Let's Find Common Ground - Daryl Davis: KKKrossing the divide: A Black man talks with white supremacists

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Communities of color face visible threats. The recent murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black jogger in Georgia, and the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, reverberated across the country, sparking an outpouring a pain and rage. These cases of racial violence and bias were only the latest on a very long list of attacks and murders of African-American men and women. At this profoundly painful time, we speak with musician and bandleader, Daryl Davis, a Black man who has spent the past 35 years on a remarkable quest: speaking with, and at times befriending, members of white supremacist groups. He has helped more than 200 KKK members to renounce their racist ideology.  "We have to ask ourselves the question: do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes, or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see," Daryl tells us. "I've chosen the latter. And so you have to get into the thick of it."

As we record this episode, cities are erupting over racial injustice. Communities of color facing visible threats. Leaders who should bring us together seem incapable of doing so. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies. And I'm Ashley Melntite. We speak today with musician, activist, author and band leader, Darryl Davies. And I'm Ashley Melntite. We speak today with musician, activist, author and band leader, Darrell Davies, a black man who spent well over 30 years speaking with and at times befriending white supremacists.

We hear from Darrell about his extraordinary quest and strategy to improve race relations and find common ground. Welcome to Let's Find Common Ground, Darryl. Thank you. Thank you both very much for having me. Darryl, before we hear your story, we're doing this interview at a time of national despair and deep anger over racial injustice. What's your response to the killing of George Floyd

in police custody and to everything that's happened since? Well, one, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration that must be channeled into communication and dialogue, not police training as everybody wants to say. Training has nothing to do with it. When you're out there selecting a particular group of people, in this case, black people, and you're not treating white people the same way, it has nothing to do with training, has to do with humanity. You emphatically said training is not the answer. What's an alternative? An alternative is having regular meetings with your community, a planning police procedure,

listening to your community about their concerns and their fears of the police. Listen to the police concerns about the community and don't do it every time something happens, do it on an ongoing basis. It has to be an ongoing proactive thing. When you are given that kind of authority, that you have the authority to take somebody's life,

then you need to be more accountable than the average person. Can there be anything positive that comes out of what has happened? The upside of this particular protest and murder, a lynching, if you will, is that a lot of people who look like the officers who committed this lynching are now joining in the protests. And that's different. We've always had white people in protests with us since the Civil Rights Movement. But this time around, it's a lot more.

And maybe now, they will be heard. Because in the past, when they were predominantly black, they were never heard. And that's why that is happening again and again and again. And the reason I call this a lynching is this. You know, you I'm sure you've seen the pictures of a black man hanging from the tree and the crowd gather around pointing and smiling. It's like a family affair, even little girdles of their smiles on their faces. There have been several pictures like that of different lynchings. That group is called a lynch mob.

That group is called a lynch mob. When you have four police officers on camera, two of them holding a black man down, the third one choking him to death with his knee on his neck, and the fourth one holding the crowd back of pastors by on the sidewalk, that is a lynch mob. Especially when it is illegal, the hold was illegal. The man was not resisting. He's on his stomach. He's crying out for his mama. And he's saying, I can't breathe.

And you are murdering him while looking into the camera with defiance. One Tom blatant disregard for the law that you are sworn to uphold. What is the difference between that and the picture we throw from the one Tom blatant disregard for the law that you are sworn to uphold. What is the difference between that and the picture we throw off in the pictures that we've seen from the 1920s? So your work is with extremists, with white nationalists, with racists,

but are you saying that there's also a huge problem with bystanders, with people just not speaking up? No, no, the bystanders have spoken up. They were speaking up right there during the lynching, saying, get off him, he can't breathe, he can't breathe. And if you watch that video again, you'll see one of the bystanders tries to come a little closer and the guy on his neck, which is for his gun.

