LOL! Never heard the Muhammad Ali one.... looking it up.
It is all about context. Put the black doll with pandas and the white doll with monkeys; perfectly OK. Make a white doll eating watermelon and a black doll eating an ear of corn is perfectly acceptable, switching the two is not.
Joe Frazier is a gorilla and it’s gonna be a Thrilla in Manilla.
I won’t put it in quotes because I’m sure I didn’t get it exact. And he had a rubber toy gorilla about a foot tall during that press conference and he kept punching it. About 10 years ago he apologized all around for how he treated Joe during the various press conferences of their bouts. He was pretty hard core.