“At the age of 10, I formed a question in my mind, which was: how can you hate me when you don’t even know me? And now, for the next 56 years, I’ve been looking for the answer to that question.”
The son of American Foreign Service members, Daryl Davis grew up in many different countries and was exposed to a variety of cultures, religions, and ideologies. He became an internationally renowned musician, touring and performing with the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and B.B. King. But a personal experience with bigotry at a young age made him curious about why people hate.
“When I met this guy, he was a Grand Dragon. And he rose through the ranks to Imperial Wizard. And when he dropped out, because of this perception change and hanging out with me, he gave me his Klan robe and his hood,” says Mr. Davis.
Today, Mr. Davis has made a second career out of befriending white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Ku Klux Klan, helping over 200 of them to renounce their racist ideology.
“People ask me: Daryl, why don’t you burn that stuff? No, I’m not going to burn it,” says Mr. Davis, referring to his Klan paraphernalia. “Yes, it is despicable. But it’s also a part of our history. And you don’t burn our history: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. You expose it, so it doesn’t happen again.”
In this episode, we dive into Mr. Davis’s childhood, his passion for music, his encounters with the Klan, and the methodology he uses for helping them to renounce their racism.
Watch the video:
“The greatest weapon to combat racism, anti-Semitism, [and] all types of discrimination is the least expensive weapon known to man. It’s free, yet it is the most underused. It’s called conversation,” says Mr. Davis.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Daryl Davis, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Daryl Davis: It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Mr. Jekielek: You’ve made a life project of speaking with people who are enmeshed in hateful ideologies and inspiring them to step out of them. Please tell us how you got into this.
Mr. Davis: It all goes back to my childhood. I just turned 66 years of age, but let’s go back to when I was a kid. My parents were in the U.S. Foreign Service. I grew up as an American embassy kid living in different countries every two years and coming home in between. My first exposure to school was overseas and my classmates were from all over the world.
Any country who had an embassy where we were assigned, all of their kids went to the same embassy school. This child might have been from Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Czechoslovakia, France, or Germany, whoever had an embassy there. Since that was my first exposure to school, it became my baseline for what school was. This was in the 1960s.
When I came back home, I would either be in all black schools, or black and white schools, meaning the newly integrated schools. At that time, there was not the diversity that we have today in our country. I was probably living 10 years ahead of my time when I was overseas, because that multicultural environment in the schools had yet to come here. I couldn’t figure it out.
One time when I came back in 1968 at the age of 10 in the fourth grade, I was in an integrated school. Even though desegregation was passed by the Supreme Court in 1954, four years before I was born, schools did not integrate overnight. It took years. Even today in 2024, we’re still dealing with some of that.
I was in an integrated school and one of two black children in the entire school. The school was first grade through sixth grade, and I was in the fourth grade. There was a little black girl in second grade. Consequently, all of my friends were fourth and fifth graders who were white. Several of my friends invited me to join the Cub Scouts, which I did. I was the only black scout anywhere in the area.
We had a parade, and I was the only black scout participating in this parade. The streets were blocked off, and the sidewalks filled with white people waving and cheering, until we got to a certain point in this route. Suddenly, I’m getting hit with bottles and soda pop cans and small debris from the street by a small group of spectators off to my right on the sidewalk. I remember there being a couple of kids maybe a year or two older than me and a couple of adults who I assume were their parents.
They were throwing things at me. Never having had any precedent for this kind of behavior my first thought was. “Oh, these people over here don’t like the scouts.” That’s how naive I was. It wasn’t until my white scout leaders came running over and covered me with their own bodies and quickly escorted me out of the danger that I realized nobody else was getting this special protection.
I thought, “Why am I being targeted?” I had no clue. I kept asking them, “Why are they doing this? I didn’t do anything. What did I do?” I had no idea. All they would do is shush me and rush me along and tell me, “Keep moving, keep moving. Everything will be fine,” so I kept moving and everything was fine. They didn’t follow us.