Those other three officers should have pulled their fellow officer off that man. They knew he was doing wrong, charged them, and let the jury decide whether they're guilty or not and what their fate should be. But yet they're out running the streets. We have complained. not on what their fate should be, but yet they're out running the streets. We have complained. We've been complaining for decades about this and it's falling on deaf ears. So people want to know, you know, why do these buildings get burned down every time, you know, something like this happens? Now, I'm not advocating that kind of destruction. I'm not justifying that kind of destruction, that kind of destruction, I'm not justifying that kind of destruction, but I will tell you why it happens. If you get pulled by the police for running a red light or for speeding, you issue the citation. If you do something wrong to somebody, they might sue you. All the situations are attached to money. And the reason being is because when somebody separates

you from your money, it asks as a deterrent. When people have talked to you and told you time and time and time again, what's happening? And you don't live them. Then people feel they have no choice but to write you that speeding ticket through you to impose that fine upon you. And that's what they do when they burn down these buildings. It costs the city money. Now officer Derek Chauvin, the man had 18 complaints against him. Obviously some somebody or plural somebody somebody's, spoke up 18 times and nobody listened, which is why it led to what happened. Why did they allow this man with that many complaints that they have in his personnel

file, allow him to roam the streets and continue his job. They brought this on themselves, and this is not something that happens in a vacuum. It's been happening and nobody's been listening, so they figure when now maybe, maybe we'll get their attention. Darryl Davis, on the outrage over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The rest of our interview with Dararyl was conducted before this happened and after the outcry over the murder of a Mard Arbery in Georgia. I began by asking, Daryl Davis, about his years of discussions with white supremacists and how he convinced members of the Ku Klux Klan to hang up their robes and quit.

Well, let's say this. I did not convince them. They convinced themselves. I was simply the the impetus for that. I planted the seed and I nourished it and gave them enough reason to think and do some introspection and reconsider their path. And in doing so, they made up their mind

to choose another direction. Take us back. I mean, how did this all start? Okay. Well, we have to go back to my childhood for that. I'm 62 years of age, but my parents were in the US Foreign Service. So I grew up as an American embassy brat traveling all over the world, living in different countries for two years, and then returning home here to the States for a few months, and then being assigned to another country. So back in the early 60s, when I was overseas

in elementary school, my classes were filled with kids from all over the world, whoever had an embassy there, all of their kids went to the same school as I did. So I grew up in what you would call a multicultural environment. And if you were to open the door to my classroom and pop your head in, you would say, this looks like a United Nations of little kids because that's exactly what it was. Now, when I would return home here to my own country, the United States,

I would be in either all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. And at that time, there was not the amount of diversity that I had overseas, all kinds of different colors and ethnicities, et cetera, like we have today, if you walk into a classroom. So I was baffled why people could not get along. It was beyond me. And then you had an incident in the Boy Scouts or Cubscouts? In the Cubscouts, yeah. I was the only black scout in a parade. And everything was going fine. The sidewalks were lined with nothing but white people. And we reached a point in the parade

where I began getting hit with bottles and soda pop cans and rocks. How old were you? I was 10. I was in fourth grade. And it was not by everybody. It's just a small group of people mixed in with the crowd standing together, maybe four or five people.

I was so naive that when I was getting hit, I thought those people over there did not like the scouts. I had no idea I was a target. Until my grandmother and cub master and troop leader all came running over and they huddled over me to protect me and escort me out of the danger that I realized I was only target and I didn't understand it and they were not explaining it to me. It's good saying it'll be okay. It'll be okay. Hurry up. Move along. Move along. And so when I got home that day my mother and father were cleaning me up and putting band-aids on me and asking me, you know, how did you fall down and get all scraped up? I told my didn't fall down. I told them precisely what had happened. And for the first time in my life, my parents sat me down and explained racism to me. And at the age of 10, believe it or not,

I had never heard the word racism. I had no reason to. I'd been all over the world and got along with everybody. There was no racism. So I did not believe my parents when they were telling me this because my 10-year-old brain could not wrap itself around the idea that someone who had never seen me spoken to me or knew anything about me would want to hurt me for no other reason than the color of my skin. It made absolutely no sense. And about a month and a half later, Martin Luther King was assassinated that same year, 1968. And I remember, I remember the riots. And then I realized my parents had not lied to me. This thing called racism does exist. But why do people hate each other? Because of skin color.

