BT: When Floyd talked about racism in boxing, I think some media outlets missed his message. He wasn't talking about fans being racist when it comes to liking him. What he was talking about was people in the industry being racist. In other words, the movers and shakers in the industry; the people that have the power to make decisions, like network executives, and the people that have the ability to control the narrative, like the media. When it comes to the people inside the boxing industry, do you think there's any truth to Floyd's comments?
VH: Well, you know what, Ben? I'm a product of an activist family. I lived long enough before the Civil Rights Movement came along and of course I'm alive after it. Before the Civil Rights Movement, I personally experienced it, whether it be from the Oakland police department or whether it be from teachers at school. I'll give you a great example. My father was in the Navy and he was on an aircraft carrier. I love aircraft carriers and I used to build them and I used to draw them; the whole bit. In the second grade, I was drawing them and I was building them and I remember one teacher put in her remarks that I had a strange fascination for ships. Now, why would my fascination be strange? I loved ships. My mother actually went to the school and corrected her on her statement because it was obvious that she made the statement without thinking.
A lot of times, people are programmed in a way to think that you're not supposed to think this way or you're not supposed to have this available to you. There are people that are born into this world and they learn from a very early age that this is meant to be for me. They see themselves on TV, they see themselves on billboards; when you go to school, you didn't learn about nobody else's history except for Caucasian history. You didn't learn about yours, your didn't learn about anybody's else's; only their history. It gives minorities and people of color a negative image of themselves. Whether this is by design or whether this is by coincidence, it still tends to give the same result.
So when I bring it back to what Floyd is saying, I'm sure along the line that he has experienced it. Whether he hears people making comments about the way his uncle speaks or his dad speaks. People have made fun on camera about their speech impediment. Both of them have been called crackheads by fans and media alike. There are people in the media right now that show open disdain for Floyd. If a fan writes in and has an opinion or asks a question, the response is very open to the fact that, hey, this guy is a piece of this and he's a piece of that, so I'm sure that he experiences that, but what they have to understand is that he has children and they read about this. He has loved ones and they read about it.
I mean, if you want to talk about racism in boxing, we only have to go back 100 years and nothing much has really changed. It's not a secret in professional boxing that the African American fighter is a hard sale and a hard person to promote. Now, he becomes easy to promote when he plays the buffoon. He becomes easy to promote when he does some things that are unthinkable. Whether he slaps a person in public or whether he runs his car off the road and hits somebody or whether he uses profanity when a microphone is in his face, he becomes easy to promote, but this is not required of the other fighters that are different racial ethnic background. Instead, you see the dignity, you see the family togetherness, you see the thoughtfulness that's involved in that fighter's life and you respect him for who he is, and then the dirt that that person does is pretty much covered up as much as possible.
If you want to talk about racism, I mean, we can just start with Jack Johnson, where rules were made up to stop him from living his life. He was a marked man on the freeway because he had a preference in women. Rules were made up to get that belt back from him. Now if he would've been doing all this and the heayvweight championship wasn't on the line, I don't think a lot of these rules would've been made and a lot of these laws wouldn't have been passed. A lot of African American fighters gave away their health, gave away their life, and everything to try and achieve a goal that was pushed back all because of their color. They were deprived a chance because of their color. Even Joe Louis pretty much had to pay his way to a championship fight. It would be unheard of today that I'd give you a championship fight, but you have to give me 10% of your earnings if I give you this shot. If he's worthy of the title shot, that shouldn't be a question. We can also go back to Joe when he lost to Schmelling the first time. Some of the newspaper articles that were written about him and some of the pictures depicted him as a gorilla and as a lazy goon and things like that. I mean, very, very hurtful things.
Even Ali, Ali is revered today, but when he was Cassius Clay, just because his religious preferences were not in line with what other people thought they were, you know, they just started this hunt to get this belt from up under him. Now here's a man who flunked the military test and then gets reclassified without ever being tested again, right, because we're going to make an example out of you and we're going to show you what time it is, you see. We're going to make sure that you don't go around running your mouth and bragging and things like that. We're going to make an example out of you. So you deprive him of a living, you take away his prime years, you take his passport; you not only not let him fight, you put him behind bars outside of prison walls. But later on, he becomes a hero.
Sonny Liston, who desperately wanted to change people's perception about him as he came up. People have to ask themselves if they came up in a family of 18 in dirt poor situations and the daddy done just beat them all the time to the point that they had to leave home in the 3rd or 4th grade, and you go into a strange city and you look out of place because you're big for your age and everything else; he was vilified because of his mob connections, yet we glorify the same mobsters in movies. We glorified the same mobsters in American history. They say it's part of American history. Well, they ran boxing at the time. Look at the guys like Ike Williams, who couldn't get an opportunity unless they were mob connected, and then they're taking your money, they're fixing fights, and everything else. Boxing was not a sport that one could really be trusted in at that time, but again, the people that got the worst of the type of operation were African American. They were also racists towards Jewish fighters. Jewish fighters had to change their names. I believe Benny Leonard, that was not his real name. I believe he had to come up with a different name just to fight. Sugar Ray Robinson was deprived of a title shot after being 91-0; he still hadn't had a title shot.