were all called to answer for beliefs held in our younger days we'd all be a topic of a Jacoby hit piece. I thought Ali was a phony, a draft dodger who hid behind his newfound religion to avoid doing his duty. How wrong I was. He took his punishment and went on to become a man who deserves all the accolades he is getting.
That being said, Jacoby shows his pettiness. He couldn't have waited until Ali was in the ground before he attacked him?
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no-name-06/08/16 08:59 AM
...in fact many, many "left wing" people have spoken about George Wallace's "context", that he bragged about adopting a politics of racism and inflicting racist violence on afro-americans for political reasons after he lost his first election because he DIDN'T run as a racist. and when Wallace decided to reject his racist past when he was dying, many, many "left wing" people, including john lewis, the former chair of the extremely left wing SNCC met with him and accepted his apologies.
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Giermund06/08/16 08:15 AM
Let's see Jacoby do a piece on the various aspects and causes of the Black Separatist movement within the context of the turbulent 60s. The advancement of civil rights was not a smooth linear progression. There are reasons Ali made his public statements and Jacoby doesn't mention them. Of course that wouldn't make such an incendiary column. I'll bet Jacoby would have been standing against his hero Bill Buckley when Bill agreed with Ali. Yeah right.
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lordchaucer06/08/16 10:10 AM
You knew this column was coming...
It was simply a matter of time...
I agree with Jacoby once in a while but he has no idea about what it must have been like to live as a minority in the "good old days." Many people cannot ever seem to see things from the perspective of others.
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LiberatingStory06/08/16 11:26 AM
Yes, Ali's views in 1968 on race were separatist and abhorrent. Jeff, show us a source that tells your readers what Ali thought about race in 2016. Oh, you neglected to include this far more recent quote from Ali: "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." When are you going to admit your views on same sex marriage are outdated?
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lenona at June 8, 2016 10:27 AM
I will point out in the material that Lenona quoted above that the commenter "no-name" has an awful lot of his facts wrong. For one, Wallace did not repent racism "as he was dying"; he did it as he was running for the Alabama governorship in 1982, which he won with the support of the Birmingham black and leftist community, among others. But that's a side point. I think the big point is the one Gog knocked out of the park. Ali really wasn't that into politics. He was into self-promotion, an area where he was gifted, and he was happy to grab on to almost any political position that would bring him publicity. He had the misfortune of arriving on the boxing scene as the sport was beginning to deteriorate, and he probably kept it going longer than it deserved to. (Even though Ali himself did some things that contributed to the deterioration. Watching any video of the later fights where he used the "rope-a-dope" tactic is just brutal now. You watch those and you cringe and you wonder what the hell he was thinking.)
Cousin Dave at June 8, 2016 11:55 AM
Reminds me of the late intellectual curmudgeon Paul Fussell, who lived into his 80s, and, thirty years ago, bluntly implied that men (and women too, I would think) have every right NOT to be interested in sports without being labelled snobbish or anti-male. Obviously, one benefit of not being involved that way is, your brains get a much better shot at living and flourishing in general - as his did.
lenona at June 8, 2016 12:07 PM
The problem with heroes is that we want them to be heroic in all ways, to be not just heroic or great but an angel too. But few are. Churchill was great at standing up to Germany, but had many flaws (drank too much, rude,...). Steve Jobs was great and terribly flawed: almost destroyed his own company, stole ideas left and right, sued other companies for no reason. No heroes are perfect but that doesn't mean we can't admire them for what they did accomplish.
I personally don't buy the claim that sports figures should be "role models". Great if they are, but not a job requirement.
Craig Loehle at June 8, 2016 12:15 PM
He scored a 78 on his Army IQ test. Which may not say much as he could have tanked the score to avoid the draft. Not to mention that the IQ test was controversial at the time for its use of complex words and concepts that many who grew up poor did not understand and on which they were never educated.
Ali was originally classified 1-Y: "Not qualified under current standards for service in the armed forces." Two years later, as the war continued to escalate, the Army lowered its minimum score for service, and Ali was reclassified 1-A: "Fit for Service."
If the 78 is genuine, it may also explain his outspoken opposition to being drafted. It's possible that his opposition was motivated, at least in part, by the direct-to-the-jungle job assignment awaiting someone with his low test scores. No one wants to die anonymously in a jungle meat grinder when there's a better option out there; and Ali had a better option.
Although it's also possible there was a PR role awaiting him and he, like Elvis and Al Gore, Jr. would have sat out his term of service in a semi-safe spot with the occasional publicity photo to show that even stars get drafted. That Ali refused the draft because he genuinely opposed the war and/or the country waging it.
He was a more complex and intelligent man than an IQ of 78 would indicate.
Conan the Grammarian at June 8, 2016 12:32 PM
My recollection is that he was a member of the Nation of Islam.
Bill O Rights at June 8, 2016 12:54 PM
The majority of the world currently shares his views on race mixing.
Americans just live in a bubble.
ppen at June 8, 2016 2:21 PM
"Americans just live in a bubble"
Speaking of which, here's a black columnist upset because black judges might lose their elections and be replaced by - gasp! - a different minority.
Oh, race card. You are the Joker in the deck of American life.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 8, 2016 5:56 PM
I dunno, I kinda though this post had a screechy SJW vibe to it. Muhammad Ali had beliefs which are non-polite and unsustainable in an inclusive framework of social kindness! Well, yeah... That's one of the ways he got famous. It didn't make him especially interesting if you had your own head straight about anything he ever said (and didn't like boxing anyway). He was famous for a lot of things that weren't exactly the Salk vaccine or the Heimlich maneuver... It's a little late in the the day to get all pissy about him. Across a lifetime, I've essentially ignored him, and it worked out great for us both. With zero investment, I know as much about a lot of vapid celebrities... That's why they're celebrities. Nobody really listen's to Cher's thoughts about mixed marriages, right?
Crid at June 8, 2016 10:39 PM
> Americans just live in a bubble.
A bubble of decency, patience, and modernity.
Never let it be said that the rest of the world has instruction to offer on such matters.
Over my lifetime, the United States has welcomed and integrated more immigrants than all the other nations (and belief systems) of the world put together... And brought them up to speed.
Slowing down to meet them in the middle is not the way to go here.
Crid at June 9, 2016 1:07 AM
"No heroes are perfect but that doesn't mean we can't admire them for what they did accomplish."
And yet, popular culture since the '70s has been eager to embrace anti-heroes, who are defined by their flaws. For that audience, the end justifies the means.
Cousin Dave at June 9, 2016 7:33 AM
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