Muhammad Ali on Race and Marriage
December 26, 2011
IN THIS 1971 BBC interview, Muhammad Ali passionately defends racial identity and explains why he objects to interracial marriage. It’s well worth watching for his unapologetic and commonsense arguments. Sir Michael Parkinson, his interviewer, is a typical liberal sap. He insists that the races are all the same and only “society has made us different.” To which Ali instantly responds, “No, God made us different.”
Ali is applauded by the audience. “It’s nature to just want to be with your own,” he says. “I want to be with my own…. You a hater of your people if you don’t want to stay who you are. Are you ashamed of what God made you? God didn’t make no mistake when he made us all as we are.”
“I think that’s a philosophy of despair,” Parkinson says.
“Despair?” Ali says. “That ain’t no despair. [applause] I tell you no woman on this earth … can please me like my American black woman… I want to be with my own. I love my people.”
No white person could make the same arguments today without risking his livelihood and accusations of serious psychological illness. Was Ali sick and evil when he defended racial identity? No, he was the most normal of men. He was healthy and honest.
— Comments —
Buck, who sent the video, writes:
Ali’s take on this important subject was another thing, that, as a very young man, I admired about him. He had a unique and very effective way of expressing himself.
Hannon writes:
Thanks so much for posting this. It exceeded my expectations and was a superb display of the chasm between the truly sick modern liberal philosophy (in 1971 no less) and, as you say, a normal healthy view of the subject at hand. It was also an early and very powerful demonstration of British cultural suicide as against American exceptionalism. Of course, the BBC was the icing on the cake!