Why Asians have a kinship with Muhammad Ali, a 'Black Asiatic'

Boxing historians consider the Thrilla in Manila between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to be
one of the greatest fights of all time.

By Louis Chan
Reprinted from AsAm News

From the classic Thrilla in Manila in 1975 to his visit to South Korea to his worldwide charisma and courage to stand up in opposition to the Vietnam War and oppression of the underclass, Muhammad Ali, 74, had a deep impact on Asians worldwide, including those in America.

As word of his death in Phoenix spread Friday night, the tributes began pouring in. The boxing legend died after being hospitalized for respiratory issues and a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.

The height of his career arguably occurred in Manila in 1975 when he beat Joe Frazier in one of the most memorable championship fights in boxing history–the Thrilla to Manila.

The fight put Manila on the worldwide map. The owner of Amanita Arena where the match was held, promised to build a mall in Ali's honor to commemorate the fight. The Ali Mall in Quezon City opened a year after the Thrilla in Manila and was the first major shopping mall in the country. 

Ali also had a big impact on Asians in sports and two of the biggest quickly reacted to Ali’s death.

In the Philippines, Ali’s legend is surpassed perhaps only by boxer (now, Senator) Manny Pacquiao.

Tiger Woods whose mother is Thai, called Ali a champion “in so many ways.”

Muhammad Ali visits South Korea in 1976

A year after the fight in Manila, Ali visited American troops in South Korea. Thousands of Koreans lined the streets in honor of the boxing champ as he drove in from the airport in Seoul.

Ali was born Cassius Clay in 1942 but changed his name in 1964 when he joined the Nation of Islam. Citing his opposition to the Vietnam War in 1977 and his religious beliefs, he refused to be drafted into the military and eventually was stripped of his boxing titles. His conviction on draft evasion was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court four years later.

"When Ali went on his anti-Vietnam War speaking tour in the late 1960’s, it was primarily an effort to substitute his income after his boxing ban," according to an exhibit RE: Collections, project of the Asian Pacific Center that will be on exhibit this summer at the Smithsonian. "But while his membership in the Nation of Islam (NOI) and friendship with civil rights leader Malcolm X aligned his anti-war stance with the Black liberation movement, it also put him in a ripe position to counter widespread anti-Asian sentiment in a time when there were no Asian American media icons to do so." 

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“My enemy is the whitepeople, not Viet Cong or Chinese or Japanese,” Ali announced in a 1967 speech. Only two years after the public had been exposed to its first glimpses of war footage, Ali added dimension to the media’s portrayal of Vietnamese which otherwise illustrated them as faceless enemies and victims.

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” Ali said about his resistance to the draft. “Shoot them for what? They never called me ni*ger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father…. How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

Ali’s expressed kinship with Asians was not merely a circumstance of the war taking place in Vietnam. In fact, he and members of the Nation of Islam (NOI) identified as “Black Asiatic,” a concept tracing back at least as early as the beginning of the 20th Century. Japan’s 1905 victory in the Russo-Japanese War became a point of inspiration among a number of Asian and African nations, the platform for imagining a non-white coalition embraced by the likes of Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen and African American leader Marcus Garvey. 

Concepts such as the Black Asiatic, third-world liberation and a “dark-skinned race” eventually became elemental to the founding of the NOI by Elijah Muhammad. In later years, Malcolm X adopted the term Afro American but Ali, retained the term "Asiatic" as a mechanism to bridge the plights of African Americans, Vietnamese and minorities alike.

Sudip Bhattacharya, a PhD candidate from Rutgers University and a staff writer for AsAmNews, recalled on his personal blog when he was just 7 how he channeled Ali’s courage to take on bullies and racists in his neighborhood in Queens.

“I remember staying where I was and telling them “Yea, I’m Ali and I’ll knock you out,” wrote Bhattacharya. “They paused. We didn’t fight and they moved on. I already could associate images of Ali and stories of him as examples of someone who didn’t shy away from what he believed in. He was a proud Black man, and even though I didn’t understand race back then, or why exactly these White people kept bothering us, I had this image of Ali beside me too, not fighting for the sake of fighting, but believing strongly that as folks of color, you can be defiant, and free. ‪#‎ripAli‬”

Rajan Zed, President of Universal Society of Hinduism in Nevada, said that with Ali’s death, the “world had lost someone unique and brave; a humanitarian who challenged the status quo.” Zed called Ali a “global ambassador for cross-cultural understanding; who stood up for many and who symbolized the victory of the human spirit.”

-- Views from the Edge contributed to this article.

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April 30, forty years ago.

