The Champ
It’s well-known that Muhammad Ali refused induction into the United States military to serve in the Vietnam War. He’s often been accused, maliciously and incorrectly, of “dodging” the draft. It’s not the case. Dodging the draft is what Dick Cheney and Ted Nugent did. Ali objected to serving on religious and moral grounds. The mainstream media despised him. The Johnson and Nixon administrations responded by bugging his phone. Conservatives thought him a traitor. So did liberals, including many in the Civil Rights movement. Vietnam was Johnson's war in 1967.It’s also been misreported that Ali, the most important athlete ever to live, was a pacifist. By refusing service in '67, he risked five years imprisonment, and this was not because he didn’t believe in war. He did so because he took a principled stand against a specific war. You probably know that Ali made the proclamation that “no Viet Cong ever called me a nigger” but his entire statement opposing the war at the time drew sharp distinctions between battle with cause and battle without. "I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over... The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people, or myself by becoming a tool to those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom, and equality... (my italics) If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years."
The Champ’s most important legacy upon this Earth was drawing together, for those that could not see as clearly as he could, that the struggle of people in Southeast Asia was the exact same struggle as the one for black freedom at home, and the one for black freedom in Africa. The black, brown, and poor had the same oppressor. He taught us that. Ali held no elected office, but he was a world leader. He inspired Martin Luther King Jr. in his protests. He inspired Nelson Mandela in prison. The first visual symbol of the Black Panther movement, the stalking black wildcat, appeared over the slogan "WE are the greatest."
As the heavyweight champion of the world, Ali had a number of extraordinary gifts-- the great power, speed, reflex, and instinct in the ring, the intelligence, wit, humor, courage, and voice outside of it. His courage and voice were capable of regenerating inside the bodies of other people. But for his great physical gifts, don’t forget about the eyes. These, to me, were the greatest assets he possessed. He saw what few others could.
posted by CM @ 7:43 PM
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