By the end of the march they still had not answered my question as to why this was happening. When I got home my mother and father were cleaning me up and putting band-aids on me. They asked me, “How did you trip and fall down and get all scraped up?” I said, “I didn’t fall down,” then I told them what happened.
For the first time in my life my mother and father sat me down as an only child and explained to me at age 10 what racism was. I had never heard the word racism. I had no clue what they were talking about. My sphere consisted of people from all over the world and we all got along. This racism made no sense to me.
My ten-year-old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me before, never spoken to me, and knew nothing about me would want to hurt me for no other reason than the color of my skin. It made no sense. My parents had to be wrong because the people who were doing this to me in the parade did not look any different to me than my little white friends from school or my little white friends overseas, whether they were my fellow Americans or my little French, Danish, or Polish friends.
Again, this was in 1968 and a lot of things began happening with the culmination of the assassination of Dr. King. I then realized that my parents had not lied to me. This phenomenon called racism does exist, but I did not know why. At the age of 10, I formed a question in my mind, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” For the last 56 years, I’ve been looking for the answer to that question.
Mr. Jekielek: But through music, correct?
Mr. Davis: Yes, I made a left turn. My parents did not want me to be a musician.
Mr. Jekielek: You became a very successful musician and this was important on your journey to answer this question.
Mr. Davis: Yes, indeed. I heard Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard, the pioneers of rock and roll. I liked that kind of music and I said, “That’s what I’m going to do.” Back in the 1940s, there were Jim Crow laws where you and I could not sit together at a concert, even if we were both allowed into the building. Actually, I might not even have been allowed in some buildings.
But let’s say if you and I went to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra or Tommy Dorsey in the 1940s, we could not sit together. There were seating sections with ropes and signs hanging over them that said, “White patrons only. Colored seating only.” We could not cross sit and if they cross sat, they would be arrested. That was the law and that same law was in effect in the 1950s.
But two things happened in the 1950s. One was the creation of rock and roll by black artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Bo Diddley. It was popularized by white artists like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and others. That same law was in effect.
But the second thing that happened was when these people came out playing this new rhythm and new beat the white kids and black kids could not sit still. They wanted to move. They bounced up out of their seats and knocked over those signs and they were boogieing and dancing in the aisles together for the first time in American music history.
Police would come in and shut down the show because they were race mixing and that concert was over in the middle of the song, boom, done. Because they couldn’t have that. A lot of rock and roll concerts started getting banned. They were banned from different towns, not just in the South, but also in the North. These white kids and black kids who were dancing together to this music, to this new beat, they didn’t even know each other.
Because in the 1950s, black kids and white kids did not go to school together. Adults, city fathers, mayors, people like that, began blaming it on a communist plot. It was the devil’s music and it was corrupting white youth. They said, “We’ve got to stop this rock and roll because it’s integrating black kids and white kids.”
We give a lot of respect and respect is due to a lot of the civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and many other black and white people who marched, demonstrated, and did sit-ins and boycotts in order to bring white adults and black adults together. These rock and roll pioneers were achieving that with their music with the black and white youth. That’s another reason why I liked the original form of rock and roll.
Mr. Jekielek: What did your parents say when you decided that music was going to be your focus?
Mr. Davis: Oh, my goodness, we went round and round. My parents had taken me all over the world. I met kings, I met emperors, I met presidents of foreign countries and all kinds of people like that. They were hoping maybe I would get any job other than being a musician. But I was more focused on the king of rock and roll rather than the King of Jordan.
Mr. Jekielek: You ended up playing with Jerry Lee Lewis.
Mr. Davis: I did a lot of shows with Jerry Lee Lewis, yes. The main one that I played with in his band was Chuck Berry. Oftentimes it would be a rock and roll revival with Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard. I knew Jerry Lee very very well, but I played mostly most extensively with Chuck Berry. I had my own band as well.
Mr. Jekielek: I heard you speaking at an event and you told a powerful story about your first positive encounter with a Klansmen. Please tell us about that.
