Muhammad Ali Vaunted Not Himself, and Was Not Puffed Up: On Greatness, On Blackness
Jonathon Penny, Ph.D
Leader, Thinker, Innovator, Culture-maker, Problem-solver, Poet
From 2021
I woke up this morning thinking about Muhammad Ali.
He was remarkable, no question, but his boisterous vanity, his self-orientation, never sat well with me. I mean, I've had periods of self-assurance and even arrogance, but it never manifested in boasting or claims of superiority. So Ali's performative claims always rankled me, even if they were (obviously) justified.
But I woke up this morning to a realization born, in part, of my theological shift away from literalism. Jesus, for the grandest instance, I consider--yes, I think, "above all" other claims about him--the best expression of the best impulses in human being: care for the other over self, determined vulnerability, and a radical willingness to "lay down one's life for one's friends," whatever their disposition.
Ali knew--was entirely conscious of and intentional about--what he could be and what he became; and he knew, I think, that he was necessarily more than himself. Ali was one of many revelations to a society that hated black bodies, faces, voices, and minds because it feared them: feared their power, their presence, their potential, and (that basest of projected expectations) their anger and the possibility of retribution. I think he recognized that his notoriety and his general appeal afforded him access to minds and hearts than most black persons had.
But the realization for me (and this will have been plain to some of you) was that the vaunting, the boasting, and the performed ego weren't (entirely and definitely not mostly) about Ali the man, but were a celebration and an assertion of Black value. "I am the Greatest!" was a personal claim, yes, but it was also a way of saying, "See me! See us! See our beauty and strength and intelligence!" And it wasn't a plea, it was a demand. Ali demanded and then commanded our attention, and in directing that attention to his person, his achievements, his peculiarity, he directed our attention to a whole population. It was their greatness--actual and potential--, their pain, their beauty he was requiring us to see.
(I say this as a secular humanist): Ali was prophetic and, in the general sense of the word, messianic. It's just harder to recognize that when the mantle is a cape and the burden is a crown.