Some things you might not know about Ali.

Among other things they still talk about black superiority.

Support for them is low perhaps because people tend to wise up to small religious cults that take their money, and because Farrakhan is old and washed up, and in the internet/conspiracy age there's a lot of competition in the field.
Also, however much they helped at a grass roots level they didn't have a lasting solution to the plight of black people in America.

I've been led to believe social conditions are still really bad for the black man in America:
*The number of black men in prisons in staggering.
*The number of black victims of black-on-black killings is staggering.
*The number of black victims of cop killings is staggering.

Does anyone serious dispute this?

Your theory doesn't hold water.

Well, if people are generally good and smart they'd be no problem with any movement or any consensus.
You could justify any movement ever ... the German Nazi party, the Khmer Rouge, Al-Qaeda/ISIS and all the spin-offs, etc. .... because such large numbers of people must be thinking they were doing good.

Or you could justify the consensus that was white supremacist racism in the 19th and 20th century. The people just thought it was right and proper. People are generally good and smart, you say.

Actually if you go back and read my posts you will see I came in to the discussion expressing my agreement with those particular points you make.
I said you were correct in highlighting what was positive about the NOI.

It's unfortunate that you've taken the step to slander me by saying I treated white supremacy as a ho hum.
I take the white supremacy and oppressive white power structure it as a given. We are on the same page there. Everything you stated in that regard I agreed with.

If you're interested in seeing the whole picture, it would be worth noting that much of the NOI racial ideology actually feeds the most extreme sections of white supremacy by bolstering the ideas of :
- racial purity
- separation being natural and inter-mixing being unnatural
- myths about where the "races" came from
- the impossibility than races could live side by side peacefully

NOI saw common ground with the KKK and the American Nazi Party, the most reactionary and hateful sections of white America.
You can avoid that if you want, or dismiss it, or you can address it honestly.

 

Spot on.

 

But MLK was also a victim. His stance of forgiveness was an incredibly strong one. It's good to tell people to be more forgiving. It becomes snobbish and patronizing when you haven't felt their pain but yet hold them to unreasonable standards through the gift of hindsight.

And my whole point of frustration is how overblown the criticism of Ali and the NOI are.

White America was never truly threatened by the NOI. A lot of white people wanted to join them! To everyone, it was obvious that the NOI was like a kid who constantly got bullied, finally deciding one day to pound his chest.


White Americans regularly gathered to go on murder sprees against black people. The NOI never roamed the streets looking for white people to kill! It was rhetoric.

And yet, with boxing fans, Ali seems to get more blame for being part of that group, than white America gets for putting him in that place!

 

The NOI was a force until Malcolm X got killed. It started dissipating ever since. It didn't take the internet.

Why do you think I believe that social conditions are good for black americans? I said they improved. The definition of improvement is things getting better, not fixed. If you were genuine enough to interpret my words honestly, you would see that my theory DOES hold water. Cool move though, twisting my words to make me sound like I'm the one insensitive to the movement.

I didn't say that evil doesn't exist. I said people are generally good, and smart.

gen·er·al·ly
ˈjen(&#601rəlē/
adverb
1.
in most cases; usually.

Does the Nazi regime reflect other societies in most cases, usually?

 

Apart from perhaps Mendoza, I doubt anyone here is expressing the view that the NOI were an immediate and practical danger to innocent white people.

Many of their teachings are an ideological danger to humanity.
In my opinion:
-Race-mixing is not immoral or unnatural.
-So, Mixed race offspring are not to be considered products of something immoral or unnatural.

Then again, in the internet age, I'll be labelled a "genocidal cultural marxist" for saying that too.

 

Well, in that case it dissipated because they lost they lost/killed their best (former) member.
Not because social conditions improved.

Surely, the conditions are bad enough to require radical solutions and radical movements, that was my point.
Conditions don't seem to have improved so much that people will assume militant/radical leaders and organizations are unworthy of support or unnecessary.
That can't be the reason the NOI is at a low ebb.

But I'm not particularly interested in the highs and lows of the NOI and speculating on the reasons for them.
We can stick to the period in question.

I'm just debating. I haven't twisted anything intentionally. Thank you for attempting to clarify.

And my point was that because a lot of people join a movement with 'good intentions' it doesn't automatically make the movement good and positive at its core.
One doesn't logically follow from the other.

 

I completely agree. That rhetoric was garbage. I think it came down to people finally having freedom to entertain those ideas. Not long before then, it must've felt like living amongst the thought police, where the slightest mistake in your mental approach could have your harmed. And then in the 60's this Malcolm X guy is on TV saying that black people are better?! Imagine being black in the 60's and hearing that for the first time.

I think Ali represented a big cultural movement happening with black americans. It's as if once they feel that they had space to entertain thoughts of black superiority, and didn't feel threatened for it, they finally said "You know what, this is wrong." It's like they wanted to prove to themselves that they could think that way.

Also, you can't discount the programs they had for their communities, and the security they provided to many innocent people in danger. That would be unfair as it was a big part of what they did.


I think you kevin and I agree mostly on this issue. You guys may have pointed out something that I exaggerated, or perhaps a slight misstep in my logic. Or maybe you looked for one that wasn't really there if you had given me a bit more benefit of the doubt. I think you guys wanted to argue with me, but by doing so took the wrong side of the argument. I could be wrong, thats just how I feel.

 

Which, again, I think capsulated my contention, which is that people gravitated towards the sensible values of the NOI that Malcolm represented, not the fantastical ones. Ali started the same way. At one point he started drifting more towards the fantastical, I think because his strong character made him deeply loyal. He caught himself, and quickly adjusted his thinking to be more inclusive. Which was really being more true to himself. Ali and inclusivity go hand in hand.

Like which radical movements? The Black Panthers are gone too. I there anything around today remotely similar?

This is what the movement was about at it's deepest core:
"Fard taught that Blacks, as original Asiatics, had a rich cultural history which was stolen from them in their enslavement. Fard stated that African Americans could regain their freedoms through self-independence and cultivation of their own culture and civilization."

This is all good stuff right? I think this is what most people were subscribed to.

 

Successful cults provide resources. Good people or not, they were uneducated and dispossessed and that's precisely why they bought into this nonsense. Fard Muhammad started the NOI by dazzling illiterate, uneducated, impoverished, unemployed recent southern transplants living in the worst conditions in the Detroit slums with his racial superstitions & cosmology. Suggesting that people had little choice but to join the NOI just seems like a nonsensical rhetorical flourish. Of course people had other options-- in fact, the vast majority of black Americans chose those other options.

 

You have absolutely no basis for suggesting that people only subscribed to that vague, general message and not any of the specific tenets or teaching of the NOI, other than your own wishful thinking.

 

Every tidbit in the original post came from one recent HBO special about Ali.

 

So what does that make every single white person who has ever believed in black inferiority backed up by "science"?

Some of them were Presidents of companies, universities, and countries!

 

The text of mine that you emboldened is merely descriptive-- it is factually and historically accurate. Read up on the history of the NOI some time if you're going to insist on wasting so much time and energy defending it.

I never suggested that only uneducated people could be racist...

Anyway, I've criticized the NOI way more than I had ever intended already. I'm done discussing them. Anyone else who wants to talk politics can just send me a message.

 

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