Can you condemn Mohammad Ali for his racist views?

Well, I never saw that stated as something 'factual'. You may remember or think it that way... but I haven't seen it.

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Amen!! Needs to be said in 100 different ways to people of today!!

 

My guess is you don't smell the fish when you walk into the fish store either.

 

Wow. That's just idiocy on parade.

Goodbye.

 

Well Ali both was and wasn't a racist during his lifetime, and his lifetime happens to encompass the period where we as a nation started to address racism, so kind of a hard question to answer. Ali should have known, and indeed eventually learned the best way to think about race relations, but his formative years were at a time when, at best notions of race and racism were just being questioned, it wasn't so etched in our cultural morality as it is now, thus I don't judge him as harshly as I would if he were a modern celeb.

 

Racists don't bother me at all. As long as they leave me alone. I wouldn't want to be around most of the people who would be racist against me anyway.

 

What you continue not to get, since you were obviously brought up in a culture influenced by Christianity, is that for most of its existence, and even today, it was such an extremely radical teaching that the powers-that-be, then and now, including most members of the upper Christian hierarchy, do their best to obscure the core teachings--and this extends as well to what was and was not included in the "Bible" you so often cite as "proof".

Where you get that people not influenced by decent teachings of some sort would not revert to the most primitive barbarity in their relationships with other humans is beyond me. You see the excesses of ISIS, and are undoubtedly aware of many other examples. That is what happens if defects in teachings are used as excuses, or people simply operate according to their unimpeded impulses.

You push an orientation which doesn't even need excuses, as it has no clear cut cultural reference point. There is a thin veneer of human civilization aided and abetted by an amalgam of cultural teachings of all sorts that you spit upon. You count on it without realizing it.

IMO, if the US were not a Christian culture, its black population would still be in slavery.

 

You have a nice day as well.

 

calling someone an idiot may be against the rules... suggest you take a breath

 

What you mean to say is that as always, I won't condemn those who you want, when you want, based on charges you bring to the forum's attention. You know very little beyond that.

It is pretty rare that I accuse people of being racists, homophobes or sexists. I think it is done entirely too often, too flippantly, and too conveniently on most forums I frequent. I love humanity enough to be mighty careful before I throw those accusations around. I want to see long term patterns of behavior, with few other explanations, before I go there. I won't be going there for you at all. NOTHING will get me to cooperate with your agenda.

 

The post to which you refer, calls no one anything. It calls ideas set forth in prior post something.

 

You have done nothing in that direction. One would be hard pressed to know what your stance on that issue is, because if you cannot slam a religion expressing it, you don't say it.. Its not hard at all to be concerned about same sex marriage regardless of what religious tomes say that religious figures may have said centuries before.. Its been debated for almost a decade on this forum and real progress was made. Can't say I can remember you playing a role, though. If it does not fit your agenda, I assert that you do not give a rat's ass about gay rights, women's rights or racism.

 

I do. What of it?

 

I remember that simulated fight. Couldn't figure out how they did it.

 

Here's more:

http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/06/who-whitewashed-muhammad-ali/

Who Whitewashed Muhammad Ali?
Muhammad Ali was a radical. Whether one views that radicalism as virtuous or sinister, there is truth to idea that much of it is being ignored.
David Marcus
By David Marcus
JUNE 6, 2016
With the death of former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, a new fight is emerging in the massive shadow of his life. In segments of both the Right and Left is a sense that his story has been softened, his image whitewashed, and his legacy turned into a cultural fiction. Ali was a radical. Whether one views that radicalism as virtuous or sinister, there is truth to idea that much of it is being ignored.

At Huffington Post, Maxwell Strachan argues that whitewashing Ali was meant to make him more acceptable to white fans and admirers. As the article puts it: “Throughout U.S. history, white Americans have toned down the life stories of radical people of color so that they can celebrate them as they want them to be, not as they were. It is why we first think of ‘I Have a Dream’ when we hear the name Martin Luther King Jr., and not his opposition to the Vietnam War. Narratives are altered. Complex people simplified. Revolutionary ideas watered down, wrapped and packaged with a bow for mainstream America.”

It is not made clear who is responsible for this in Ali’s case. In looking back through Ali’s life and career, it is also not clear why the boxer’s legacy was altered in this way. It is possible that media outlets and Ali’s business partners might have chosen to water down his radicalism for profit. But his radical ideas about race, religion, and the United States themselves also didn’t always paint him in a very good light.