The Vietnam Memorial rises from the depths as one of it's legs points towards the Washington Monument.

I COULDN'T let today, April 30, 2015, go by without mentioning the 40th Anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War Memorial is one of the most emotionally moving monuments in Washington D.C. Designed by Maya Lin, a 21-year old Chinese American student, the memorial design was initially criticized because critics thought it was making a negative political statement. Critics wanted something more heroic and patriotic.

The simplicity of the design belies the emotion welling up inside you as you descend one of the legs of the V-shaped memorial. You read the engraved names as you descend down the path -- one name, two, four, until you get to center of the V. There are so many names the columns of names of the dead are over your head. Then it hits you in the gut. The sheer number of names of those American servicemen who died in that war is overwhelming. Over 58,000 of them. I went to high school with some of them. Some are relatives.

You look up and amidst the engraved names, the polished black granite reflects an image of the visitor. Then you get a second jolt with the realization: All these soldiers, they died for you. A few were my high school classmates. I was related to two others.

No matter what your political beliefs are, you can't help but be moved. It took an effort to hold back the emotions welling up inside me.

Then visitors walk up the slope of the other leg of the V. Thousands of names, hundreds and finally a single name. You have come out of the wedge that divided our country;  away from the black granite with all those names; away from the depths. In the distance you can see the Washington Monument. You can see the horizon again

Located discreetly amongst the trees near the memorial was another monument. It was a more traditional statue dedicated to the women who served in that war. In that era, women were not allowed in combat units so most women served in support units, like the combat nurses depicted in the statue. At the base of the statue was a note that took my breath away.

"I can't remember your name but I just wanted to say thanks for saving my life." It was signed, "One of many."

The tears came forth.

Nixon was even worst than I thought - Part 1

Martin Luther King spoke at Cal's Sproul Plaza in 1967,  outlining how civil rights included being against the war.

IN 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese staged the Tet Offensive demonstrating how vulnerable American and South Vietnamese forces were and how fragile the Saigon government was.

In America the anti-war movement was gaining steam with each casualty report coming out of the Vietnam war. Nowhere was the anti-war movement stronger that at our country's college campuses. UC Berkeley, where I was starting my second year, was in the center of the storm. 

Richard Nixon

Even though I was in ROTC, I wasn't immune to the sentiment of my peers in regards to the war. In some ways, those of us in ROTC had more at stake than most. It was a difficult time for everyone and I was no exception. I was torn. I struggled. On one hand, I wholeheartedly agreed with my friends about the war. On the other hand, I attended pro-war seminars and lectures trying to find justification for being part of the military conducting what I felt was an unjust war where the U.S. shouldn't have been involved. These efforts failed.

To people outside of the campus -- people in the Midwest and those political leaders in Washington, D.C. -- it might have appeared that the country was on the border of a real revolution. The Beatles came out with a song titled "Revolution," and people who didn't listen to the lyrics thought it advocated revolution. (Video below)

Other social forces were converging - the civil rights movement, the country was still shaken by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the Black Panthers were carrying their guns in the streets, the Brown Berets looked threatening, Asian students and professors were grumbling at S.F. State planning the Third World Strike with their allies in the Chicano and black studies departments --  stirring the pot and added to this bubbling cauldron of social unrest was the anti-war movement. 

To lovers of the status quo, it indeed might have looked like the country and the old social order were on the verge of collapse. 

That sentiment forced President Johnson to decide not to run for reelection and the war was THE central issue of the Presidential campaign which pitted former Vice President Richard Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

All of those memories and feelings came rushing back to me last month with the revelation of Nixon's role in sabotaging the peace talks between North and South Vietnam.

As if Watergate wasn’t enough to forever taint President Nixon’s record of public service, if he were alive today, he would be in jail for being a traitor to our country.

I didn’t think that this type of political commentary would fit in this blog’s format but I’m so angry, I had to write about it. Why mainstream media isn’t all over this story with 10 different angles; talking heads would be analyzing this on all our networks; editorials would be lamenting Nixon’s true legacy and Fox News would have figured out a way to twist the facts around and blame Obama – is beyond me.

The state of mainstream media these days is so sad I shouldn’t be surprised at their timidity. I guess the latest suntanning efforts of the Kardasians is more important.

For years, it was rumored that Nixon was behind the failure of President Johnson to negotiate a peace treaty with North Vietnam in 1968. The audiotapes of President Lyndon Johnson White House conversations revealed that the president accused Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign of treason for undermining the peace negotiations to end the war in Vietnam.

It wasn’t until this summer that those rumors were confirmed.

TO BE CONTINUED