Muhammad Ali

People saying you should only say nice things, or nothing at all when someone dies, just wait until the Queen passes away, I bet you'll all be respectful then....

 

That is not a racist statement considering the society he lived in. He wanted segregation because whites controlled the economy and black people were reduced to becoming pimps and gang bangers because they weren't allowed to be included in white society.

Racism is when you think you are better than someone because of their race. Ali whether you agree with it or not was just trying to advocate a way to live harmoniously together and that would mean apart so black people could create their own lives and economy.

 

He was part of NOI which taught things like "The original black race of man is superior, especially to the white man."
He was also qouted saying things like this "We who follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad (leader of the Nation of Islam) don't want to be forced to integrate. Integration is wrong. We don't want to live with the white man"

And In an interview with Playboy Ali said "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman." When the interviewer asked about black women crossing the colour barrier, Ali responded: "Then she dies. Kill her, too."

I'm sorry but he was a racist . He is one of my hero's and it hurts me to admit it that at one point in his life Ali was a racist, I understand why he was but it doesn't change the fact. MLK even said this about him "When Cassius Clay joined the Black Muslims he became a champion of the racial segregation and that is what we are fighting against."

 

I think your argument could be applied to anyone. Let's just be frank here, if Mohammad Ali wasn't one of the greatest boxers of all time or as entertaining as he was, you wouldn't be looking for ways to justify his beliefs.

 

Oh behave.

Comparing neo Nazis to the treatment of blacks in America ffs.

 

Dave the neo * never faced slavery, segregation and racial abuse at every turn.

What an embarrassing analogy.

 

Mohammad Ali never faced slavery, and he advocated both segregation and racism. I'm not saying they're entirely comparable either, I'm just challenging his notion that some racism is justifiable. Do you believe some racism is justifiable, Sean? Does it depend on who's being racist as to whether it should be vilified or not?

 

I'm not trying to justify his beliefs, I'm trying to understand the context in which he came to hold them. Try putting yourself in the shoes of a black person in America. Segregation is already there. They tried civil rights movement yet socio economic situation is still divided through institutionalised racism.

 

slavery was still fresh in the mind of black people at the time, probably still practised when Ali was a kid.

There is no doubt he faced segregation and racial abuse himself though.

That doesn't excuse his own views which were just as bad as white people, but for wildly different reasons.

claiming dave the neo * has as much right to feel the way he does as Ali is stupid. It's not even closely comparable.

 

Fair enough, it took me probably 20 seconds maximum to think and articulate the Dave the neo-* counter argument up and it probably shows. I do largely think that the only flaws used against Mohammad Ali come from the indoctrination from the Nation of Islam, which later in life he rejected. My only problem is people making certain forms of racism justifiable where in any other situation they'd shoot people down for doing the same - all because of who it is being racist.

 

The world has lost a fantastic athlete and a guy that did so much to help the average black guy in the US .
RIP Sir you will be sadly missed and always remembered for being a true legend .

 

It's kind of like saying rich people can relate to poverty the same way poor people can.

 

Well-known historian Randy Roberts said of Ali's actions at the time;

‘One of the many paradoxes about Ali is that he embraced an ideology that disparaged white people, yet he was never cruel to white people — only blacks.’

The beliefs of the Nation of Islam didn't stop at viewing the white man as the enemy, they basically viewed every other black man who didn't agree with their own particular brand of hate as the enemy as well.

See, Ali's main gripe with Joe Frazier on a personal level was that he was living, breathing evidence that all of that was bullshit.

The Nation of Islam is a * terrible organisation of people, it always has been. There's a reason why they're considered a hate group, right up there alongside the KKK and various * organisations.

For example, Louis Farrakhan has said of Jews "And don't you forget, when it's * who puts you in the ovens, it's forever!", and when he was compared to Hitler by some, his reply was;

"Well that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He wasn't great for me as a Black man but he was a great German and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of all of Europe and America after the First World War."

I get that there's a level of justification for how a lot of black people felt in the US at that time, but seriously, trying to iron over the fact that Ali was a member of the Nation of Islam? Come on.

It's also interesting to note what possibly the greatest civil rights figure of all time, Martin Luther King, had to say on the matter;

“When Cassius Clay joined The Nation of Islam,” said Martin Luther King, “he became a champion of racial segregation, and that is what we are fighting against.”

