Muhammad Ali was a boxer in the ring and a fighter all his life.
He was a proud black man. He was a proud Muslim. He was a man of consequence, thinking and speaking freely. He stood up for his beliefs, and he would not be knocked down.
In his last 32 years, as he battled Parkinson’s Disease and his voice fell to a whisper, Ali grew safe and benign, even cuddly, in the eyes of mainstream America, which is largely to say white America.
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We forget how reviled he was in 1964 when he converted to Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay, which he called a slave name. We forget how threatening he seemed to the status quo. Some sports columnists refused even to use his new name, as if they, and not he, set the terms of his manhood and freedom.
We forget how vehemently Ali was condemned for refusing to serve in the military, saying it would be against his religion to fight in Vietnam. “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” he said.
But Ali never stopped being Ali, not really. It was our nation that changed, in part thanks to him.
Even as a teenage Golden Gloves boxer, Ali delivered his boasts with a twinkling wit that belied the fierceness. And though we were all charmed when, in his later years, he threw mock punches at wide-eyed children in hospitals, we should not have been surprised. There was always something about the man a goodness that was a kind of innocence.
Ali said plenty of outrageous stuff in his day, no doubt, but for good reason he won over a whole nation and the world.
And, to his last days, he could still throw a punch.
As recently as last December, Ali took a swing at Donald Trump for calling for a ban on Muslims coming into the country. “We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” Ali said.
Muhammad Ali was so pretty.
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