The contest over Muhammad Ali began even as news spread of his passing.
Amid solemn recollection were the contrarian takes: regarding his name (here and here), the claim that he said far more racist things than Donald Trump, and that his death was being politicised.
Perhaps such contests fit the man. In death as in life, he defies distillation.
Muhammad Ali was a pugilist-poet. He was as intimidating in front of the microphone as he was in the boxing ring. The cadence of his speech, the sting in his rhyme, the lilt in his wit — he delivered knockouts bare-knuckled. His style, according to Rolling Stone, is in the hip-hop DNA.
His legend straddles the violence of his sport and the violence in which he refused to participate. Boxing can be brutal but it has rules and finite duration. In war, there are no rules and no one wins. Ali recognised a larger violence, chose his enemies, and reimagined bravery.
The attempts to sublimate this legacy — such as comments about him 'transcending' race — resemble the systematic appropriation of Martin Luther King Jr by conservatives.
Dr King is often positioned in polarity against Malcolm X, as a nonviolent pacifist. In truth, both carried radical demands, employed disruptive methods, and were treated as dangerous by authorities. Muhammad Ali was not only their contemporary, but cut through black ideological divides.
Ali was only in his 20s during the civil rights era. He grew up at a time when in many states, blacks were virtually barred from public life. They were forced to enter the rear door of buses and establishments. They could not sit down at certain restaurants or movie theatres. In southern states, voting was made as difficult as possible for them to do.
"The grandson of a slave, his career ascending at time when blacks were being shot in their struggle for non-discrimination, he never let white America forget that he was black and Muslim."
Then, and perhaps even now, sport was one of few areas in which a black man could be seen to participate and succeed. Ali breached the terms of that success. He wasn't grateful. He wasn't apologetic. He was loud and confrontational. The grandson of a slave, his career ascending at time when blacks were being shot in their struggle for non-discrimination, he never let white America forget that he was black and Muslim. 'I am America,' he declared. 'I am the part you