How can you hate me when you don't even know me? And now for the next 52 years, I've been looking for the answer to that question. And who better to ask than someone who would go so far as to join an organization whose whole premise has been hating those who don't look like them and who don't believe in what they stand for. So I've been seeking out white supremacists and people like that from various groups,

the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Naxis, etc. You've been seeking them out. When was the first time, how did it happen? Was it serendipitous? If you can call it that, that you met someone from the clan, or did you seek to find them? It was a serendipitous, because I bought a lot of books. I have a vast library starting from when I was a kid

on the Ku Klux Klan, on white supremacy, black supremacy, anti-Semitism, the Nazis in Germany, the neo-Nazis over here, just trying to learn where does this ideology come from? I know you're not born with it. So where did you get it? Where is it going? How can it be addressed? And none of my books answered it. So I graduated from college with my degree in music.

And I was playing in a band. Country music had made a comeback in this country. So as a full-time musician, if you wanted to work in the play country, and I enjoyed country music. So I joined a country band, only Black guy in the band, and usually the only Black guy where we would perform. We were performing in a bar in a town called Frederick Maryland.

And we had just finished playing a set of music, we had taken a break, and I was walking to go sit down at a table with my bandmates when a white gentleman came up behind me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. And now this bar was an all white bar. And I don't mean that black people could not go in. I mean that they did not go in by their own choice because they were not welcome there. So I didn't know anybody in this bar and I'm wondering who's touching me. It was not one of my badmates because they were all all over ahead of me.

So I turned around and it was this guy. And he said he enjoyed the music I should have said and thanked him. And then he made the remark that he'd never seen a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis before. And I was not offended, but I was kind of surprised because this guy was older than me. And I thought he should, you know, he would have known the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis's style of piano playing. Yeah, just for listeners who don't know, you know, he would have known the Black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis's style of piano playing. Yeah, just for listeners who don't know, I mean Jerry Lee Lewis's musical inspiration in the 1950s was for African Americans. Absolutely. He got his stuff and listening. He'll tell

you himself, he's a very good friend of mine. He told me, you know, he listened to to Black Blues and Boogie Woogie piano players. And that's where Rock and Roll and Rockabilly came from. Well, I tried to explain that to this guy, and he was incredulous. He did not believe me. Even after I told him, you know, that I know Charially, and he told me himself, he didn't believe that either. But he was fascinated enough with me

that he wanted to buy me a drink. Now, I don't drink alcohol, but I went back to his table and had a cranberry juice. And he took his glass and I think my glass and cheered me. And he says, you know, this is the first time I've ever sat down with a black man, had a drink. And now I'm wondering like, you know, what's going on here?

So I innocently asked, I said, why? And at first he didn't answer me, I asked him again. And he had a friend, so he next to him who elbowed him and said, tell him, tell him, tell him. And I said, tell me. And he looked back at me just as straight as an arrow. And he said, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Well, I burst out laughing because now I did not believe him, you know, why would a Klan's been coming to me and embraced me and praise my, my, you praise my piano abilities and want to buy me a drink? It does not work that way.

I'd never read any similar story in any of my plan books, right? So I'm laughing at him like he's joking. He went inside his pocket, produced his wallet, and handed me his planned membership card. And I recognized the Ku Klux Klan in Sydney, which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the center of the cross. And I stopped laughing. But we had a great conversation who was very friendly, you know, and he gave me his film number and wanted me to call him whenever I was to return to this bar because he wanted to bring his friends, meaning friendsmen and plans women, to see this black guy play piano, I'd cheerily.

And I'd call him every six weeks, and he'd come and he'd bring plan people, and they would watch me play, and on the breaks, you know, I wouldn't go to his table to say hello, I would meet some of them, some of them would see me coming in and get up and scurry off to some of the part of the room,

you know, they want nothing to do with me, other than to watch me, which was fine. But the ones that hung out and were curious, I'd meet them and talk with them. And I quit that band shortly thereafter. I lost track of the guy. But then later, it dawned on me. Darryl, you know,

say, is the answer to your question fell right into your lap. There's a serendipity, Ashley. You know, I've been looking for this answer to your question. It fell right into your lap. There's a serendipity, Ashley. I've been looking for this answer to my question since the age of 10. How can you hate me when you don't even know me? And no book and no one had been able to provide it to me. And here, a clansman falls right into my lap.