Mr. Davis: I majored in music and got my degree, so I wanted to work full-time playing music. Around that time, a movie came out called Urban Cowboy that featured a lot of country music. It was a big hit at the box office. A lot of bars and clubs that were playing Top 40 and other genres of music switched their format to country. If you want to play music full-time, you do what people want to hear.
I joined a country band. I was the only black guy in the band and usually the only black person anywhere we played. There was a lounge called the Silver Dollar Lounge in Frederick, Maryland, which sits about an hour and 20 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. The Silver Dollar Lounge had a reputation of being an all-white lounge. But there were no signs that said, “Whites only,” nothing like that.
But you knew that if you were black, you were not welcome. When you go somewhere where you’re not welcome and alcohol is being served, that is not a good combination. The band had played there before because they were pretty well-established in Maryland. I knew of this place, but I had never been there.
Now, we’re booked into the Silver Dollar Lounge and I go there with them. When I walked in, people looked at me, but they didn’t bother me. We played our first set of music. On the break, I’m following the band over to sit down at the table, and I felt somebody put their arm across my shoulder. I don’t know anybody here, so I’m trying to see who is touching me.
It was a white gentleman, maybe 15 years older than me with a big smile on his face. He says how much he enjoys the music and the band. He says that he has never seen me before, but he has seen the band before. I said, “Yes, they have played here before, but I just joined.” He goes, “This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” and I was not offended by his statement.
But I was surprised that given the fact that he is a decade-and-a-half older than me but did not know the black origins of Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano style. I proceeded to explain to him that Jerry Lee got it from the same place I did—from black, blues and boogie-woogie piano players. That’s where that early rock and roll, rockabilly style came from.
He says, “Oh, no, I ain’t never seen no black man play piano like that, except for you.” I said, “Well, I have. I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He’s a good friend of mine. He told me himself where his influences came from.” This guy didn’t believe that.
But he was so fascinated with me that he wanted me to go back to his table and let him buy me a drink. I don’t drink alcohol, but I let him buy me a cranberry juice. He pays the waitress, takes his own glass, clinks my glass, and cheers me. Then he says, “This is the first time I ever sat down with a black man and had a drink.”
Now, I’m even more mystified. He goes, “How can that be?” At that point in my life, I had sat down with literally tens of thousands of white people and had a meal, a beverage, and a conversation. How is it that this man had never done that? Innocently, I asked him why. He didn’t answer me and just looked down at the table and was very quiet.
I asked him again. His friend said, “Tell him, tell him.” I said, “Tell me.” Then he says, “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan.” I started laughing at him because I did not believe him. I know a lot about the Klan. They don’t just come up and embrace a black man and want to hang out and buy him a drink and converse. It doesn’t work that way.
I figured, “Okay, this guy’s joking. I’m going along with the joke.” He pulled out his wallet and handed me his Klan membership card. I recognized the Klan emblem immediately and thought, “Whoa, this is for real,” so I stopped laughing. It wasn’t funny anymore and I gave it back to him.
But we talked about the Klan and some other things. Then he gave me his number and wanted me to call him any time I was to return to this bar with this band. He wanted to bring his friends, his Klansmen and Klanswomen, to see the black guy who plays like Jerry Lee. I don’t know if he called me the black guy to his friends, but that’s how he explained it to me.
I would call him every six weeks and he would come and bring his Klansmen and Klanswomen. They came in street clothes, not robes and hoods. They would come near the stage and watch me play the piano. They would get out on the floor and dance. On the breaks, I'd make my way to his table, thank him for coming, meet some of them, and also thank them for coming.
Two of them didn’t want to meet me. They would get up and walk to the other side of the room when they saw me coming, which was fine with me. This went on until the end of that year. I quit that band and went back to playing rock and roll and R&B.
A few years later, it dawned on me. The question of how they could hate when they didn’t even know me had been plaguing me since the age of 10. I said, “Daryl, it fell right into your lap, and you didn’t even realize it. Who better to ask that question than somebody who would go so far as to join an organization that has over a hundred-year history of hating people who don’t look like them, and who don’t believe as they believe?”
