For Americans - how much is the view on Ali political?

Definitely are important points.....Yeah, we can´t simply take those things literally.

Like I said, I think Ali was important for USA (not so much like some of his fans say IMHO, but anyway..), and when he was a bit older he was a good man...
But I dislike when people talk about Dempsey like if he was a racist....he was clearly against the racism, segregation and he spoke against it (in those days !)
I understand what you said...he was a bit naive, manipulable...it´s comprehensible, but at the end of the day being used like that removes a bit the aura of a type of revolutionary that some have of him....

 

I believe this happened about the same time he was calling Frazier an 'uncle Tom' for 'working for the enemy'. About the 'evil' stuff, I'm not so sure what was the context.

Here are some more quotes of him, and they're not just words taken out of a context:

So, are we going to take the actions of some people and use them against the entire white race? How is that fair? White men have been used as slaves too! Especially him, as a muslim, has no right to blame all of it on white people.

About Dempsey being a racist, I still don't know what to believe. I heard he had black sparring partners, that he even managed a black boxers, and that the papers for his fight with Wills were signed by both of them even though it didn't actually happen after all for different reasons.

 

These aren't just words taken out of contexts, and I believe it's pretty clear what Clay was trying to say. He was actually talking about building their own country to live in. It's not possible for me to understand how anyone can think of him as an anti-racism person.

By the way, there were white slaves too! And he, as a muslim, has no right to blame everything on the white people.

About Dempsey being a racist, I still don't know what to think. I heard he had black sparring partners, that he even managed a black boxer, and that the papers for his fight against Wills were signed by both of them even though it didn't happen for some different reasons. Have you ever considered that it's not necessarily him who was against black people fighting for a world title?

P.S: I'm not an American.

 

Lets not confuse 'wit' which Cassius Clay had, with 'intelligent thoughts'.

What he did do was carry fire in one hand, and water in the other.

 

I really think Saintpat has framed the proper perspective on Ali. Nobody is saying he is not without sin

I don't know, I mean I think it was a lot more likely to expect Dempsey to be less outspoken about racism (His own sincere views), then it is for a young black man with a platform like Ali to not be outspoken about discrimination and racism (Even while sharing his own racist views). I know Sullivan and Jeffries expressed their own views. But it makes more sense to me for Dempsey to withhold his beliefs. Ali was not just an outspoken character. He was an outspoken character in outspoken times.

I don't really like when people label Dempsey racist or what not either. I don't know his true beliefs. I just don't think Ali should be so vehemently knocked for radical beliefs in radical times. It feels out of context...

 

But sitting there, right in front of anyone who puts 10 minutes into a Google search, are multiple sources both in writing and on video that has Ali saying the kind of thing that would have a Ku Klux Klansmen testifying "Amen!". His political opinions were purely that of a stereotypical conservative white racist - for segregation, against interracial relationships and integration, racially insulting black guys....all of it.

Not sure I can even nearly agree with ali's comments of the time being similar to the KKK.

At that time, blacks were not in any type of position of power. They were so far off parity with whites that anything any black leader could or would say about white leaders/people was either dismissed or used to denigrate blacks even further...possibly with the exception of the Black Panther movement.

The KKK's power was of such, that they could openly murder and lynch black people and get away with it. It only became an issue when white civil rights workers were killed.

My point being, both sets of people(KKK & NOI) were wrong in what they were Promoting but in vastly varying degrees.


I've watched some of Ali's interviews on race related matters and the "white man is the devil" quotes are unpalatable, but in essence wasn't some of the treatment dished out by some(by no means all) whites devilish? There was motive, rightly or wrongly, for why he said what he said.

What was the motive for the KKK's treatment of lets say Emmett Till? A wolf whistle??

That's what I mean by both wrong but in varying degrees

 

The quotes I was referring to were ones where Ali supposedly painted all white people as "devils" or as "evil."

I don't see where he ever "blamed everything" on white people.

It was not uncommon in any way in America at that time (or Britain or China or dozens of other countries -- then or in our more enlightened times) for people to believe that members of their race should not intermix with members of other races. That's not exactly openminded, but it's not necessarily racist in and of itself.

A lot of white people as well as black people believed in setting up a separate state for blacks. Abraham Lincoln, who ended slavery as an institution in the U.S., the Great Emancipator, was for a separate state to be set up. Many black leaders in Ali's time during the Civil Rights movement were not just for black purity as a race, but also realized that it was dangerous for black people to date or "mix" with white people because many blacks who even so much as smiled at a white women found themselves lynched -- hung to death from trees.

For Ali to have espoused the beliefs of the Black Muslim race that blacks should not "amalgamate" with whites is not in and of itself an indictment of him as a racist.

Again, I say, look at his ACTIONS:

Ali had Angelo Dundee, a white man, as his chief boxing mentor and advisor.

He had Bundini Brown, a black man, in his corner as one of his closest aides. Brown, by the way, married a Jewish woman and converted to Judaism, making him a Black Jew. As far as Ali's views on military service, Brown was a decorated fighter pilot in the Navy.

Oh, and Ali's physician was Ferdie Pacheco, who is Hispanic aka Latin American.

Ali also chose a Howard Cosell, who was Jewish, as the media person closest to his inner circle.

