Charles P Pierce- A child of contradiction, Muhammad Ali was an essential American
Ever since the word came out of Phoenix that Muhammad Ali had gone off to just about the last remaining glory it was his to attain, I’ve had a bit of Walt Whitman’s verse banging around in my head. It’s from Song Of Myself, and it’s just about the most American fragment of poetry I can recall.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
It was true of him, and it is certainly true of the country that produced him, because what is America except a massive contradiction in history? It’s right there in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, the country’s original birth certificate.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
And there it is, written by a Virginia slaveowner. Dr. King called it a promissory note that had gone unredeemed by the country that had been founded on that revolutionary assertion. But it was more than that. It was a land mine in history, exploding over and over again, usually in bloody murder, but also in the bloodless language of law and custom. If he is remembered as nothing else, let Muhammad Ali be remembered as a child of that great contradiction, as are we all. Even the name he abandoned as his “slave name” had a story that doubled back on itself in fascinating and, yes, violent ways.
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http://www.si.com/boxing/2016/06/04/muhammad-ali-death-cassius-clay-america
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