I said to myself, “Get back in contact with that Klansman and get him to hook you up with the Klan leader from Maryland. Start with him, and interview him. Then go up north, go down south, go to the Midwest, go to the West, and interview other Klan leaders and other members, and write a book.” Because no book had been written by a black author on the KKK from in-person interviews.
Mr. Jekielek: This sounds like a crazy idea. Please tell us more about how this came to you.
Mr. Davis: It was curiosity. I knew a lot about the Klan and I never heard of them buying a black guy a drink. Something was going on here. I needed to find out more about this. But I also wanted to find out more about how you could hate somebody when you don’t even know them.
With my childhood travels with my parents and my adulthood travels as a professional musician and lecturer, if you combine those two sets of travels, I have played in all 50 states. I have been to 63 countries on six continents. That has exposed me to a wide variety of skin colors, ethnicities, cultures, ideologies, and religions. All of that has helped shape who I’ve become.
It was just very foreign to me to talk to somebody who was judging me when they didn’t even know me. All he saw was this body and he already had a different reality. His perception became his reality. Where did that perception come from? How can I perhaps alter it?
Mr. Jekielek: Did you reach out to him?
Mr. Davis: I reached out to the guy that I originally met and got him to connect me. He did not want to do it because he feared for my safety. I said, “Give me his number and his address and I will go see him myself. He only gave it to me on the condition that I not tell this guy where I got his personal information.
The leader’s name was Roger Kelly. Then he warned me, “Daryl, do not fool with Roger Kelly. He will kill you.” I said, “That’s the whole reason I need to see him. Why would he kill me? I don’t understand that.” For me, it was more like, “Don’t get furious, get curious. Try to understand where all this is coming from.”
Mr. Jekielek: What did you find?
Mr. Davis: I found a lot. A Klansman or a Klanswoman or a white supremacist is not stamped from a standard cookie cutter. They come from all walks of life, all educational levels, and all socioeconomic levels. I interviewed Mr. Kelly and I learned that he had a lot of false perceptions stemming from ignorance. When I say ignorance, I don’t use that term in the derogatory sense.
I use it in a sense of being unaware of something. Ignorance breeds fear. We fear the things that we don’t understand, those things of which we are ignorant. If we don’t address that fear and keep that in check, that fear in turn will escalate into hatred.
We fear the things that we hate. They frighten us. If that hatred is not stopped, it will in turn escalate into destruction. We get angry because we hate something. The next thing you know, we want to destroy it. Ignorance breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred. Hatred breeds destruction.
We spend way too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, and talking past the other person. Why don’t we spend time talking with the other person? The greatest weapon to combat racism, anti-Semitism, and all types of discrimination is the least expensive weapon known to man.
It’s free, yet it is the most underused. It’s called conversation. I say forget about the destruction in the past. I’m sorry it happened. But what has been destroyed is not coming back. The destruction is a symptom of the root cause.
Forget about the hate and don’t focus on that. That’s also a symptom. Forget about the fear which is another symptom. Focus on the root cause which is ignorance.
If you can cure ignorance, there is nothing to fear. With nothing to fear, there’s nothing to hate. With nothing to hate, there’s nothing to get angry about and destroy. The cure for ignorance is exposure and education.
That man had been aware of black people, but he had never spent any time with them or been exposed to them on a social basis. It was no skin off my back and just a little bit of my time. Through that exposure, he got educated, then his mind began changing. That perception that he had of a black person, a Jewish person, a gay person, a Muslim, or any of the people that he hated began to change. As a result, he got out of the Klan.
When I met him, he was what’s called a grand dragon. A grand dragon in Klan terminology is what you and I would call a governor, the head of the state. Each state that has a Klan chapter has a grand dragon. The national leader who oversees all the states that you and I would call the president, they call that person the imperial wizard.
When I met this guy, he was a grand dragon, and he rose up through the ranks to imperial wizard. When he dropped out, because of this perception change and hanging out with me, he gave me his Klan robe and his hood.
