What is Sacred to you? Daryl Davis responds 

Elizabeth   

Darryl, I’m always really curious about someone’s guiding values. I think they tell us a lot about the trajectory their life has taken. I frame it as what is sacred to you? But you can answer in any way you like, what are the kind of principles that have undergirded your life? 

Daryl Davis   

Well, I have a lot of principles that guide me, but I think two of the most important ones to me would be trustworthiness and honesty. I look for those in other people, and I try to exhibit those in myself. And I learned that as a child, when people would promise to do something and they didn’t do it, it was a real letdown because I was really expecting it. But when they would go to extreme lengths to fulfill what they promised to do, that meant a lot to me, and so I would try to also exhibit those kinds of things. If I told somebody I would do something, I would follow through, regardless of how hard or difficult it may be, unless it was just impossible or I was incapacitated in some way or another. 

Elizabeth   

Beautiful. I think trustworthiness feels like a very good thing to be trying to live by, and I am sure it will come up in our conversations of friendship later. Could you tell us a little bit about your childhood, and particularly the kind of formative context of having moved around so much?  

Growing up outside of the segregated US 

Daryl Davis   

Yes, sure, my parents were in the US State Department, so I grew up as an American Embassy kid. And I’m 66 years old now, I was born in 1958 but I began traveling around the world at the age of three in 1961. How it works is you get assigned to the American Embassy abroad for two years, and then at the end of that assignment, you return back home here to the States. You’re maybe here for a year, and then you get assigned to another country for two years. So back and forth, back and forth were the formative years of my life.  

My first exposure to school was abroad. I did kindergarten and first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, all in different countries. The in between grades I would do back home, I noticed that my classes overseas contained kids from all over the world. Anybody who had an embassy where we were assigned, all of their kids went to the same school. The one over on this side of my desk might have been from Yugoslavia. The one on this side of my desk might have been from Russia, or Japan, or China, or France, or Germany, Italy, Nigeria, you name it. Whoever had an embassy there, all of their kids went to the same school. That was my baseline for what school was supposed to be. And we never had any issues with racism or anything like that. Sure, we looked different, we came from different places, we spoke different languages, but we were kids. We played together, we worked together, we spent the night at each other’s houses in slumber parties together, things like that. However, when I would come back home at the end of my dad’s assignment with my mom and dad, I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. And there was not the amount of diversity in my classroom that I had overseas, even though our US Supreme Court had desegregated schools. They passed desegregation in 1954, four years before I was born, schools did not integrate overnight. It took years and years for schools to integrate. Even today, in some parts of my country there’s still integration problems. So one time I came home, it was 1968 I was at the age of 10 in fourth grade, and I was in one of those newly integrated schools. 1968 is 12 years after desegregation. So to give you that example, in this public school grades one through six elementary school, I was in fourth grade, there were only two black kids in the entire school, myself in fourth grade and a little black girl in second grade. So consequently, most of my friends that I hang out with are fourth graders. They all were white. Several of them actually were members of the Cub Scouts, and they invited me to join. So I joined the Cub Scouts. I was the only black Scout anywhere in the area. So even though desegregation was passed, it still took a lot of time to catch up.  

Alex Evans   

So you grew up in conditions where difference and diversity were the norm, at least when you were on the foreign postings. How did that shape you temperamentally? Obviously, it set your baseline for what level of difference is normal at a very high level. But did it sort of lay the foundations for you being able to kind of be curious about people, to be empathetic, to be able to kind of see the world through different eyes, as it were? 

Daryl Davis   

That in itself did not make me curious about other people, like you pointed out, that was the norm for me. I didn’t really know any difference. And we all got along, there was no reason for me to think anything different of these people just because they didn’t look like me or their language sounded strange or funny to me or something like that. What made me cautious of it and put me on that trajectory was the fact that I didn’t know I was any different, right?  