Who better to ask? And so I scrambled around, scrambled around, and found this guy's number. So I say, you know what, I'm going to write a book on the plan. I like talk to this guy, um, get him to hook me up with the leader, and then I'll travel around the country and interview different plan leaders and members and find out the answer to my question, put it all in the book. Will you worry if't feel safety at all. No, not really, not really. But I think actually what it was is the fact that I had been traveling so much as a child. And then now as an adult musician, performing all

over this country and around the world, and no matter how far away I've gone from my own country, to the other side of the earth, at the end of the day, I have come to one conclusion that we all are human beings. We all want the same things. Have you been successful? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, there have been over 200 people who have we announced that ideology and left those organizations or turned their lives around.

I have robes and hoods and Nazi flags and all kinds of stuff given to me by active members, you know, who were active when I met them. And now they have they they have renounced that. I'm so curious, what do they say to you when they decide to give up and give you their robes? What do they say? They say they were wrong. I asked them, you know, during the first interviews, how can you hate me?

You know, you don't even know me. All you see is the color of my skin. If somebody sits in front of you and tells you that you're a criminal, that you lack intelligence, that you're legacy and and prefer to be on welfare, you know, would you say that what that person is telling you is offensive? Absolutely, but here's the difference. Am I offended? Absolutely not. Not because what the person is saying is true. But I'm not offended because what the person saying is a lie. At the end, when they renounce this,

they say, Gerald, you know, I was wrong. You know, I don't have any reason to hate you. You know, because what's happening is we're having a conversation. They've never done that before. They've had debates or they've had clashes. Instead of, I would disagree with them, but instead of clashing with them, I would listen because I'm there to learn. Everybody wants to be heard. So I would let them get it all out.

And then I would explain things to them from my perspective. They would go home and they would think, you know, what that black guy said was right, but he's black, he's black, but he's right, but he's black. You know, so it was a cognitive dissonance thing going on. They had to make up their own mind. Do I continue living a lie over do I believe the truth and turn my life around? So that's why I say I planted the seed, I nourished it,

and they converted or convinced themselves. You said something that I think goes right to the heart of finding common ground, which is the people that you spoke to, the racists who you talked to, had never had a discussion with a black person. They'd only had a debate about black people. Or a confrontation with. Right. And so how important is conversation, discussions, finding common ground? It is absolutely important.

And the common ground is this. All right. What you do is you look for things that you have in common. For example, I know neither one of you to be involved in white supremacist groups. But if I were to ask either one of you, do you believe that we need better education for kids? You would say yes. Do you believe that we need to address

the drug problem on the streets? You would say yes. Well, guess what? They believe the same thing. So now you've got something in common with the plan. So we may not agree on racial things, but I find things that we have in common. Drugs do not discriminate. They will take anybody out, just like this coronavirus COVID-19.

It doesn't care if you're a clansman, a Nazi, a black person, a Muslim, a gay, a Jew, whatever. It will take you out. Alright, so you find these things in common and discuss them and let them see, but then they begin seeing the humanity in you. When two enemies are talking, conversing, they're not fighting. They're talking. They may be yelling and screaming, perhaps at some points, but at least they're talking. It's when the conversation ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. We're speaking with Darrell Davis on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Ashley. I'm Richard, more in a minute.

I'm Richard, more in a minute. Our podcast brought to you by Common Ground Committee. It's public events, inspire citizens and leaders to make progress on issues through civil public discourse. Bringing light not heat to public discourse, that's our motto. We put forums together where we bring panelists from opposite sides of a tough issue. Please welcome Secretary Condoleezza Rice. Please welcome Secretary John Perry.

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Watch full events online at commongroundcommittee.org or on our Common Ground Committee YouTube channel. We're back with Darryl Davis. Right now there's outrage over recent killings. There have been many shootings and deaths of black men in recent years. At times like this, is it easier to do your work or is it harder to have those conversations? It is a bitter sweet time. The bitter thing is that we have to have those conversations because yet another black guy has been shocked for no reason who's unarmed.

