Not sure just why I am so moved by the not untimely death of Ali. It might have something to do with how he used his fame in that dangerous and exploitative sport to transcend the sport– even while being exploited, to refuse to be exploited. This from a “New Yorker” blog by David Remnick:
“They stand around and say, ‘Good fight, boy: you’re a good boy; good goin’,” Ali said, in 1970. “They don’t look at fighters to have brains. They don’t look at fighters to be businessmen, or human, or intelligent. Fighters are just brutes that come to entertain the rich white people. Beat up on each other and break each other’s noses, and bleed, and show off like two little monkeys for the crowd, killing each other for the crowd. And half the crowd is white. We’re just like two slaves in that ring. The masters get two of us big old black slaves and let us fight it out while they bet: ‘My slave can whup your slave.’ That’s what I see when I see two black people fighting.” It was almost as if Ali, at the height of his fame, was hinting that we were all complicit in something fallen and dubious, even as we were rooting him on.
What modern athlete, much less one at Ali’s level, has ever talked with such political complexity, ambiguity, or engagement?
I never had thought before this about the role Ali played a role in my own life. There were plenty of reasons to feel justified in trying to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam war, as so many of us, the lucky ones anyway, were doing. But Ali’s model was sure part of what made it a righteous (and not a shameful) thing to do. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong”– he said that before the country as a whole began to get the idea that it was a bad war. It was a great way of putting what many of us felt.
Ali provides an instructive contrast with other famous athletes who have done little or nothing to stand up for their race or their condition: Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are two names that come to mind, two of the most famous. What huge good for the world they seem content not to do. They had transcendent skill at their sport, but have chosen not to be transcendent of it. Why not? Maybe they just have no quarrel with the economic system that has rewarded them so well. But maybe it has something to do with not wanting to ruffle feathers. With not having the courage. Ali was brave in the ring, but much braver out of it: a heavyweight world political contender.
It’s not too late for either Woods or Jordan of course (or other famous athletes). One hopes they are learning from what people are saying about the meaning of Ali’s life.
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