What did Frazier do to be called "Uncle Tom" by Ali?

/Thread.

 

A lot of the younger ones literally adored him, yes, you could say that. The rest just recognized him as a big personality and controversial figure who could draw an audience, quotable and engaging. His Vietnam protest made him hugely attractive to the media and commentators, worldwide, way beyond anything to do with him being a boxer. He was also constantly on TV and radio still. On the chat shows. So, yeah. Planet Earth.

 

They were the minority. He was not initially popular. He was vilified by a very large number of white folks over the age of 24 and even by some younger than that. It took a while for anti war sentiment to gain traction and even longer for liberal whites to back him. Even some older generation black folks did not like Ali. There's an entire documentary on how much people hated Ali at first.

 

Even if that is all broadly true, and I don't want to argue the details of who did and who didn't hate Ali, we're talking about 1970-'71 here.
Regarding Vietnam the pendulum of public and media opinion had swung by then. Opposition to the war grew massively in 1967-'68, and outright support was becoming a dead duck from 1968 onwards.

Ali wasn't a pariah for long. He had a ton of 'friends' in the media (although he claimed to not have any white friends, of course).

 

And...he had/has a white Irish background!!!