So when I joined the Cub Scouts back here in 1968 I was the only black scout around, and we had a parade with a bunch of other groups, and I was the only black participant in this parade. And the sidewalks were lined with nothing but white people who were waving and smiling and cheering and having a good time, until we reached a certain point along this parade route when I started getting hit with our bottles, and rocks, and soda pop cans by just a small group of spectators off to my right, standing on the sidewalk mixed in with the larger crowd. And I turned to see who was throwing things at the scouts, that’s what I thought was happening, and I saw this little group of maybe two or three kids and two adults. And my first assumption was, oh, these people over here, they don’t like the scouts. That is how naive I was! It wasn’t until my scout leaders came running over and covered me with their own bodies, these are white people, and quickly guided me out of the danger, it was then that I realized nobody else in my scout troop was getting some special protection. So now I’m wondering, what did I do? What caused them to do this to me? I thought I had done something. And I said, “Why are they doing this? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do it!” And they’re like, “Hurry up. Move along.” So I moved along. They never answered my question. When I got back home, my mother and father, who were not attending the parade, they had something else to do or whatever, but they had come home by that time I got home, and they’re seeing me with blood scabs and bruises and stuff, and they’re asking me, “How did you fall down and get all scratched and scraped up?” I told them I did not fall down. I told them what had happened, and they cleaned me up, put band aids on me, and then they sat me down, and they explained to me for the first time in my life what racism was. 

Now, I had never heard the word ‘racism’. I was 10 years old. Every 10–year–old kid in this country knows what racism is. I had never heard that word. I had no clue what they were talking about. Furthermore, I didn’t believe them, because my 10–year–old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me, never spoken to me, who knew nothing about me, would want to hurt me for no other reason than the color of my skin, this makes no sense, right? For the first time in my life, I thought my parents were lying to me because what they were saying didn’t make any sense! And to further prove that I was right and they were wrong, skin color has nothing to do with it is the fact that my closest friends, whether they were my friends right there in school here in the States, or my friends overseas, my fellow Americans from the embassy, or my little Danish, or Swedish, or French, or Norwegian friends, they look the same as those people over here on the sidewalk. They don’t behave like that. So skin color has nothing to do with it. Well, I was wrong.  

And this was 1968 and a lot of things happened in 1968 culminating with the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. I saw it. I was I lived here. I saw the buildings burning down, the violence in the streets, people going crazy. And then I realized my parents had not deceived me. This phenomenon that I never heard of called racism does exist. But what I did not know was why. Why does racism exist? It’s just a stupid thing, right? So I want to know why. I formed a question in my own mind at the age of 10, which was, how can you hate me when you don’t even know me? And I’ve been looking for the answer to that question now for 56 years. Because I’m 66 years old now. I bought books on black supremacy, white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan, racism, antisemitism, the Nazis in Germany, the Neo–Nazis over here. My books all talked about it, but they did not answer the question to a point of satisfaction for me. And when I would ask people, “How can people hate somebody just because of the color of their skin? That makes no sense.”, “Oh, Darryl, you know, some people just like that. That’s just the way it is.” Well, that did not placate me. So who better to ask that question of than ask someone who would go so far as to join an organization that has a history of hating people, practicing hating people. You know, I’m going to hate the Jews, I’m going to hate the blacks, I’m going to hate the gays, I’m going to hate the Muslims. You know, hate anybody who does not look like them, or who does not believe as they believe. So that’s piqued my interest in the Ku Klux Klan and other similar white supremacist organizations, or even just the racist next door who doesn’t belong to an organization. How can you hate somebody when you don’t know them?  

Meeting members of the Ku Klux Klan as a black man

Alex Evans  

And when, when did you first meet somebody from the Ku Klux Klan? 

Daryl Davis   

The first person that I met from the Ku Klux Klan, I beat him up. I beat him up pretty bad. What had happened was, I’m an adult. I’m a professional musician, and I just finished a gig, and I went to this all night restaurant to get something to eat about two o’clock in the morning. And I’m pulling in to the parking lot, and there on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant, there are about four or five white guys standing and they were watching something. There’s a woman lying on her back on the sidewalk, and there’s a man sitting on her chest, and he’s banging her head into the sidewalk and hitting her across the face. And these guys are just standing there watching this. I’m parked maybe 20 feet away. He was totally oblivious to me pulling my car in and I’m going to go over there and pull him off. And when I got out of the car, I slammed my car door. He jumped up and looked, and I’m looking right at him, and he says, “You want a piece of me, nigger?” And I said, “Yeah, I do.” And he got up, and he ran over to attack me, and I let him have it. I beat him pretty severely. Well, then one of those people standing there watching, they went and called the police. They didn’t call the police when this white guy is beating the daylights out of this white woman, but when this black guy beats the daylights out of the white guy, then they go and call the police. So the cops came and I wanted the guy arrested. They would not arrest him. They said, “Well, we didn’t see what happened” Something was very strange, and I could not put my finger on it at that time, they would not arrest him. I wanted his address and his name, so they had to give it to me. So they gave me all this information, and they made him leave the premises. They told him, if he were to come back on the premises, within 24 hours, they would arrest him for trespassing and disturbing the peace. So he left. So I went inside the restaurant. I got a towel, put some ice in there, put it on this lady’s head, and all this other kind of stuff, took care of her. And I said, “Listen, here’s my name, here’s my phone number. If you if you want me to come to court, if you want to take him to court, I will come there as a witness.” And she said, “That’ll be fine. I appreciate that.” She says, “I can testify for you. He tried to attack you as well.” Long story short, the day of the trial, I went to her house, and I picked her up, and we went to court together. On the way to court, she tells me that this guy is a Klansman. And, you know, I didn’t know at the time, but it didn’t matter to me. I don’t care what he is. He was wrong for doing what he was doing, and she tells me that he was a high ranking fireman in the local fire department. So that explained to me why the cops would not arrest him, because they all know each other. He’s one of the brethren. So that was my first encounter.  