Race as Promotional Material
Part of what made Ali “The Greatest” was his gift for self-promotion. His willingness to say outlandish things and his poetry while deriding the talents of his opponents was a revelation to 1960s America. In an era when athletes were meant to be humble and do their talking with their talent, Ali wanted more, and he knew how to get it.

Race and religion were central to Ali’s promotion of himself. By changing his name from Cassius Clay, the sobriquet of a ninteteenth-century abolitionist, he was making a political and social statement. In joining the Nation of Islam, a radical Black Muslim movement, he further challenged the acceptable norms of 1960s American society.

None of this is to say that Ali’s beliefs were not sincere. He remained a Muslim his whole life and was a champion for the concept that Islam is a religion of peace. Likewise, his sometimes-controversial attitudes on race were clearly deeply held. But he knew these were hot buttons, and he was quite expert at pushing them, even in terribly unfair and hurtful ways.


Joe ‘Uncle Tom’ Frazier
In 1971, after facing a three-year suspension for refusing to serve in Vietnam, Ali was back to regain his title. In his way was an old friend, the then-current champion Joe Frazier. Frazier had helped Ali during his three-year hiatus with money and influence to get him reinstated. But instead of thanking Smokin’ Joe, Ali used the opportunity to once again put race front and center in his self-promotion.

Ideally, Ali would have faced a white opponent, as in the movie “Rocky.” Apollo Creed was based on Ali, and Rocky Balboa was based on a white version of Frazier, a southpaw who actually trained by punching sides of beef in Philly. But there was no white boxer on his level. About the only man on his level was Frazier, who was decidedly black. This did not stop Ali from putting race front and center in the fight. Ali’s contention was that, unlike himself, Frazier was a pawn of white and Jewish promoters. He flat-out called Smokin’ Joe an Uncle Tom.

In a 1996 Sports Illustrated cover story Frazier talked about that time: “This guy was a buddy. I remember looking at him and thinkin’, What’s wrong with this guy? Has he gone crazy? He called me an Uncle Tom. For a guy who did as much for him as I did, that was cruel. I grew up like the black man-he didn’t. I cooked the liquor. I cut the wood. I worked the farm. I lived in the ghetto. Yes, I tommed; when he asked me to help him get a license, I tommed for him. For him! He betrayed my friendship.”

That fight in 1971 was as brutal a competition of pugilistics as the world has ever seen. Frazier’s anger at Ali’s unfair racial attacks found its culmination in one of the greatest punches ever thrown. In the fifteenth round, after a juke he landed a slow and searing left hook that dropped Ali. Ali got up—he always got up—but Frazier had sent his message. The Uncle Tom had grounded the great radical black man.

Frazier never forgave Ali for his insult. In that same 1996 interview he said he was happy that his punishment of Ali in the ring might have led to Ali’s Parkinson’s disease. Frazier was also clearly unhappy about the accolades and awards Ali was winning. When Ali lit the Olympic flame in 1996, Frazier said he wished he could have been there and pushed him into the fire.


Revising Ali’s Legacy
1996 was seminal in reestablishing Ali’s place in American sports and cultural history. After losing to Trevor Berbick in 1981, Ali’s career was over. Boxing moved on, and by the mid-1980s Mike Tyson had become the new superstar the sport needed. But by the 1996 Olympics the media was ready to celebrate a new, weakened version of Ali once again.

Now suffering demonstrably from his illness, he was lauded as a hero and human rights activist, and he received a presidential award from Bill Clinton. This was the moment when the whitewashing so bemoaned by those in the liberal press began. This great champion, clearly suffering, was turned into a saint. Yes, that meant erasing his most controversial and frankly sometimes horrible statements about race, including the statement “No intelligent person wants to mix races.”

If the Left wants that back, if it wants the proud black man sticking it to the man to replace the graceful and loving image of Ali that was perhaps fabricated, it comes with a price. It comes with the baggage of his self-serving and unfair willingness to throw others under the bus. Great men are complicated; they often do bad things. At the hours of their deaths we forgive them, and cast a generous eye on their lives. Ali deserves nothing less.

But if Ali the radical must replace Ali the celebrity, then it must be done honestly. We must accept that his refusal to serve in Vietnam meant somebody else had to. We must recognize his often separatist rhetoric in denouncing interracial relationships. He can still be a hero to some, but he can no longer be the same hero to all.

