Ali's Racial Identity

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focused on how white Americans talk about Ali as this icon that transcended race, but Smith makes the point that this distorts the reality of Ali’s life and what he meant to people around the world as well as Americans. He redefined his identity calling for racial unity he declared, “I’m not an American, I’m a black man (Smith, 2017).” Between the 1960-1970 various publications and documentaries portrayed Ali as not a symbol of peace, tolerance, and unity. Most of the time they just point out how Ali shamelessly denigrated Joe Frazier. Ali’s refusal to get drafted in Vietnam made him a unifying force among African Americans and inspired support from nationalists and integrationists. But white commentators have inaccurate Ali’s legacy by erasing

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