Mr. Jekielek: Please show us the hoods and robes that you collected as a sign that people left the Klan.
Mr. Davis: Some were going to throw them away or burn them. I said, “No, give them to me. At first I didn’t know why I wanted it, but I just knew I wanted it, and now I know why. I’m going to start my own museum. This is the robe of an imperial wizard. You can tell by the color blue and sometimes it’s purple. This is the Klan emblem that every Klan member uses on their robes, on their T-shirts, or the business card that the guy gave me in the Silver Dollar Lounge. He oversaw all the states for his chapter.
This is what’s known as the hood and this is the mask. Members who want anonymity wear this mask, which is attached with three snaps and or Velcro. If they don’t care that you know who they are, they simply detach the mask, and the face is exposed under the hood.
This guy here was a Grand Dragon. Now, you have a choice. You can have a white cotton robe, with blue or purple adornments to signify your rank, or you can have a satin robe, in which case it would be all blue or all purple. I have some of those, too.
Green is the color of the Grand Dragon, the state leader. You can have a white cotton robe with green stripes and green cape, or you can have a green satin robe. This guy chose the satin. You see, he wore two of these things, and he wore the American flag and the Confederate battle flag on both sleeves.
Now, let me tell you about this fellow. This guy was the Grand Dragon of Maryland at one time and I remember him. I never met him, but I remember hearing about him on the news. He went to prison for four years for trying to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore. He continued running the Klan while in prison through his right-hand guy on the outside.
Then he got out, took over the Klan again. A couple of years later, he went back to prison for three years for assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun. I wanted to meet him. What was going through his mind? When he came out, I got to meet him.
I had written him letters in prison. He didn’t know I was black until later. He sent somebody to check me out, but I didn’t know about it. They reported back to him, and he was all upset. He wrote me some letters because he was cussing out Jews and black people. Everything wrong with the world was because of the blacks and the Jews.
Of course, he thought he was talking to a white guy. Then he found out I was black and he wrote back to me. He was all upset and said that I was trying to trick him. I said, “No, I just don’t walk around saying I’m black. I’m a human being.” Anyway, we got together and spent a lot of time together. He was vehemently violent and anti-Semitic and racist.
But over time, he began changing because of those conversations. I don’t agree with them and they know that, but I allow them to be heard. I show them that respect. Understand, when I say respect, I don’t respect what they’re saying. I respect their right to say it. In return, they treat me the same way, and it’s a fair exchange. There is fairness.
Being a Klan leader, you don’t make a lot of money. You might get a small stipend from the quarterly dues, but not enough to pay your mortgage or your car loan or whatever. You have to have a regular job. Grand Dragon, Imperial Wizard, these are just titles, like Boy Scout leader. His regular job, when he was in the Ku Klux Klan and trying to bomb the synagogue in Baltimore, was a Baltimore City police officer. He was not an undercover cop in the KKK gathering intelligence. He was a bonafide KKK member on the Baltimore City police force.
This is his uniform. When he and I became friends, he gave me the robe and the hood and the uniform and some other things, because he knows I go around and lecture and I can show them to people. I’ve got a couple of other items here that I'll show you. This is a Klan rally banner that they use at their rallies or when they have their marches, and it bears that emblem that I showed you there.
Mr. Jekielek: Who gave you that?
Mr. Davis: This came from a leader of another Klan group. I also deal with a lot of neo-Nazis and this came from one of them. I’ve got a bunch of these, and like I said, I get them over the years. These will all be going into my museum. People ask me, “Daryl, why don’t you burn that stuff?” No, I’m not going to burn it. Yes, it is despicable, but it’s also a part of our history. You don’t burn our history; the good, the bad, the ugly, and the shameful. You expose it so it doesn’t happen again.
Everybody knows what this is. Now, people call this the Confederate flag, but it’s not the official Confederate flag. It is the official Confederate battle flag. This is the flag that flew during the Civil War to preserve slavery. The official flag of the Confederacy is the red and white stripes with the blue square and the circle of silver stars representing each colony.
