Why would you hate Ali?
If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait till I kick Foreman's behind
Why was Ali so controversial? He wasn't the first outspoken African-American, nor was he the first person to lay bare the institutions of power that underpinned White supremacy in the United States. What prompted the visceral hatred and the vitriol that Ali was subject to? Methinks that rather than Ali's ability to talk back to power, it was about how he talked back to power that was so infuriating for White America. I refer here to Ali's unabashed, unfettered, full expression of self. Power seeks absoluteness, and naturally, it is most under threat when this absoluteness is challenged.
A lot of what Ali said was clearly absurd, but the matter-of-factness that overlay his outlandish statements made it all the more infuriating:
I'm so mean I make medicine sick
I would have handcuffed lightening and thrown thunder in jail
I murdered a stone and hospitalised a brick
No Viet Cong ever called me a Nigger (Yeah, this one really stung)
Ali said all of what he said, backed it up with his boxing prowess, and proceeded without reprimand. Why was it so important for both the White journalists in the first 25 minutes to go at length to argue that Ali wouldn't win? They barely compared his boxing ability to that of Foreman, instead, they attempted to expose vulnerabilities in the otherwise cocky and arrogant expression of Ali. He's scared; and the closer he gets to the first, the more scared he is. This was to say that Ali's arrogance is a facade, behind which lies a scared, unsure black man. Black people are supposed to be vulnerable, aren't they? They always have been! Never before has a black man, not in the shadows but in the mainstream, presented such a full expression of self, wherein his expression fundamentally turns the tables and makes the White man powerless and vulnerable. Why else would there have been such a visceral hatred for him?
Ali's pride in his blackness and his Muslim-ness. particularly the eccentricity of his arrogance, did what no one else had done for the African-American community: it had placed the black man on the turf of the White Man- sport, and on this turf shown that the black man too could express himself fully. That the black man could, in a way, impose his superiority on the white man, and essentially get away with it. Ali was revered, his cockiness appreciated, and his boxing idolised. This was unacceptable, because power seeks to repress and limit, and the power of the Whites sought to repress and limit the expression of black-ness. For power, this expression must be limited to nothing-ness, to bare life. Ali did the exact opposite: he presented black-ness in its fullness.
Why was Ali so controversial? He wasn't the first outspoken African-American, nor was he the first person to lay bare the institutions of power that underpinned White supremacy in the United States. What prompted the visceral hatred and the vitriol that Ali was subject to? Methinks that rather than Ali's ability to talk back to power, it was about how he talked back to power that was so infuriating for White America. I refer here to Ali's unabashed, unfettered, full expression of self. Power seeks absoluteness, and naturally, it is most under threat when this absoluteness is challenged.
A lot of what Ali said was clearly absurd, but the matter-of-factness that overlay his outlandish statements made it all the more infuriating:
I'm so mean I make medicine sick
I would have handcuffed lightening and thrown thunder in jail
I murdered a stone and hospitalised a brick
No Viet Cong ever called me a Nigger (Yeah, this one really stung)
Ali said all of what he said, backed it up with his boxing prowess, and proceeded without reprimand. Why was it so important for both the White journalists in the first 25 minutes to go at length to argue that Ali wouldn't win? They barely compared his boxing ability to that of Foreman, instead, they attempted to expose vulnerabilities in the otherwise cocky and arrogant expression of Ali. He's scared; and the closer he gets to the first, the more scared he is. This was to say that Ali's arrogance is a facade, behind which lies a scared, unsure black man. Black people are supposed to be vulnerable, aren't they? They always have been! Never before has a black man, not in the shadows but in the mainstream, presented such a full expression of self, wherein his expression fundamentally turns the tables and makes the White man powerless and vulnerable. Why else would there have been such a visceral hatred for him?
Ali's pride in his blackness and his Muslim-ness. particularly the eccentricity of his arrogance, did what no one else had done for the African-American community: it had placed the black man on the turf of the White Man- sport, and on this turf shown that the black man too could express himself fully. That the black man could, in a way, impose his superiority on the white man, and essentially get away with it. Ali was revered, his cockiness appreciated, and his boxing idolised. This was unacceptable, because power seeks to repress and limit, and the power of the Whites sought to repress and limit the expression of black-ness. For power, this expression must be limited to nothing-ness, to bare life. Ali did the exact opposite: he presented black-ness in its fullness.
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