Ali is funny. He has some good points. It shows that even an advocate of segregation does not necessarily do so out of racial hatred. This is free speech which would be strongly condemned today to the point that if Ali were at the peak of his career today, he would lose that career for these words alone.
On the other hand, advocating for an integrated society is also free speech.
More significantly, Ali clearly has white ancestry as well as black. This undercuts a lot of his arguments. He says it’s natural (and means that it’s ONLY natural) to want to marry someone who has the same ethnic and cultural background as you do. That may be what he wants, and that’s fine. But it may not be what others want, including some of his own ancestors. Ali’s looks came from ancestors who didn’t subscribe to his beliefs.
Genealogist Antoinette O’Brien discovered that one of Ali’s great-grandfathers emigrated to the United States from County Clare.
In the 1860s, Abe Grady left Ennis in County Clare to start a new life in America. He would make his home in Kentucky and marry a free African-American woman.
The couple started a family, and one of their daughters was Odessa Lee Grady. Odessa met and married Cassius Clay, Sr. and on January 17, 1942, Cassius junior was born.
In 2009, Ali visited County Clare with his then wife to connect with his Irish roots, where he received a resounding welcome from the populace. He was mobbed by tens of thousands of locals who turned out to meet him and show him the area where his great-grandfather came from.
Ali’s views on many subjects, including intergration, changed as he matured and gained more wisdom. I suspect that this revelation about his Caucasian ancestry had much to do with it.