Now, we see this flag flying in people’s yards, on the back of their pickup trucks, and on their T-shirts and caps. Some people do understand what it is and others don’t. They say, “This is my heritage. It’s not about hate. It’s about heritage.” That particular flag flew to preserve slavery.
I tell these people, “Come to a Klan rally with me. When you see one of those people with your heritage flag, you go up to them and you tell them, ‘Hey, that’s not what that’s about. It’s not about this. Give me back my flag.’ They probably won’t give it to you. But if you do that, I will come to your house, I will take your Confederate battle flag, and I will hoist it up your flagpole for you.” I have yet to have anybody come and take me up on that offer.
Let’s talk about that flag for a second. We Americans went to war against Great Britain and we beat Great Britain, which is why we celebrate the Fourth of July in this country. There are plenty of white Americans who are of British descent from Scotland, Wales, England, and Ireland. We love Great Britain and they are our friends. They can go back there and find their third cousin removed.
But they don’t run out and put up statues to King George III or fly the Union Jack. The loser does not get to fly his flag or build his statues on the winner’s property. We went to war in 1941 against Japan when they bombed Pearl Harbor. There are plenty of Japanese Americans in this country. We treated them very poorly by putting them in internment camps when that happened. But they were no less American than we were. They love their ancestry, but they don’t run out and build statues to Emperor Hirohito and fly the Japanese flag.
We went to war against Germany. The majority of white Americans in the United States are of German descent. That’s the largest group. The second largest is of British descent. These Americans of German descent don’t build statues to Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler and fly swastikas, unless they’re neo-Nazis or something. The Confederacy lost the war. They need to get over it.
Mr. Jekielek: Everything you’re talking about requires dialogue. Let’s say I’m a very understanding person and I’m ready to give people the benefit of the doubt. When I think about Klansmen, these are people that I might not ever want to talk to, but you did. Through that process, you facilitated something amazing. You made a project out of this.
Mr. Davis: This project has led to the formation of a new foundation called the Pro-Human Foundation, cofounded by myself and Bion Bartning. We always talk about what we are against and say, “I’m anti-this and anti-that.” Okay, fine. What are you for? Therefore, we have the Pro-Human Foundation. I’m not anti-racist. To me, racist is a noun describing the person.
I am anti-racism, meaning the ideology. The ideology needs to be erased, not the person. The person acquired that ideology, so let’s not be anti-the person. Let’s be anti-the message. Let’s be pro-human. These are people that I never believed would change. Why would they?
They hate me because of the color of my skin. They went so far as to take a blood oath to join a group. When you do that, that becomes your family above and beyond all others. You go through a whole ritual to be in the Ku Klux Klan. I’ve seen these things.
Now, you’re leaving and renouncing that group? You have betrayed your family. You’ve given your enemy your robe and hood and your flag? That would be like one of our U.S. generals taking off his uniform and giving it to ISIS or Al-Qaeda. But transformation can happen.
What caused that transformation? It was not me saying, “You’re wrong. Give me that hood and robe.” No. It was conversation and exposure to people that they didn’t know. That brings the education out. They’re being self-educated through that exposure.
What did it cost me? A little bit of time, but no skin off my back. Look what I got. I got some friends out of that. Some of them even come out with me to my lectures and renounce their former organization. Some are working very hard now trying to get others out of that movement and trying to prevent young people from joining those movements.
Mr. Jekielek: How many people have you helped pull out of these types of organizations?
Mr. Davis: Over the last 42 years, I would say just over 200.
Mr. Jekielek: Have you ever feared for your life in the process?
Mr. Davis: I’ve been threatened before, sure. It’s not on a daily basis or anything like that. But I’ve had my share and I still get them. I’ve had violent, physical confrontations. To me, violence is not the first resort, but I’ve had to be violent. I’ve had to hurt people and put them in the hospital, or put them in jail for putting their hands on me or trying to hurt me. I’m not going to just sit by and let somebody beat on me. Fortunately, those situations have been few and far between.