My second encounter went a lot differently. I was playing a gig in the in the same place, not the same place, but the same town. I was at an all–white bar called The Silver Dollar Lounge. I was playing with a country band, and The Silver Dollar Lounge has a long–standing reputation of being unwelcoming to black people. Black people do not go there. There are no signs that forbid us to go there, but the feeling is there, you just don’t go there. And I knew of the place. I’ve seen it before. I’d never been in there but the band had played there before, and the band was pretty well known around Maryland, so they asked me to join the band, it was an all white band, and I joined. So here I am in The Silver Dollar Lounge, and on the break, I’m following the band to go sit down at the band table. I felt somebody from behind me put their arm across my shoulder. Now I see the whole band in front of me because I’m following them to the table. I don’t know anybody in this place, so I’m turning around trying to see who’s touching me. I’m thinking, I’m going to have to get into another fight again. And I see this older white guy, big smile on his face. He’s maybe 15 to 20 years older than me, and he says, “Man, I sure love your all’s music.” I said, “Thank you, sir.” And I shook his hand, and he pointed at the stage, and he said, “I’ve seen this here band before. “I never seen you before. Where’d you come from?” And I explained to the guy, “Yeah, you probably did see them. They told me they’ve played here before, but I just joined this band. This is my first time here. I joined a couple months ago.” He goes, “Well, man, I sure love your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.” I was not offended, but I was surprised, because this guy is almost two decades older than me, and he did not know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano style. And so I proceeded to explain to him that Jerry Lee Lewis got that style from the same place I did from black blues and boogie–woogie piano players. That is where rock and roll and rockabilly evolved. Oh, he did not believe that, “I never seen no black man play like that, except for you. You know Jerry Lee invented that stuff.” And I said, “Look, man, I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s told me himself where he learned how to play like that.” He didn’t believe I knew Jerry Lee Lewis either, but he was fascinated with me, and he wanted me to come back to his table and let him buy me a drink. I don’t drink alcohol, but I went back to his table. I let him buy me a cranberry juice, and he paid the lady, and he clinked my glass with his glass and cheered me. And then he says, “You know, this is the first time I ever sat down had a drink with a black man.” And now I’m totally baffled. I’m mystified. Like, first of all, why is he saying that? And second of all, how can this be? By this time in my life, I have sat down with thousands, maybe tens of thousands of white people or anybody else, and had a meal, a beverage, a conversation. How can this man have lived this long and never sat down with a black man? So I said, why? And he did not answer me at first. He like looked down at the table. I asked him again. His buddy elbowed him and said, “Tell him. Tell him.” And I said, “Tell me.” He looked back at me. He says, “I’m a member of the Ku Klux Klan.” I started laughing at him because I thought he was joking. I know a lot about the clan. They don’t behave that way. They behave like the guy that I beat up, right? So this guy is pulling my leg. And while I’m laughing, he goes inside his pocket and produces his wallet and flips through it, and he handed me his clan membership card. And I realized, oh, this is real! This is not funny anymore, and I gave it back to him. And now I’m questioning myself in my own mind, what the hell am I doing sitting at this table with the Klansman? But he was very friendly, and he gave me his phone number. He wanted me to call him anytime I was to come back to this bar with this band, because he wanted to bring his friends, meaning Klansmen and Klanswomen, to see me play like Jerry Lee Lewis, as he put it.  

So I would call him about every six weeks, whenever we would return, and he would come with our Klansmen and Klanswomen, and they would sit there and watch me play. They come near the stage watch me play, they’d get out on the dance floor and dance. And then on the breaks, I would go to his table to thank him for coming. Most of them would stay there and they were curious about me, they wanted to meet me, talk to me. Two of them would get up and they walk to the other side of the room when they saw me coming. So the implied message waswe don’t want to shake your hand. We don’t want to touch you or talk to you, we just want to look at you, like I’m in a cage or something. But that was fine. And so that went on until the end of that year. I quit the band, and I went back to playing rock and roll and R&B and whatever else was going on.  

