“Don’t get me wrong… some of my best friends are of the mongrel races!”
Indeed. I know lots of people who don’t want to dilute their inferior gene pool with a superior one.
I don’t see how someone can refer to Muhammad Ali as ‘racist’. He wasn’t advocating black supremacy; he was demanding an end to the unfair treatment of his fellow African Americans, and he was involved in a philosophical debate among those in the black community, about how to confront racism. He was an enormously successful and marketable athlete who achieved fame and fortune before he had the maturity to understand that some people were using him.
You don’t have to like Ali’s trash talking or his aggressive militarist rhetoric. But frankly, I think it’s pretty condescending for whites to lecture blacks on how they should respond to blatant injustice, and to lecture a high profile athlete like Ali at a time when many of his own race were being beaten up, jailed, assassinated, and lynched, merely because they wanted access to quality schools, voting rights, and a fairer justice system.
Moreover, say what you want, but I think anyone has to respect the fact that Ali could have chosen to take the money and make his fans happy. Instead, like Ted Williams did, he gave up the best years of his career. Unlike Williams, he went to jail, probably assuming his career was finished.
In later life Ali was involved in human rights and other causes. I don’t see how he’s not a model athlete and public figure.
Yeah, but even then you gotta admit that he was kind of uppity, right?
“I said I was ‘The Greatest,’ I never said I was the smartest.” ~~Muhammad Ali
Having been on this site for a little while, I now understand how it works:
If you wish to deny a factual statement or event that discredits your side of the debate, deny, deny, deny and use the “cite” or “link it” card.
It’s part lazy, part denial. If you take a minute to google anything that I’ve stated about Ali, corroborating evidence will immediately pop up. Don’t be so lazy.
Ali’s low-intellect and 78 IQ is widely known. In fact, and I’m paraphrasing here, Ali has a famous quote when discussion his IQ score (which he took with the Army): “I said I was the greatest of all-time, not the smartest.” And if you ever heard him speak, his lack of intelligence could be found in most statements, as is the case with most racists.
Also, look up Ali’s appearance with the KKK. It’s quite remarkable.
Mike Tyson held racist beliefs too. But upon “growing up” he disavowed them. Ali never did any such thing. He held such beliefs in his 30s, so unless disavowed, it’s safe to assume the he still holds them. A racist has never been given such benefit of doubt!
Another one of Ali’s more famous exploits: he tried to get white boxers to publicly use the N-word in reference to him. When one refused, he simply lied and said he called him the N-word anyway.
I dare the deniers to do some research on these well-known facts. If they’re not true, you can discredit me, right? I dare ya!
And yet you say nothing about the counter-claims others have brought to the table, you just ignore them. For several points, they’re much better documented as facts than what you claim. It’s a tactic we associate with people who live under bridges and harass billy-goats.
Come on guys, prove me wrong!!
Wow, you were right, you are not debating, you are just trolling. I won’t bother looking up any of your specious claims, because you’re not going to be here that long. Say hi to the Balrog.
I hope you can appreciate that cites do help to establish whether something is indeed factual or just being pulled out of some orifice.
I am, in fact lazy. That’s why I couldn’t be much arsed to go chasing up “evidence” on this internet thingy which, as you must know, is awash with “facts” of all flavors. (Wasting time back-chatting trolls, though, I somehow can make time for.)
(Bolding mine.)
You mean this one, right? (See? A link!)
Yes, that is remarkable. And disappointing.
Anyone know whether Ali ever expressed regret over this or changed his views on miscegenation?
Gee, golly. That’s terrible.
Who was it?
Before we go all fisty-cuffy, it would be really helpful if you’d share with us where you got all this well-known information.
Might help us to know where you’re coming from.
Might even educate some ignorant folk like me.
That’s the slogan of the board and all.
So… another racist troll OP’er who makes wild accusations and refuses to provide a single actual cite to back up any of it.
GCD, on this board when you make claims, YOU are responsible for backing them up with factual cites. If you can’t do that, you’re just a troll and not long for this board.
