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

The Elijah Muhammad NOI preached that blacks and whites were hopelessly incompatible and could never live in peace together.

They preached that mixing of the races was against the will of God - pretty much the same as KKK doctrine.

The NOI's views on race mixing are indefensible from a non-racist's standpoint. Then or now.

The movement against state "anti-miscenegation" laws (laws prohibited inter-racial marriages and relationships) resulted in a Supreme court ruling in 1967 that finally made such laws unconstitutional and must be seen as an integral part of the civil rights movement.

Many states got rid of such laws in the 1940s and 1950s.

Muhammad Ali in 1974 is still defending the position that the old laws were morally correct.

 

As late as 1975, Ali advocated killing Blacks who "messed" with other races.

I wonder how many of his fans read that interview and went out and did something about it?

 

If you take away his 'celebrity' as Heavyweight Champion of the World in 1964

And made him earn his credentials as a spokesman for whatever he was 'spewing'
back then, he would be considered a 'third rate charlatan'.

 

Ali said a lot of things for shock effect.

Did he ever kill anyone who "messed with" other races?

Did he kill Bundini Brown, who married a Jew and converted to Judaism?

What a freaking joke that Ali is villified for calling Joe Frazier a gorilla and being mean to poor ol' Joe.

He called Foreman the Mummy. He called Liston the Big Ugly Bear. He called Shavers the Acorn. Etc., etc. It was part of his schtick.

Let's also put it into context. Frazier attacked Ali -- wrestled him to the ground when Ali tried to hug him -- on live television on ABC's Wide World of Sports. Who ever mentions that? You will notice Ali never called Frazier the Gorilla before they were going to fight in ... MANILLA. It rhymes. It's not racism, it's rap, or poetry.

Ali in an interview before the third Frazier fight: "I just like to talk about him. He's a nice fella. It just makes him hot. I want to get him real mad because when he gets mad he wants it so bad he can't think."

If you hold it against Ali for talking down his opponent, waging psychological warfare and trying to get under his opponent's skin and inside his head, please at least be consistent and start some threads about what horrible human beings every boxer from Duran to Tyson to, yes, Joe Frazier were.

Frazier when Ken Norton says his wife just had a baby: "Whose is it?"

He actually publicly called Norton's wife a *****, in effect. Where is the outrage?

Tyson: "I wnat to eat his children. Praise to Allah."

OK, if Ali was truly advocating the death penalty for race mixing (inflammatory words but no action and had Bundini Brown, himself in a mixed-race marriage, in his inner circle), then surely Tyson is a cannibal.

Tyson also said he was going to gut an opponent, Kevin McBride, like a fish. This is an insult to fish everywhere. Where's the outrage?

David Haye said Nicholai Valuev looked like the Elephant Man. Jack Johnson made a point of Tommy Burns' whiteness (RACISM!!!). Blood Green called Tyson a homo (although, to be fair, Tyson did speak of making a male opponent his girlfriend). The examples are endless, and, yes, they often veer into matters of race or homosexuality.

Guess what -- IT'S BOXING. Fighters insult other fighters all the time. It's to build up the gate or to gain a psychological edge. Yet Ali haters act mock-offended at his treatment of Frazier. Un-f'ing-believable.

 

Wasn't Joe Frazier friend with Ken Norton? Isn't that one of the reasons why they never fought? Weren't they sparring partners at some point? I can't find any proof that he actually said that about his wife, and I'm not sure why would he say that. If he said it, I believe it was probably some kind of a joke between friends, I don't believe he meant to call Norton's wife a "*****".

It's not fun to insult someone like Clay used to do, even though "it's boxing". Especially not after Frazier supported him and was close to him when he needed.

 

What i hate the most is when Louis is called an "Uncle Tom" by ignorant idiots, because he conducted himself with dignity and wasn't a loudmouthed braggart like Ali was, so he's "subservient" to white power. The misconception of Ali being a civil rights hero while Louis is thought of as the obedient lapdog is the example of the illusion that was so wonderfully exposed earlier in this thread. Because Ali has been portrayed by the liberal media as a great political figure, politics is heavily involved in the view of Ali, as can be seen by the comments in this thread.

 

You're making assumptions and taking things to extremes there though. Louis was no man's lapdog. But he was massively censored and made to walk on egg shells. Its a knock on society at the time, not an insult to Louis.