Ali, during that period, was a mixed-up guy who was gullible enough to be led astray by hate-filled types who knew they could capitalise on his fame.

The very fact that Nation of Islam originally rejected Ali's application to join, only to "reconsider" after he won the heavyweight title tells you all you need to know.

Ali deserves credit for smartening up and turning his life around on a personal level, there's very few who'll disagree, but to ignore or even worse, try to frame his past actions as somehow acceptable is pretty sad.

The way he treated Frazier will always be a uncomfortable part of his legacy, and the fact that he never took the opportunity to apologise in person is quite sad, as both men died without that closure.

 

Well said.

 

Daibhi is my man crush monday.

 

Many people have been led into political radicalism due to violent discrimination. We are Celtic fans and there have been plenty of people among us who have sang IRA songs, sympathized with "the cause" and even defended their actions. The IRA are hardly die in the wool liberal multiculturalists. What the blacks have had to put up with is astonishing, an greater level of discrimination than Catholics in Scotland or Northern Ireland by an enormous distance. And Irish nationalists were not long to tool up and get liberal with the Semtex. Given that, it's hardly surprising African Americans have flirted with radicalism. To hold that over his head when he has been a symbol of individual liberty for so many demonstrates an incredible lack of insight. The sheer enormity of the racism, its power and reach, is what makes Ali's contribution even more striking. At a city and state level it is was endemic, institutionalized in every facet of life. Even presidents were openly racist. Lynch mobs hanging blacks from trees, beating a black to death went unpunished in many states. The odds were stacked massively against them. His stance to be identified as an individual amongst this torrent of hate and prejudice dwarfs any perverted ideology he may have flirted with.

Trying to measure him up against Martin Luther King is pointless. The reverend preached peace when the rest of us would have taken to the Molotov Cocktail, exceptionally few meet that mark.

 

Everything that happened to "blacks" happened to the Irish. History did not start during 'the troubles' go way back and you find slavery, mass famine, utter humiliation, mass murder, land theft, crude science experiments, rape, every kind of crime going was done to the Irish and the word brutality does not even do it justice. No point comparing levels of discrimination it's like comparing one genocide to another.

 

This isn't the oppression Olympics, a large chunk of what blacks had to put up with in America happened before Ali's day, with the emancipation proclamation coming in 1863, some 80 years before Ali's birth. Ali grew up in a middle class neighbourhood, with the only real form of discrimination he witnessed was through the segregation laws in place at that time, of which were abolished when he was 20 - before he joined the NoI. If it counts for anything, over the course of 800 years, the Irish suffered more than African Americans in America.

Martin Luther King wasn't marching on his own, he had the following of literal millions, whereas the NoI have always been a fringe group because quite simply the black masses rejected them and their hatred. I think it's become clear to me now that the term racist is used explicitly to shut down debates and essentially silence white people. Nobody dares calling Mohammad Ali racist, or if they do, they justify his racism and present it in a way that is acceptable, pathetic.

 

As has been documented though, his vitriol and hate was primarily aimed at fellow blacks, including blacks such as Joe Frazier who suffered the same injustices and prejudices that he did, being as they were both products of the American south.

I personally don't know many Irish nationalists who would direct as much hate and anger towards fellow Irishmen who were in the same position they were.

in fact, it was also well documented that the Nation of Islam had very good relationships with various KKK branches and even George Lincoln Rockwell and the American * Party.

And whilst the level of discrimination is obviously far greater, most people who buy into radical politics have some form of reason for doing so, and that reason usually lies in a wrong being done to them and/or their families or people of a similar background.

We certainly do not offer others who have held these views the excuses and explanations that some seem hellbent on offering Ali, do we?

As I've said, he should certainly be respected and recognised for seeing the error of his ways and changing how he thought later in life, but it would be wrong to simply brush aside the period of his life where he did carry a lot of hate, and ironically that hate was felt most by the very people who had been victimised just like him.

Ali, much like the leaders of the Nation of Islam, was only too happy to spout the hate when it came to the white man, but behind closed doors they were willing to sit with such scumbags as George Lincoln Rockwell and share an anti-semitic story or two.

I'm not measuring, I simply provided a quote from MLK about Ali.