The late great boxer Muhammad Ali was never known to mince words, especially when it came to his Black pride. He once said, “I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.”
However, one of Ali‘s sons says his late dad, a former member of the Nation of Islam, would not have approved of the “racist” Black Lives Matter movement and the protestors.
This, despite the fact that Ali marched more than once with members of the Black revolutionary organization Black Panther Party and was known to be a vocal civil rights campaigner who called for an end to racism, and refused to sign up for the Vietnam War, The Daily Mail reported.
On the fourth anniversary of his death, Muhammad Ali Jr., Ali’s only biological son, said his father would have been upset at how the protests have turned to violence and looting following the police murder of George Floyd.
“Don’t bust up s–t, don’t trash the place,” Ali Jr. told The New York Post. “You can peacefully protest.
‘‘My father would have said, ‘They ain’t nothing but devils.’ My father said, ‘all lives matter.’ I don’t think he’d agree.
Ali Jr., a Muslim like his father, said this about Black Lives Matter: “I think it’s racist.”
“It’s not just Black lives matter,” Ali Jr. said during an interview with The Post. “White lives matter, Chinese lives matter, all lives matter, everybody’s life matters. God loves everyone — he never singled anyone out. Killing is wrong no matter who it is.”
On police brutality, Ali Jr. took the side of law enforcement.
“Police don’t wake up and think, ‘I’m going to kill a n—-r today or kill a white man,’” he said. “They’re just trying to make it back home to their family in one piece.”
On Floyd’s killing at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer, Ali Jr. said, “The officer was wrong with killing that person, but people don’t realize there was more footage than what they showed. The guy resisted arrest, the officer was doing his job, but he used the wrong tactic.”
Ali Jr., 47, is a father of two, lives in Hallandale Beach, Florida, and works as a landscape gardener and construction worker. He said he receives only a $1,000 monthly allowance from his father’s estimated $60-million estate. Ali died on June 3, 2016.
Ali Jr. is one of Ali’s nine children with four wives, including eight daughters and an adopted son, Asaad Amin. Junior was the fourth-born to Ali’s wife Belinda Boyd (Khalilah Ali).
Junior said he supports Donald Trump and that his father would have too.
“I think Trump’s a good president. My father would have supported him. Trump’s not a racist, he’s for all the people. Democrats are the ones who are racist and not for everybody.
“These (Democrat politicians) saying Black Lives Matter, who the hell are you to say that? You’re not even Black.
“Democrats don’t give a s–t about anybody. Hillary Clinton doesn’t give a s–t. She’s trying not to get locked up.
“Trump is much better than Clinton and Obama…The only one to do what he said he would do is Donald Trump.”
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 72: Jamarlin Martin Part 2. J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, may not be around but his energy is present in new Black politics.FBI agents and informants were used to weaken Marcus Garvey, the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers — in many cases for money and career advancement. How could this energy metastasize into the “New Blacks” politics in 2020? Jamarlin goes solo to discuss who is doing the trading and what is being traded to weaken the aggregate Black political position.
Ironically, Junior was stopped and detained twice by immigration officers at a Florida airport in 2017 amid Trump’s Muslim travel ban. At the time, he said he was singled out because he is Muslim and considered suing, The Daily Mail reported. Junior even spoke out against the ban at a forum on the consequences of Trump’s immigration policies at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 2017.
Ali seemed to not favor one political party over the other. He once endorsed liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter but also supported the reelection of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan (who was backed by only 9 percent of Black people), The Post reported.
