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Ali's Logical Analysis of Societal Norms

In his interview with Michael Parkinson, Ali blatantly explains the ingrained racism that overflows 1960s society through the depiction of angels, derogatory terms centered around black versus white, and even the names of dessert foods. Ali recalls asking his mother “Why is the Lord’s Supper all white men?” and “angels are white...what happened to all the black angels?”.  From a young age Ali notes that even in widely-used depictions of an afterlife, African Americans were innately subordinated and reminded of that ideology by religious images.  Furthermore, Ali questions the racist undertone of the English language, directing his audience’s attention to the use of the word “blackmail” to denote a criminal offense.  While criticisms may mark this as an overly-critical analysis of the our language, he makes a logical argument that the word “black” carries a negative connotation that the word “white” does not.  Furthering his point, Ali points towards the name of two common desserts that combine these racial prejudices.  First, “angel fruit cake was a white cake,” associating angelic qualities with strictly white or caucasians. Secondly, “devil food cake was the chocolate cake,” furthering the embedded prejudices of the English language.  Through a simple analysis of societal norms in the 1960s, Ali presents a logical argument to hopefully open the eyes of the public to the abounding, inescapable racism facing African Americans in the 1960s.

 By Brennan Maher

Comments

  1. The Women's Rights Movement ENG101October 9, 2017 at 12:49 PM

    This was a super enlightening post! I never thought about the relationship between race and the connotations of white and black in the english language, but after reading this I started to think more critically about the symbolism of colors. Race and religious iconography is an argument that I've seen multiple times on social media, so in a sense Ali set a precedent for this argument. I found it especially interesting how his argument pointed out all the ingrained prejudice within language seem to affect how people think without them noticing.

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