BOXING and the Deterioration of Society...

Hence "something like."

As I mentioned above, people of all ethnicities would probably be more pleasant, on average, if they adhered to something like Louis's public persona. Just racially neutral.

 

I'm not celebrating them; certainly not the racist parts. (As I've already mentioned, and you have acknowledged, but for others just tuning in...) Louis, however, had a subdued, stiff upper lip public persona that was far more likable and easy to live around than (e.g.) Tyson Fury, Conor McGregor, Mayweather, etc. If Paris is worth a Mass, a world of (public) Joe Louises may be worth the loss of pink Cadillacs.

As far as politics go, fewer celebrity athletes opining about complex issues would likely leave more room in the public sphere for folks who know what they're talking about -- politicians, academics, and the like -- so a world of Joe Louises might have a tiny bit more subtlety in its political discourse.

Especially since boxing has a pretty ugly history when it gets mixed up in politics.

 

My position throughout this thread has been that Joe Louis's public persona -- respectful of opponents, polite, etc. -- was a good thing. Irrespective of race. Marciano was kind of similar in the way he tried to present, for example.

Someone (I think you?) drew a connection between Louis's admirable behavior and Roxborough's rules.

To the extent that the rules were responsible for the positive behavior I pinpointed in Joe Louis, they should be followed. To the extent that the rules were racist and awful, they should not be followed. If they are totally unconnected with the polite behavior seen in Joe Louis, then they aren't relevant to the discussion at all.

 

I mean, I'm clearly a bot, but:

It doesn't particularly matter to me what Louis's actual motives were, nor the motives of the racist people forcing him to act a certain way. Louis's persona -- however it was created, and regardless of the motives for creating it -- was an admirable persona. So much so that fighters like Marciano took their cue from it despite not being black. So there are parts of whatever Louis was acting like that could cross ethnic lines.

So from my perspective, the way that Louis got that way was irrelevant to the point I was making.

Since you wanted to (understandably) jettison even the awkward word "Roxborough", perhaps you will understand my inclination to use "the rules" as a shorthand for "The-public-persona-of-Joe-Louis-as-distinct-from-his-private-views-and-irrespective-of-the-genesis-of-the-persona-in-midcentury-oppression."

If you want to jettison mention of the rules entirely and simply refer to it as "the Joe Louis persona" or similar, that's fine with me. It's the point that matters to me; not the nomenclature.

 

Correct. The racist society at large imposed the necessity of behaving that way.

You don't have to answer this, obviously, but here I would just say that other fighters mimicked Joe Louis even when they were not themselves black. Marciano being a good example. That would be odd if there was something innately awful or oppressed about the way Louis acted.

If one guy shakes your hand before a fight because he's oppressed and afraid, and the other guy shakes your hand because he's just a nice guy, that doesn't make handshaking bad. It's still a good idea to follow both men's example and shake people's hands. That shouldn't stop you from having sympathy for the oppressed one who didn't have a choice, though.

I will draw one final distinction, just in case it got lost in translation. Creating a fake persona to placate racists is not an admirable action. The persona itself, however -- the character Joe Louis created and played in public -- was an admirable persona. A polite veteran who was not addicted to drugs, did not cheat on his wife or commit acts of violence, fought for his country in and out of the ring, etc. That persona / character was so admirable that non-racist people just getting into boxing still like Louis on the strength of the persona. (And spawned the possibly apocryphal story of the suicide jumper shouting "Save me, Joe Louis!") It is a persona that also crossed ethnic lines, since other majority-group boxers took the character and ran with it.

That doesn't mean it was fair to dragoon Louis into the role. The oppressive society around him did that because it held him to a different standard than white boxers.

So. As the great philosopher Forrest Gump once said, "That's all I have to say about that."

 

Well, yeah. The Irish have definitely been oppressed in that scenario.

As was Louis. That goes without saying.

No. Of course the rules were repressive, because they held Louis to a higher standard than white men were held to. The wider society punished black men for things that white men got away with. That is unjust.