And then a few years later, it dawned on me, Daryl, you blew it the answer to your question that you’ve been seeking since the age of 10: how can you hate me when you don’t even know me? It fell right into your lap, and you didn’t realize it! Who better to ask that question of than a KKK member. That’s what they do, they hate people, right? You know, he would have the answer so get back in contact with that guy. And so I still had his phone number. It’d been several years later, but I still had it. I found it and I called the number, but it had been disconnected. So I had to track him down. I don’t know why it was disconnected. I found out later he had moved. I got an address. There was no way of being able to notify him that I wanted to come and talk to him, so I just showed up at his apartment one evening. And I knocked on the door, and he opens the door, he goes, “Darryl, what are you doing here?” And he steps out into the hallway, he looks up and down the hallway to see if anybody was with me. And when he stepped out of his apartment, I stepped in. So he turns around, he comes back, and he goes, “What’s going on? Are you still playing music? What’s going on?” I said, “Yeah, I’m still playing but listen, I need to talk to you about the Klan.” He says, “The Klan?” And I said, “You remember, right?” And he goes, “Well I was but I quit.” And he gave me some long dissertation as to why he quit. So anyway, long story short, I decided that I want to write a book on the Ku Klux Klan, and I’m going to start right here in Maryland. I’m going to start with the head of the Klan from Maryland, and I wanted him to introduce me to this person. This person’s name was Roger Kelly, and so he did not want to do that, and he was fearful for his own safety and my safety. And I said, “But you’re not a member anymore.” He goes, “It doesn’t matter. I cannot take a black man to Roger Kelly.” And I said, “I tell you what. Give me Mr. Kelly’s phone number and address. I will go there myself.” He said, “Daryl, I can’t do that.” I begged and pleaded with this man. Finally, he gave it to me on the condition that I would not tell Mr. Kelly where I got his personal home information and stuff. He warned me. He said, “Daryl, do not fool with Roger Kelly. Roger Kelly will kill you.” And I said, “Well, that’s why I need to see him. Why would he kill me just because of the colour of my skin? I have to understand this. 

Getting curious not furious: Friendship across divides 

Elizabeth  

You use this phrase, which has really stuck with me, because I aspire to it. You say, “I get curious, not furious.” It’s so key in your story, how much this question has bugged you, just like wanting to find the answer was sufficiently motivating for you to go and see someone who could have killed you, and later make friends with him.  

Daryl Davis   

I was friends with people who look just like Roger Kelly, and so that debunked the theory that the color of somebody’s skin makes them who they are. Now they think that the color of my skin makes me who I am. They think I’m a criminal, I’m a drug dealer, I’m a pimp. I run around raping white women, I’m on welfare, I’m a criminal, and all these other things just because I’m inferior, just because of the color of my skin. That’s what makes them a supremacist. They are supreme. They are superior.  

So if somebody is superior, well then who is inferior? Somebody of a darker skin color. Well, that’s for them, I don’t think like that. The fact that I had friends that looked like Roger Kelly told me, skin color has nothing to do with it. The fact that this one Klansman was very nasty to me and tried to attack me, and I had to violently beat him down. Then this other Klansman was putting his arm around me, wanted to buy me a drink, and hang out, and give me his phone number, and said “Call me when you’re playing here again, I want to bring my friends.” So they were the same color! If I can see a difference in people of the same color, why can’t you? That was my mentality. I was very naive, as I pointed out. I didn’t know why people were throwing rocks at me, right? I would know today, but I didn’t know back then, and that’s why it’s so important for people to understand my background. When I was around diversity, that behavior did not exist. People always say to me, “Well, Daryl, how come your parents didn’t tell you about racism early on? Why did they just let you experience it like that, the hard way?” And I thought about it when I was first asked that question, how come my mom and dad didn’t prepare me for this? That’s not right, to let me go out there and somebody abused me like that. And I have no forewarning or no knowledge of it, this thing exists and I didn’t know. Initially, I was I was curious, and I was a little upset that I did not know this and my parents had not prepared me.  