But you realize going in that these people do not like you. You are inferior and they are superior. That’s the term supremacist. They have to let you know that they are superior. How do they do that? They step on somebody and push them down. But I’ve even had some of those that I’ve been into a physical confrontation with come back and apologize to me.
But there will be people on all sides, black, white, and every color who will go to their grave being hateful, violent, and racist. They probably will never change, but I don’t give up on those people. I just simply move them down my list of priorities and deal with the ones who are willing to sit down and talk. Even though they disagree with me and don’t like me, at least we can converse. Then I work my way down to the ones who are a little harder.
But here’s something else that’s very interesting. Hate is very exhausting. When these people get out, they feel like a burden has been lifted and they can breathe. Their lives become a lot better. Those hardcore ones that call them race traitors and say that they sold out, when they see that person blossoming and having a great life their eyes open up. They begin wondering, “Have I gone down the wrong road? Can I get that too?” Some of them change through that vicarious situation.
Mr. Jekielek: That’s fascinating.
Mr. Davis: I never dreamed I would be doing this all these years later. I first started writing the book in 1990. Now, I’ve finished my second book and it’s going through the editing process right now. But the first book came out in 1997. I started writing in 1990, interviewing KKK people. I had no intentions of becoming friends with these people or hanging out or anything like that.
All I asked them was, “Tell me how can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” Then we parted ways. But over time, through these conversations, I would see them changing. When you’re the interviewer, you’re asking them questions. They will answer the question, but they won’t reciprocate.
They won’t ask you anything. You might say, “What do you think of Donald Trump’s policy on this issue?” Then they'll give you the answer. But they don’t say, “Well, what do you think about it?” They’re not interested in what you have to say because you are inferior. Nothing you can say is going to be of any consequence for them. They have all the answers.
Over time, you'll ask a question, “What do you think about that issue? This always catches you by surprise because there is no timeframe, it just happens randomly. They will say, “I think this. What do you think about it, Daryl?” Then it’s like, “Whoa, this person actually asked me a question. I have some modicum of value. This person wants to know my opinion.” That’s when you realize that you’ve broken through. The crack in the armor is beginning to appear.
Mr. Jekielek: I’ve had people on the show who are detransitioning from so-called gender-affirming care. They may have taken drugs and cross-sex hormones. They’ve been living in this ideological space of gender ideology. But they found that it wasn’t good for them and decided to leave this ideology, which is called detransitioning. They originally went into it thinking that it would help them and they found a community of supportive people. But the moment that they leave, they get this vitriolic hate that you were just describing.
Mr. Davis: Right, because they went into a community that welcomed them like a family. Now, they say, “You are betraying us.” When I help somebody transition out of hate into normalcy, it’s very important that I give this person support because they are hanging in the wind. They have left their clan family.
They betrayed that family and they can’t go back. If their biological family is in that clan, they don’t want them back, so they’re out there hanging in the wind by themselves with nothing, and they want to belong to something. Chances are they’re going to find some other kind of group. If it’s not the clan, it might be the neo-Nazis. It might be some religious culture or satanic worshipers. They want to belong to something.
It’s important for you to be an anchor to help them re-enter society on a normal basis. Otherwise, they will fall. It’s like an alcoholic. When they decide they want to stop drinking they need some kind of support like Alcoholics Anonymous. That’s where the Pro-Human Foundation comes in. This is what we do.
I’m not saying to let them slide, by any means. It’s how you approach them. If they think you’re there to change them, it’s not going to happen. You cannot change somebody’s reality. You can try to change their reality, and you know it’s not real, but to them, it is real. They only know what they know.
If it’s real to them, it’s a lost cause for you to try to change their reality. Don’t ever attempt to do that. They will push back. If you push harder, it’s going to escalate. Maybe even beyond yelling and screaming, maybe even to the point of physical violence.
You need to understand that one’s perception is one’s reality. Whatever somebody perceives becomes manifest as their reality. If you want somebody’s reality to change, you have to offer them a better perception. If they resonate with that perception, they then will change their own reality.
