Ali was incomprehensible to me at the time. I was alive and aware when he changed his name and religion, and when he spoke against the United States’ foreign policy and wars. It was incomprehensible to me that any American would do anything but support the United States as-is, especially to the point where any alleged mistakes are not talked about in polite company. It was incomprehensible to me that anyone would change their religion from Christianity to Islam, and be so confident and positive about it. It was incomprehensible to me that he was so universally admired, respected, beloved by so many people when he was so adamantly anti-American. The adulation he received from his fans, the following he received when he toured–it made no sense. He gave up his birth name to take on a foreign name, he gave up his birth right to take on a foreign religion. Americans, Christians, don’t do that. Maybe he was a communist like Martin Luther King, Jr. I didn’t know, but at the time the vilification in my tribe was near-universal, from sheer blinding hatred to the smug evisceration of his character by the elite. I wasn’t emotionally angry–but I agreed. Ali wasn’t really a loyal American because he spoke against America.
He is the first person I knew contemporaneously who was unbowed when beaten and unafraid when challenged, who did not fit into the box he was supposed to fit into. My God, he stood up to the United States military, the godliest military ever, and said they sending black people to kill people in Vietnam in order to make white people feel safe, and that was just an utter lie. America was good, and he was completely wrong. We were liberating Vietnam and who knows what catastrophe might ensue if we didn’t keep on killing people to protect America?
It has taken me a long time to undo my reactions and to revert my opinions, and in all that time my ignorance and willful blindness kept me from enjoying his character and appreciating he accomplishments. It kept me from listening to what he said, and in considering what he said as being true, and perhaps worth heeding.
I mourn him because he was an extraordinary person, but I don’t think I can be part of that crowd who is deeply affected by the loss of someone they have known all along. They have earned the right to mourn. I am too late, even to the funeral.
I missed out on all that Muhammad Ali was because I was too blinded by fear and hate and anger to listen to what he said and appreciate what he was doing, from his extraordinary showmanship in boxing to his reasoned comments about so many things to his transformation into a world figure working for peace.
Rest in peace, great lion of God.