But in retrospect, again, I’m glad that it worked out this way. Let’s say that my parents had told me, “Daryl, we’re living in a time now where things are not equal. They’re going to be some people who are not going to like you. And they may treat you bad, they may hurt you, they may call you names just because of the color of your skin. These are white people who have a problem with black people. We’ve gone through segregation, all these riots, etc. If they had told me that, would I be looking at every white person I see and maybe be a little weary of them? Because I’ve already been inundated with a preconceived prejudice, ‘pre’ right, meaning before prejudge people. And now I’m judging them. Okay, white people, a lot of them don’t like black people. A white person killed Martin Luther King, and now all these riots are happening. Yes there’s some good white people in the world, but maybe I just should not trust them until they prove themselves or whatever. So I’m prejudging somebody. Well, that is exactly what the Ku Klux Klan does. They see my skin color, and they already make an assessment about me, so I’m glad my parents did not plant that prejudice in me. 

Postures and practices of encounter 

Elizabeth   

Yeah. So when you went to see Roger Kelly, we’re really interested in what is the actual postures and practices that you’re adopting when you’re befriending someone who is not just a different skin color from you, but has a completely different way of seeing the world. Because your reaction to the Klan member in the in the bar, of not just standing up and flipping the table, but of staying in conversation with him and getting to the point where Roger Kelly was able to hand over his robes to you. What do you think it is about how you approach those encounters that enable each of you to see each other as complex human beings, not just the signifiers of groups? What’s going on in that moment of befriending of encounter? 

Daryl Davis  

So let’s understand something. I never set out to befriend any Klan people. I never set out to convert any Klan people. You know when, when you see my name in the media or whatever it says, you know, ‘black musician converts X number of white supremacists or KKK members or whatever’. No, that is not true. I did not convert anybody. I am the impetus for over 200 people to convert themselves. When we were children, you and I and Alex, and anybody that we know, would’ve heard the expression ‘a tiger does not change its stripes, a leopard does not change its spots.’ This is very true. That’s who the leopard is. That’s who the tiger is, right? I was under the notion that a Klansman does not change his robe and hood. That’s who he is. I don’t want to change somebody. All I want to know from you is, how can you hate me when you don’t even know me? That’s all I want to know, you give me the answer, I thank you, we go our separate ways and I never see you again. 

Elizabeth 

You just want to understand? 

Daryl Davis 

Exactly. I had no intentions of being friends with these people. Now I was wrong. Yes, a tiger does not change his stripes. Yes, a leopard does not change his spots. They were born with those stripes and spots, that’s who they are. A Klansman, on the other hand, is not born with that robe and hood, they acquire it. They learn it and what can be learned can be unlearned. I did not realize that when I went into this. And all I wanted to do was learn from them why they hate me without even knowing me. And over the course of time and conversations and interviews, I saw things changing with them. It’s very interesting how it works. I’ve been doing this, interviewing these people started 56 years ago. But t’ll be 45 years next year in 2025. I’ve seen this process many times. When somebody thinks they’re better than you, they’re superior to you, they’re a supremacist and you’re inferior, they don’t ask you any questions. You ask all the questions. Like, for example, if I ran into you all on the street, and I say, “Hey, Alex, how you doing?” You say, “I’m doing fine. How are you doing?” Or, you know, “Hey Liz, what’s new? And you tell me what’s new in your life, and you’d ask me what’s new in mine. It’d be a two way conversation, right? Not with supremacists, unless it’s another supremacist talking to them. But if you are an inferior person, if you ask them what’s going on, they’re going to tell you what’s going on, but they’re not interested in what’s going on with you because you are inferior. So during the interview, it’d be kind of be like a one–way thing. I’d ask questions, they would answer, but they didn’t want to hear my opinion or what do you think? And this went on for a while, and then one day I said, “So what do you think about Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton’s policy on whatever?” And they tell me what they think, and then say, “Well, what do you think, Daryl?” Whoa, you caught me off guard! You want my opinion on something. I’ve made one little modicum of progress, because now they’re interested in me. So again, here comes the trust and honesty. I give them my answer, and if I know something for a fact, I will tell them “I know this for a fact”, and I will give them the evidence that proves it to be true. If I don’t know it for a fact and it’s my opinion, I always preface it by saying “I don’t know for sure, but this is my opinion.” This is what I think based on what I know and what I feel. That way I cover myself, because if my opinion ends up being wrong, it just further enforces what they already think about me. So always be honest, be truthful. And so I’m always transparent. I give them my honest answer, and I give them a trustworthy source where they can ascertain the fact themselves, if I present it as a fact.  