We seek perfection in our heroes. We never get it. The flaws, the bad decisions, the arrogance is always there, beneath the veneer of our adulation. Maybe in the case of Muhammad Ali it is best that we ignore his more radical positions. Maybe he helps us more as a smiling and funny great fighter than he does as an activist of black liberation. But if he doesn’t, if the latter must be his legacy, it must be an honest one. It’s not always a legacy that makes the champ look good, but it is who he was.


Photo Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
David Marcus is a senior contributor to the Federalist and the Artistic Director of Blue Box World, a Brooklyn based theater project. Follow him on Twitter, [MENTION=13873]Blue[/MENTION]BoxDave.

 

I condemn him for his racism, I condemn him for his cowardice and the disgrace he was to this nation.

The guy was a draft dodger, he wad actually sentenced to give years in prison but avoided it because nit wits think punching people is a valuable skill.

I'm sorry he died, I'm sorry to his family for their loss, but he wasn't great, I'd say he wasn't even good. He punched people, that's all he did.

 

The point where he said that white people are his enemy kind of says it all about the Muslim....now doesn't it? There are white people on this very forum who not only praise ali but say he had the right to be racist against we whites because of the slave history of our nation. Go figure!

 

If you would condemn racists it would make the world a better place - such as when people of conscience condemned slave owners (despite the Bible giving full-on approval of slavery, since the Bible doesn't know right from wrong of course.) Your silence is like the silent person who was asked to condemn slavery but couldn't muster the moral courage to do that.
I'd like to see you muster more moral courage - for example IIRC you couldn't muster the courage to approve of asking Christians to remove the parts of their bible that say to kill gays. Take a look in the mirror, and say to yourself "I'm better than that". I know you can do it.

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I absolutely do.....so much so in fact that I'm willing to speak out against the underlying causes of the discrimination ("sacred" texts that preach barbarity, that people refuse to condemn, thereby only perpetuating said barbarity.) You want to band-aid it, I want to cut it off at the root.

 

You, sir, have a moral backbone! I admire you for that.

You can serve as a moral role model to some posters, like btthegreat, who though very well-intended, intelligent, and likely very moral, somehow seems unwilling to ever condemn anything that is inspired by a "great religion". A part of their brain shuts down when they might realize that they are actually greater than someone like Jesus or Mohammad. They have been taught from a young age that they are a "sinner", and "evil" or "wicked" (Jesus says this in the verse right before the Golden Rule), so their self-esteem is in the toilet. They don't realize that they are probably even more moral than great people like Jesus/Mohammad - in many ways at least.

 

White, non-Muslim GUILT is unfortunately at play here.....white non-Muslims unwilling to speak the truth (that yes Ali was a racist) because they feel guilty. That has to stop. If, say, a Modern Secular Humanist is racist, I condemn him, and if a Muslim is not racist then I applaud him for that.

 

I do. I have seen multiple sites where the comments generally run toward what a great man he was, but I don't see it that way. He was a great boxer, but a racist piece of (*)(*)(*)(*) as a human being. Not that the left-nuts here will agree with it of course.

 

If they are members of a religion, and when asked, they refuse to condemn the founders of said religion for the founder's/book's racism or homophobia or sexism, then they themselves should be considered racists, or homophobes, or sexist. Let's raise our moral standards to this level - ask for moral accountability, not give people a pass for their immoral/harmful thinking.

Have a great day.

 

Superb post.
Yes, to the left, a black Muslim gets a pass...even on RACISM! Shame on them.
A great boxer, a great entertainer, probably a very good family man, and a racist. Jesus accepted slavery, and Ali didn't, so Ali might have been more moral than Jesus.

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Incredibly, you and I are in the minority on this thread. Incredible.

 

Unless the underlying texts that promote said barbarity don't change, then we've only achieved a temporary victory....a permanent victory is what I seek.

 

Oh...oh....if Ali had been WHITE, oh what a difference that would have made.

 

I'm calling for the parts that say to kill gays to be removed from the Bible.....do YOU support that? If not, then clearly one of us does indeed "give a rat's ass about gay rights", while the other of us clearly does not, despite his posturing - that person cares more about maintaining the credibility of ancient barbaric texts than about helping innocent people in the here and now, clearly. What say you?