 

Isn't being called an uncle Tom the worst insult a black man can give to another black man? and isn't that what Ali called Louis in the sixties? as well as sections of the black community? and Louis being "massively censored" is IMO over exaggerated, because Louis wasn't the loud talkative type. His son inf act addresses this stuff in this video from 00:58 onwards

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

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwXYMGtBIA&list=FLLZY31efE6cfs4GtCrI9jhw&index=338&feature=plpp_video"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwXYMGtBIA&list=FLLZY31efE6cfs4GtCrI9jhw&index=338&feature=plpp_video[/ame]

 

I always thought Ali stood up for his personal rights, a little more of a me first guy because he did have a mouth on him. Always talking. I dont think he realized that the magnitude of his personal rights would be a huge chunk of the platform that was part of the civil rights movement and Viet Nam.

I don't know if he truly understood the context of what was going on in Viet Nam at the time. Grown man alone and heavyweight champion, he was still pretty much a kid. Not that far removed from his teens. One thing for true is that he refused to fight a war for America, outside of America, meanwhile their was an ongoing human rights war inside America.

He never wanted to be the second coming of the Joe Louis negro poster boy for American pride and publication only to get shafted when the war was done to deal with the ghost of Jim Crow at home.

 

You do not take some ones help on day then call him an uncle tom the next day.

on one is calling Tyson , Joe etc... one of the influental parts of the civil rights movement though and a great Black leader.

Ali was always just out for himself but his fans think he is / was out to save the Black Man.

Two white cr***ers are sitting together watching tv talking about how the Black man is not equal and is more ape than man , Malcom X comes on and is a smart , clear, articulete and consise in speach thinker , if abete a little extreme and they turn to each other like wow we might wrong if this guy gets some power we could be in trouble , then they change the channel and there is Ali performing like a trained seal being heralded as a Black leader calling Joe a gorilla and insulting his Black looks, while calling him an uncle tom & the two white *******s turn to each other and smile and say , uhh nothing to worry about.

 

Louis was kinda forced into his role as one of the poster boys for America during the war. The Schmeling fights added major fuel, especially with Hitler's propaganda of Aryan supremacy. Add the fact that Jack Blackburn pounded into Joe's head that he wasn't going to conduct himself like Jack Johnson and upset white people.

Joe Louis had to play the role of Uncle Tom even though he wasn't. The heavyweight champion had to be a "yes man" and answer the call of "boy" to racist and non-racist whites that didn't no better. He was rarely called Mr. Louis, but often had his manhood stripped because of his skin colour. Sometimes by children more than half his age who insisted on referring to him in childlike status.

Some ridiculously blame Jack Johnson for what Joe Louis had to endure which is why Ali wasn't gone to stand for any of that kind of subservience.

 

LOL the ironic thing is that if you look at the comments in that video, they're mainly from white supremacists with StormFront accounts

 

Ali didn't object to Jim Crow. He tried to further Jim Crow. He was for it and spoke out for it even at a KKK rally.

 

I said this in other threads about this subject and I'll say it again.

What Ali said to Frazier is one of the worst kind of insults a black man could say to another black man and he did it using two of the most vicious phrases. It goes way beyond the point of ticket sales.

One black man calling another black man a gorilla is an indicative references to primates. It's all on tape. He smacked the toy gorilla in training saying "come on gorilla, this is a chiller, come on gorilla, this is a killer." During that time he used the chiller, killer, gorilla rhyme over and over again to promote the fight. Imagine what Joe's family must have felt watching the press cover that?

There's even one joke that Ali said "Joe Frazier is so ugly, his face should be donated to the bureau of wildlife."

That's nasty stuff, not very polite. Racist whites gloriously reference black people as monkeys, gorillas, apes, baboons and chimps. I've heard them all. When it comes from someone who has close to the same skin colour as you, it's worse than bad. It's just wrong.

Ali called him an Uncle Tom, unjustly trying to make the FOTC a race war because he always thought white bureaucracy took away his championship and kept him away from the sport he loved. Joe was an easy target for that because he was the opponent in the ring who had inherited the championship from "white america" while Ali was exiled. Joe grew up way poorer than Ali who grew up in Kentucky. Joe did nothing but fight who was put in front of him and agreed to a match to determine who was the true champion.

Joe's not innocent either. He was provocative and just as bad as Patterson, Terrell and others who continually annoyed Ali by calling him Clay. That I didn't agree with. The man deserves to be called by his legal name regardless of what he changed it to.

As per the fight on TV? Joe got pissed, because Muhammad started mocking him on TV and calling him ignorant. Started correcting his sentences on live camera and just took the opportunity to insult Joe. All this after Joe helped get him his license back, loaned him a good chunk of cash while he was banned from the sport, went along with his appearance schemes to promote a fight between two of them long before the FOTC was even thought of.

Tyson apologized to Lewis after saying the stuff he said which I don't agree with either. Eating his children was just Tyson spur of the moment nonsense that Lennox kinda laughed off.

You don't laugh off racist remarks while having your own children come home from school beat up and ridiculed because their daddy is the opponent against Ali.