And so then I noticed, then they began asking more and more questions as they find out that I was right. And then guess what happens? All right, they go home and they think, I just had a conversation, a three–hour conversation, with a black man, and we didn’t come to blows. Maybe we argued, we got a little loud, but we didn’t get violent. And you know, what that Daryl guy said is true. Oh, but he’s black, but what he said made sense, but he’s black. So they’re experiencing a cognitive dissonance. They know what I said is true, they know what I said made sense, but what holds them from adopting it is my skin color. So now they’re struggling. And it becomes tiresome, so they have to resolve this dilemma. So they have to consider two things: do I disregard his skin color and believe it to be true because I know it’s true and now, I change my ideological path? Or do I consider his skin color and continue living a lie just because of his skin color? So most people choose the path of least resistance, and they go with the truth. There are those who just don’t want to accept the truth, because they’ve been in this thing for so long. Now, if you are a leader in the clan and you hold some high up position, you know, Exalted Cyclops, Great Titan, Grand Dragon, Imperial Wizard, it is harder for you to give up power, because you’ve sat on the throne of power for so long, right? And you’ve recruited people into your organization and these followers… I’m sure you all have never been to Klan rallies before, but I have. These people, they look up to their leaders. They even get autographs and stuff of Grand Dragons and Imperial Wizards and get their picture taken with them and all this crazy stuff. It’s like a rock star, you know, celebrity. These people love that power, and so now they have to think, even if they know that you are right and they’re wrong and they’re feeling bad. The next dilemma is, do I want to give up this power? And how do I go to my followers that I recruited and say, “Hey, folks, I was wrong.”  

How do people end up becoming white supremacists? 

Alex Evans   

Daryl, what have you learned about what leads people to become white supremacists in the first place? I mean, one of the things we’ve noted in our research at Larger Us is how extremist groups often attract people in by offering a kind of belonging. I mean, a twisted kind of belonging based on who is excluded, but belonging nevertheless. And then there’s also psychological research about how when people grow up feeling shame as a chronic psychological condition, it can create a kind of self–protective rage that they externalize out onto somebody else who becomes the scapegoat. Are these things that you have seen in your conversations with white supremacists? Or do you have a kind of different theory of where this comes from in people in the first place? 

Daryl Davis   

You’re absolutely right. There is a lot of that. A lot of people want to belong. They feel ostracized by society. Where do I fit in? And that’s exactly what the Klan looks for, people who are vulnerable, who are looking for something. So yes, you’re right about that, the psychological thing of being shamed. Yes, there are many reasons, and I’ll give you a few more, other than the ones that you just gave, which are 100% valid. It could be a family tradition. My grandfather was in the clan. My father was in the Klan, I’m in the Klan, and my kids are going to be in the Klan. So family tradition passed down, right? It’s just the way it is, as people would tell me. Or like, I have some Jewish friends, and some of them keep kosher, some of the younger ones. And there are some Jewish people who don’t keep kosher. And so I asked the ones who kept kosher, “So why do you keep kosher?” And they say, “Well, my grandmother did it, my mom did it, and I do it. I don’t know why we just do it.” So tradition, that’s one reason. They might move into a town where it’s a stronghold for the Klan, they run everything in the town. So now you’re a newcomer in that town. You want to live there, you want to do business there, you want to assimilate. So you have to join the local Chamber of Commerce, you join the local country club, you join the local KKK and that gets you in. It’s sort of like a gang, some towns are run by gangs and when you move on that block, you want to be a part of that gang to defend from other gangs. That’s one reason.  

Another reason is economic, I’ll give you an example. We have a lot of coal mining towns in this country and most of your coal miners, at least back in the day, were white people. And they go right to the coal mines right out of high school. They’ve been doing it for generations and generations, right? And so now you have people coming into the country, immigrating here legally or illegally, and they want work. And these coal mining companies are greedy. They say, “You know what, let’s lay off our workers, who are all white, and hire those people, because we can pay those people this much money. We’re already paying our people this much money. Let’s pay them less money, because this much money is a lot of money in their country.” Now these white people, all they know is coal mining so they cannot get another job, they’re not trained in anything else. So now they’re out of work, and the bank is knocking on the door for the loan, for the house, or whatever. They don’t have the money. The Klan will come into a town like that, and they will hold a rally, and they will say, “Well, the blacks have the NAACP and the Jews have the ADL. Nobody stands up for the white man but the Ku Klux Klan! Your job is not gone, but you’re gone. Some racial epithet has your job. Why does he have your job? You’ve been there for years, your family has been there for generations. Why is your job gone? Why is he there? Come join us. We’ll get your job back.” So these people who were never prejudiced before, were happy people. They were working, they were making money, they were feeding their family, they’re putting clothes on their kid’s back. They had no racist bone in their body. But now they’re out of work, and they’re being told, “You can’t even put food on your family’s table. You can’t put clothes on your kid’s back because of that racial epithet. Who has your job? Come join us. We’ll get your job back. They had no right to do that to you. This person ain’t even American!” So these people, who were never racist, they began thinking, well, they do have a point. My job is still there. My job wasn’t terminated, but I was terminated. I don’t have any other job, they said they’ll get my job back. What do I have to lose? Give me an application. And then they go through the initiation process, take a blood oath, and that becomes their family. 