Check the link on post #21, it demonstrated that Ali did the walk and accepted his descendants that were the result of “miscegenation”.
Karma got to him later in life.
As four our intrepid Giraffe that can not swing, He is happy to demonstrate that he is not smart enough to know the difference between “debunking” and “Accepting what someone said before but pointing out that there was a change that the poster is just ignorant about”
Oh, but just to set the record more straight one has to point out that a poster linked to news that the medal of Ali was found in the river, not so, the origin of that is from a parody site. AFAIK the biographer of Ali did report a long time ago that Ali fessed up and just lost the medal in Florida. IIRC Ali eventually got a replacement medal from the Olympic committee.
Obvious troll is obvious.
Yeah, on this site, we don’t do your work for you. If you hadn’t got the hint from the bombardment of two dozen or so “Cites!,” then you’ll never understand the intellectual dishonesty if claiming things you don’t bother to substantiate. However, as this is undoubtedly nothing more than a troll, I’m sure you already know that. But that information is for other newbies, if we ever have any honest-to-God real ones.
Fine, I’m a troll. Great. Prove it! If I’m so clearly wrong, it should be fairly easy to discredit me.
The truth is, in an effort to discredit me, a few of you did look up my claims and found them to be true. But instead of admitting that you were wrong, you play the “link it” game. Such is a common tactic by you trolls.
Fact: Ali had a 78 IQ, putting him near the 17th percentile. The test was administered by the Army (a quick Google will cover that).
Fact: Ali spoke at a KKK rally in support of their message of segregation. Ali never disavowed those beliefs (an even quicker Google should cover that).
Fact: Ali spoke of his beliefs in segregation during an interview with the BBC (a quick search of YouTube should cover that).
Fact: Ali divorced his first wife because she wouldn’t adhere to his dress code (he boasts about this in his own words).
There are other fun things, like Ali’s deplorable treatment of Joe Frazier, his staged racism in asking a white boxer to call him the N-word, etc.
When you’re on the ropes, call the other guy a racist, right? Typical tactic.
You can stubbornly refute the facts in which I’ve provided. But I’ve said nothing racist.
As for what “you guys do here”: your refusal to do your own investigating is why you’re ignorant to this subject matter in the first play. If someone was making claims that I disagreed with, I would investigate myself, gleefully spiking their dishonesty right back into their faces.
Try me!
It’s a shame that so many are willing to overlook the terrible actions expressed by someone because that person is a great athlete. From Ali to Adrian Peterson; people are shallow.
Well, it is not my problem that you want to certify how dumb you are; read again what many are saying, what you reported is not overlooked, and you continue to ignore the march of time and the changes observed. What you are willing to ignore (that Ali did change a lot) and you demanding everyone else to ignore it too is what makes you look like an idiot.
You’ve got 2 things working against you. 1. You refuse to worship at the feet of Muhammad Ali 2. It is a common tactic to accuse a poster of being a troll if you don’t like their opinion.
Plus, if your not one of the “Board Favorites” then there’s a third strike against you.
I posted this in the Cafe Society thread - it’s a paragraph from the 1975 Playboy interview with Ali about how he wanted to be remembered.
Later on, Ali would post an edited version of this for his autobiography -
The later version omits any mention of Elijah Muhammed and changes “preacher” to “leader”. It also drops the mention of not bringing disgrace on his people.
I chose to quote the earlier version because it seemed to me to have an immediacy. I thought it showed a truly great person, in both his aspirations and his weak points.
Great people are not flawless. Great people are defined by their greatness - their bigness. Great people have Great flaws. That’s nothing to surprise or dismay us.
What happens next is what separates the truly great from the merely boastful. Great people overcome their great flaws. Ali put the Nation of Islam’s racism behind him. He embraced a genuine faith and attempted to empower all people. That’s why he went back to the Olympics to light the torch.
Ali wanted to be remembered as a leader who viewed all humankind as “his people”. It was a long road but he found his path in the end. That’s the thing that makes him great.
I should have included both versions of this in my original post. I guess I’ll drop a breadcrumb over in the Cafe thread.