Mr. Jekielek: You’re saying to give them the opportunity to broaden their perspective on reality.
Mr. Davis: Precisely. I lived 10 years in Africa. I lived in Europe and visited many other countries in between. As a kid in elementary school, whenever I would come back home here to the States, you would go around the classroom and say where you’re from. I had just gotten back from Africa. My fellow classmates would ask me, and they were serious, “Did you ever see Tarzan?” That was their perception of Africa.
They don’t picture tall buildings and houses and cars. They picture wild animals running through the backyard and mud huts and straw. Does that exist? Yes, that exists. Do trailer parks exist in this country? Yes, they exist. We don’t show them in our tour guide, but they exist. But one’s perception is one’s reality.
They say, “You’ve been to Africa? Did you see Tarzan? Were there lions in your backyard?” It was all kinds of crazy stuff. These are kids and they’re being honest. That’s their perception. When I was a little kid, there was a mythical place which represented some place very far away. It was called Timbuktu. You know the phrase, “I’m going to knock you to Timbuktu,” meaning you are going so far that you are never coming back.
Timbuktu actually does exist and I’ve been there. It’s in the country of Mali on the west coast of Africa. I lived in Dakar, Senegal, Conakry, Guinea, and Accra, Ghana on the west coast. We visited other countries, then went to Mali. Back then, you could not drive into Timbuktu. You had to drive your car a certain distance, then you had to walk into the village. But yes, it does exist. When I tell people that I’ve been to Timbuktu, they don’t believe me.
Mr. Jekielek: Even when what someone seems to represent is beyond the pale, you have to try.
Mr. Davis: Don’t say you or I, always say we. In other words, if I want to say something to somebody about one of my experiences, I wouldn’t say, “I look at it like this,” or “You look at it like that.” I would say, “Why don’t we look at it like this for a second?”
I would use the words we and us. Even though you may be on the worse of terms, include them. It begins to wear on them, and they begin to shed their animosity. The next thing you know, they will be using these words. They will say, “If we look at it like this.” Now, he has caught on. Now, he’s calling me, we.
Mr. Jekielek: What was the most dramatic change that you’ve seen happen in your process of trying to connect with people?
Mr. Davis: I walked a Klan bride down the aisle and gave her away to her Klan leader husband. The one I mentioned, Roger Kelly, oversaw 13 states as an imperial wizard. When he left the Klan, he didn’t just quit and hand it over to his second in command. He shut it down. He shut down all his chapters in those 13 states. Now somebody else might come along and try to reboot it, but they can’t use that particular name. Seeing somebody give a person that they hated their uniform and their badge of honor is just incredible.
Mr. Jekielek: The work you’ve done is inspirational.
Mr. Davis: I’m just a rock and roll piano player. I’m not a sociologist or a psychologist. If I can do it, anybody can do it. But you have to know how to do it without allowing yourself to get triggered by somebody who doesn’t know you. That’s where we fall short.
I don’t get triggered because somebody who just met me tells me I’m stupid and I’m inferior, and all they saw was that. Why would I be offended by that? They don’t know me. They’re just spewing stuff from their learned perception, so I’m not going to be offended by a lie.
Mr. Jekielek: What would be your advice to folks that are seeing intolerance around them?
Mr. Davis: Never give up on having a conversation, but don’t force it on people. I know people who say, “I’m not going to Thanksgiving dinner with my family because my brother voted for so-and-so and I voted for this one, and we just can’t talk.” It doesn’t matter who becomes president. Whoever becomes president is only going to be there for a minimum of four years, and a maximum of eight years.
How long have you been with your family? Decades? You’re going to throw away decades of a relationship over somebody who’s only going to be around for four to eight years? If I can go to a KKK rally and talk to people, you can sit down at your Thanksgiving dinner table and talk to one of your siblings or your parents. Juxtapose those two things. That will help you to have another perspective.
Mr. Jekielek: Daryl Davis, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Davis: It’s my pleasure. I hope we can do it again.
Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Daryl Davis and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
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