Is listening the same as alignment? Changing perceptions not realities.

Elizabeth   

Daryl, you speak so persuasively. Even just what you’ve just said shows your ability to empathize with people, to put yourself in their shoes, to see the world from where they’re coming from. And I know that’s the fruit of years of listening and seeking to understand, because you were driven by curiosity. And both in my work on The Sacred where I have guests which some of the audience find incredibly difficult and are sometimes angry that I would be seen with them, that I would somehow legitimize them by listening to them. And in the Larger Us programme and in the call of this kind of work, which is hard inner work, right? It requires you to steady yourself, it requires you to have a stable sense of self, it requires you to get your fight or flight under control so that you’re able to respond with curiosity, not with furiosity. This is the work of being a bridge builder, and someone can cross divides, but the pushback we get at Larger Us, and that I sometimes get, and that I’m sure you get is: why should we? Particularly for you as a black person, why should you be doing the work to go to the Klan? Why should we be listening to people who are clearly abhorrent, isn’t it somehow colluding and collaborating with the enemy? 

Daryl Davis   

Yes, I get that. I do have my share of detractors, no question about it. Sometimes I’ve been able to make friends out of my detractors and supporters. And then there have been times, people on both sides will go to their grave feeling hate, and racism, and violence, and detraction, and whatever else. Some black detractors say to me, “It’s not our job to teach white people how to treat us!” Well, my response to that is, yes, you are absolutely right. It shouldn’t be anybody’s job to teach somebody how to treat us, but when you have been mistreated for 400 years and you’re still being mistreated 400 years later, maybe it’s time to change the way you approach this. So I have an approach that works. How many Klan robes do you have hanging in your closet? That’s the dent I’ve put in racism. What have you done? And that kind of shuts them up. 

Elizabeth   

Yeah, there’s a strong effectiveness argument here! 

Daryl Davis   

To your point, Liz: how can you be seen with these people? You’re against them and they’re against them, and you put yourself in a platform where your detractors feel that you are platforming them, and enabling them, and colluding with them, or whatever. The people who  would argue with you about that and be your detractors, if you were to ask them, “Don’t you wish those people did not exist, or could change, or see the light?” Most of them would say, “Yes, I would hope they would see the light one day.” Well, how are they going to see the light without seeing the people who are already enlightened? You know what I mean? So you are the light that they need to see. That gives your detractor another perspective. 

Now another thing is this, and you had mentioned about how people are perceived, Alex, we’ve all heard the expression that ‘one’s perception is one’s reality’, and that is very true. Whatever somebody perceives becomes their reality. Even if it’s not real, it’s still their reality. And if you know it’s not real, and you try to tell them that, you’re going to get resistance because they think it’s real, they know it’s real in their mind, right? And so, you are attacking them by attacking their reality. And that is a big problem that most conflicts have, whether it’s racial, whether it’s abortion, pro–choice, whether it’s political, whatever it is. When somebody attacks somebody’s reality, that’s the beginning of the problem. And all it does is escalate, because the more you Attack somebody’s reality, the more you’re going to have a problem. If you want somebody’s reality to change, what you must do is not attack the reality. Offer them a better perception, or better perceptions. If they resonate with one of your perceptions, they then will change their own reality, because the perception becomes their reality. And an example that I like to give is, let’s say that you have a eight or nine–year–old brother, and he goes to a magic show, and he comes home and tells you, “Alex, you’re not going to believe this. This magician on stage, he asked for for a lady volunteer, and 50 women raised their hand, and he picked one out of the audience and invited her on stage, what’s your name? Where are you from? And then he had her climb into this long box and put her feet out the hole at that end, and put her head out the hole at this end. And then he closed the box. He took a chainsaw and went right through the middle of the box, and the saw came out the bottom of the box. He cut her in half, and then he told her to wiggle her feet out the hole and she wiggled her feet!” And you say, “Listen, it didn’t really happen like that.” He’ll say, “Yes, it did. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. You weren’t there. I saw it” He is 100% right. You were not there. You did not see what he saw. How dare you tell him he did not see something that he saw? He saw the man cut her in half, put her in the box right. You weren’t there, and yet you’re going to challenge him. You have attacked his reality. And to make it even more convincing to you, he tells you, after he cut her in half and she wiggled her feet, he took the half of the box with the feet and moved it over here to stage right and the half of the head, and put it over there on stage left. And then he talked to the lady’s head, and she spoke back to him. She was cut in half, and she spoke back to him right? And then he brings the two halves back together, and he puts his hands over the box, he says, “Abracadabra”, or whatever, incantation. And then he opens the lid, and the lady climbs out. He cut her in half and put her back together, and there’s no blood. And you say, “Listen, it’s an illusion.” He says, “No, it’s not!” He’s going to go off on you again. It’s going to escalate. He might even punch you, because now you’re calling him a liar.  

