Holmes vs Norton - What Gene Tunney said!

Isn't this an oxymoron?

 

Ali was a hero to white America, right?

Do you think the whole country was/is stupid, looking up to a guy who's racist towards them?

Obviously Ali wasn't racist. You could see it in his eyes when he talked to people. That's it.

 

Not for me.
Tunney's personal racist beliefs are equally a product of his environment, circumstances and times as Ali's are. As individuals, white racists of the time were generally not as "evil" as the sum total of the society they populated. Lots of people being a little bit nasty, superior and bigoted can add up to them perpetuating and bolstering a thoroughly evil system.
People are, generally, not evil.

Having said that, I don't know if Tunney had many likeable qualities. But he's really insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 

That's a good point. :good

Still. The systemic effects of racism was in balance of one side at that time. And the other side had the moral right to bump against the boundaries.

But anyway, this doesn't have much to do with boxing, does it lol

 

Do I think white Americans are stupid ? Not all of them.

I don't think "looking up to a guy who's racist against them" makes anyone stupid.

Ali was a great athlete, a great fighter and entertainer. A winner, a showman. That's why people looked up to him.

Ok. :roll: He did a good impression of a racist sometimes then.

 

No, it doesn't.
But Tunney was perhaps a bit of a die-hard racist and that might have contributed to his low opinion of Holmes and Norton. I wouldn't rule that out.

 

"Racist against whites.."

Loved by millions of white people

:huh

 

Come on man u guys can gloss over or make excuses for Ali all u want.
The man wasnt loved until he became sick and the media portrayed him as a saint.
Im reality it was constantly white man this white man that blond haired blue eyed devils no mixing of races while he slept with every woman he could black or white.
Dont all of a sudden make this guy out to be the Pope.
Give me a break. His feelings on white people are well documented in books and on film. He never refered to people just as people it was always white this and white that wen reffering to a white guy and if that isnt blatant racism i dont know wat is.
Ali also called any black man who didnt agree with him and his views an uncle tom. He attacked Joe Luis jackie Robinson Frazier amongst others. Ali wasnt out to further the cause of the black man he was out for him self first and foremost.
But wait its Ali so its ok

 

I didn't say he was racist against whites, that was your thing.
I said he was racist. I explained his racism and YOU AGREED (i think) that such views have no place in the world of decent-minded people.

If someone says whites and blacks shouldn't marry or live alongside each other because that's against nature, they are racists. Ali was a racist. End of story.

As for your argument that millions of whites can't love someone racist against them unless they are all 'stupid', that's false anyway. If it was true then I take it you'd consider black Americans as 'stupid' too, since for years and years they were entertained by and admired white actors and supported white politicians even while aware that these whites were racist against them.
The world isn't a perfect place, hence such contradictions happen.

 

People didn't like Ali until he got sick?

Not at all. Plenty of "white people" liked Ali. Just like any other fighter. His so called "racist" antics weren't that big of a deal. Plenty of people liked Liston as well. Modern liberals would like you to think that people hated them because they were black but that is not the case at all.

 

Wat im getting at is Ali from say 77 had as many admirers as he did haters.
By the time he lite the Olympic torch the media turned him into a saint.

 

Good ol' liberal revisionists like to pretend Ali speaking at Klan meetings, being pro-segregation, and suggesting people in interracial relatonships be put to death never happened, either.

 

While you are correct on some points here, you are
blithely washing over some extremely racist slants of Ali's rhetoric. In the end, Ali, like most athletes, just wasn't that bright and he swayed to the influences or opportunities that blew his way. Would Jerry Quarry get away with calling Joe Frazier a gorilla and a stooge of the White Man? Do we really want to bring up Ali's thoughts on women?

That said, Tunney wasn't very bright either. He sounds like a dolt in the interviews I've read. George B Shaw was just a jock-rider.

 

Ali was absolutely racist against whites at a certain point in time. Of course there is a lot to the story.

 

Yeah, it's not really a question I'd normally expect liberal-minded or left-leaving people to have to ponder but I guess that would be a nice little debate among them .... Is it ever okay to speak against race-mixing at a KKK meeting?

It's not a question Ali had to grapple with, since he was some sort of racist and religious conservative in those days anyway.
Many of views were clearly old-fashioned and discredited already by the late 1960s, let's put it that way.