So if Ali is/was a racist, if he believed blacks were superior to other races and that blacks should in no way associate with people of other races, why was his inner circle the most diverse of any champion boxer not only of his own time, but certainly of any who came before him and arguably any who has come since.

Kind of funny that Senor Pepe' -- who should use his research skills before posting -- calls Ali a "sellout" for his contract when he turned pro with local businessmen known as the Louisville Sponsorship Group, who pooled a few thousand dollars to help the local Olympic champion get started in the professional ranks. That group was organized by a black lawyer, Alberta Jones.

I don't know Dempsey's true beliefs on race relations. I know he made a point of ducking the top black heavyweights of his day and sat on the championship for three years without defending it. He sold out his sport for Hollywood and refused to defend his title because he was too busy being a flamboyant celebrity. Yes I never see criticism of him the way I do of Ali.

 

Couldn't have put it better.

I think that the words sympathy and empathy are whats sometimes lacking in debates such as these.

 

Ali was allied with the KKK and was as racist as they come.

In 1961 Ali's mentor; Elijah Muhammad, formed an alliance with the Ku Klux Klan that lasted until his death in 1975.


He also reached out to the American Nazi Party. He addressed an ANP meeting in which George Lincoln Rockwell (The ANP Fuhrer) glowingly introduced him as the Adolf Hitler of the American Negro. Muhammad received a standing ovation.

Nasty stuff and Ali was up to his eyeballs in it. As late as 1975 Ali characterized Elijah Muhammad as his Jesus.


Here is a clip of Ali bragging about addressing a Ku Klux Klan rally on the evils of racial integration. It starts at about 4:30.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgMkrWGLkJ4[/ame]


I'm surprised that the Ali advocates chose to bring up the racist card in this thread. I don't think they know their hero's baggage. Either that, or they thought no one else knew it.

 

Here's another little item:

PLAYBOY: You're beginning to sound like a carbon copy of a white racist. Let's get it out front: Do you believe that lynching is the answer to interracial sex?

ALI: A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman...


PLAYBOY: And what if a Muslim woman wants to go out with non-Muslim blacks—or white men, for that matter?

ALI: Then she dies. Kill her, too.


Here's a link to the entire interview, with all the context you want:
http://www.playboy.com/playground/view/playboy-interview-muhammad-ali

 

Ali speaks eloquently on the subject of black and white. What's racist about this?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LvNDn1eBNw&feature=related[/ame]

But it tells you a lot about the world Ali grew up in -- he came home from winning the gold medal and could not be served at a segregated restaurant in his own town because the white people wouldn't serve "his kind." Yet he's the racist?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqiWFLsgVi4[/ame]

The David Frost interview is sometimes cited for Ali speaking racism, but listen closely to it: every time Frost says "you said ..." you can hear Ali saying "Elijah Muhammad said." He is deferring to his spiritual leader, espousing beliefs he has been taught and has embraced. Are those beliefs in line with what people believe today? No, at least not widely believed, but he points out in the Parkinson interview that he has traveled the country and the world and he hasn't seen mixed-race couples in America or England or anywhere else walking around proudly embracing -- because there were not many at the time. So he is speaking what is an everyday experience for himself and pretty much everyone else in the world at the time. Parkinson challenges that he would not be upset if his daughter married a man of color, but Ali challenges that he may say that but there is no one of color in Parkinson's family, so his words are not backed by action.

Note also that Ali's views on race, when taken in context, come from his background and experience as an African-AMERICAN. He points out that the culture of his ancestors was wiped out, erased, erradicated, by the slave-owners who bought his forefathers and foremothers at auctions and brought them, against their will, to America into forced labor, as property. For someone in the 1960s, at a time of blacks in the U.S. finally beginning to force the issue to have their basic human rights -- education, to vote, etc. -- it really is to me completely understandable that at the same time there would be a movement to preserve the heritage of African-Americans and to rediscover their roots (as the popular miniseries was called) and to embrace their, for lack of a better term, blackness. So it is also, to me, unfair to look at Ali's discussion of not wanting blacks to mix racially through the prism of today's multicultural society -- for him and the NOI to want to preserve something they felt (rightfully so) had been taken from them by white slave-owners.

 

marked for later

 

Its definitely more political than anything. Ali was a straight up nucca and people back then couldn't handle it.

 

Ali was an egotisical ****, the only thing he stood for was himself, he was a loud mouth dope that played into the people in power at the time , Ali was the opposite of what the Black power movement stood for , he played the clown , and made racist remarks and called Joe , who helped him a gorilla and called himselp pretty (as he was more white looking than Joe) and an uncle tom , when he was the unlce tom himself . Joe helped him out when he needed help than dooged him and called him names when he did not need him any more.

What he said when he dogded the draft was why me? , take some body else , he did not oppose the war for any other reason than to save his own skin , he thought that because he was someone he should not have been drafted. He dooged Malcom X too.

Thw White media used him to distroy the proud Black Man image that had intregratyand so on with his loud mouth clown act that so many have copied from then on , like a dancing ****** that performed for the masses.

 

Pretty much, yeah.

Clay/Ali spent his whole career playing up primarily for the attentions of the masses and the mass media. AKA "white folk".

Not that it's the worst thing in the world but it makes me sick when I hear people making out he was some sort of Spartacus for the black community while at the same time suggesting that Joe Louis and Joe Frazier were "Uncle Toms" in comparison.