You’re never going to get through by attacking somebody’s reality. You know it’s not real. You’re older. He does not know, it’s his reality. So what you do is this, you say, “Listen, I understand what you’re saying. But let me ask you a question: do you think that maybe, just perhaps, it’s possible that the lady that he brought up on stage out of the audience, maybe she knows the trick. Maybe she was planted in the audience. She travels around the country to every show with him, and he puts her in the same seat in every theater. That way he can look around the audience and then zoom on her and bring her up. And then when she climbs into the box, there’s already a pair of mannequin dummy legs lying on the floor of the box that are wearing the same stockings and same high heels that she has on. She picks up the ends by the pole and shows them out the hole. She takes her own knees and brings them up under her chest, so now her whole body is on that half of the box. So when he cuts the box in half, the saw never touches her. And when he says, wiggle your feet, she reaches over, grabs the handles on those poles and shakes them, and the feet wiggle out the hole right. And then when he separates the two halves, he puts the feet over here. The feet can no longer move because she’s over here. So he needs to distract you from looking at those feet, so he moves the head over this side. You’re going to follow him wherever he goes. And he talks to the head, of course, she’s going to talk back because her whole body is in that half of the box. He doesn’t want you looking over there at those still feet. So then he brings the two halves back together, he opens the lid, and of course, she’s going to climb out, no blood. She pulls those poles back in and leaves them on the floor, and she climbs out.” So then your brother says, “Hmm, you know that might be the only way that could work.” So you’ve offered him a better perception, and it has resonated with him and become his reality. So don’t waste time attacking somebody’s reality. All you’re going to get is resistance, it’s going to exacerbate and maybe even explode into violence. Even though you’re triggered by it, don’t attack somebody’s reality, just offer them better perceptions.  

Can empathy connect across political divides? 

Alex Evans   

Daryl, we’re almost out of time, and I actually have to leave in five minutes to get my kids from school. But I did want to ask you, just before we finish, I mean just briefly, what are your reflections, both on the American election now, where obviously so many of the issues that we’re talking about are right to the fore? But also to kind of bring it down to earth, what steps do you feel that listeners could potentially take to draw on your experience and the kind of approach that you’ve pioneered? Especially listeners who are in a very polarized situation, like the US, but also more generally, how can people start to put what you do into practice? 

Daryl Davis   

Okay, well, let’s talk about it like this. This country has been a white supremacist country for basically 400 years since we came here. I’m a descendant of slaves, since I came here in 1619. When you have sat on the throne of power for 400 years, that’s all you know. That’s your reality. You don’t want to get off, right? You look at our last president, he was only there for four years. He thinks he’s still there! If you want something to change that hasn’t changed in 400 years, then you have to be the change that you want to see. And that’s why we have this election, which is so crucial. We have to change the dynamic. We call many other countries ‘third world countries’, I don’t like that term. Perhaps we are a first world country technologically, but we the United States, we are a third world country ideologically. There are third world countries that have female presidents, female prime ministers. All we talk about in this country, can a black man be president? Can a Mormon be president? Can a woman be president? Who cares what religion, what gender, what color they are? Can we have a president that can lead this country? That should be the focus. And in order to bring that about, then we have to be the change. When you haven’t had something in 400 years, then change it, if that’s what you want. 

Elizabeth   

Daryl, thank you so much for speaking to us, for this special collaboration between The Sacred and Larger Us. It’s truly been a joy to speak with you. 

Daryl Davis   

Thank you. Please call me again sometime. 

Elizabeth   

We’d really like that. Have a lovely rest of your day.