You know, that's the bitter part, but the sweet part is it brings people together. You know, and we have the opportunity to address these things, but we have to do it the right way. We have been addressing this problem, the wrong way for decades, all right? Ignorance breeds fear. We fear those things we don't understand. If we do not keep that fear in check, that fear in turn will escalate, they will grow, just like weeds. If you do not keep that hatred in check, that hatred in turn will

escalate and breed destruction. So what is the right way to respond to this hatred, this fear? Don't address the hatred, don't address the fear. Go to the source. When you find out you have bone cancer in your arms, say, you don't put a topical cream on the top of your arm or a band-aid. You've got to go down to the bone where the cancer is. We have to go to the source of the racism, which is ignorance, and there is a cure for ignorance.

That cure is education, education and exposure. We're doing this interview in the weeks after the outcry over the Amod Arbery killing in Georgia. Didn't you feel a sense of anger, of even fury, when you first saw what had happened to this man? Of course, absolutely. But what is putting anger out going to do? You know, I'm not saying blow it off by any means. It has to be addressed, but let's take that energy that anger and convert it towards something positive that can come out of it. All right. And that's focusing on curing the cause, ignorance. Have these people got to know

one another? Perhaps that would not have happened. Have these people learn a little bit more about humanity, educate them? Maybe that would not have happened. So let's focus on those things. Your work as an educator and teacher, you haven't just done it here in the US, have you? You've worked in other countries. Can you talk about that? Sure. I've spoken in Israel. I've spoken in Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, and India.

And each place has different issues, unlike us. With us is a black and white issue. In India is the caste system, the lighter skinned, as opposed to the darker skinned people. And in Israel, of course, is the Palestinians and the Jewish people and the Arab people, are places like Lebanon, it's the Christians and the Muslims. In Ireland, it's the Catholics and the Protestants. But again, at the end of the day,

it's ignorance, it's ignorance. It's coming together, finding that common ground, and having those conversations. My favorite quote of all time is by the American author, Mark Twain. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth, all one's lifetime. Had I not had all that exposure as a child, what I'd be doing this today, maybe not. What do you do in your work? Do you go to colleges, to schools?

Are you asked to speak at different events? And who asks you? Well, you know, I never thought about that. I would ever be a lecturer or someone that tried one of the country talking about this. I just done this for my own knowledge. My own satisfaction of finding out how can you hate me.

We don't even know me. I put it in a book. My book became the first book written by a black author on the clan. But who do I speak to, my audiences? Predominantly colleges and universities. I also do corporations like for diversity training, companies, I do civic organizations, I speak out a lot of churches and synagogues, sometimes police departments. So I give anywhere from 60 to maybe 80 lectures a year all over the world, a lot around this country.

I'm curious just talking of family. Over the years, what, what have your own family and friends said to you about your work? What do they think? Well, my friends. Yeah. Do they think you're crazy? Well, they know it. So, you know, they understand me.

But the people who, you know, don't know me and have not had the opportunity, like you all, to interview me or talk with me or hear this interview, some of them jump to conclusions and jump to the wrong conclusion. And I get it, you know, they see a picture of a black man shaking hands with somebody in a Roman hood, you know, if I saw that, I'd have a visceral reaction. But me, I would say, what's going on here? And I would read the backstory. Some people don't read the backstory. And they draw their own narrative, and it's wrong.

You've done this work for many years. Have you convinced others to do this work alongside you? Yes, there have been some who want to do this work. I get emails all the time from people who say, hey, how can I do this? Some follow up on it, some down. Then, of course, know, those who you call former, there were former members of these organizations. Some of them come out with

me and educate people. Because they feel that they need to repair the damage that they did when they were in those organizations. What I see a lot in my professional groups that I'm in is younger people of color, so say 20s to mid 30s, sort of the millennial generation. They have had it with accommodating white people, right? They're like, why should I go out on a limb and do this emotional work of explaining to a white person what my experience of the world is like. They should be meeting me where I am. I get that question all the time. It's not my job to teach them how to behave.

Well, you know what? If they don't learn, then we're just gonna enable and continue the cycle. It's all our jobs to educate one another. We need to get rid of this attitude. I understand the frustration. I understand the impatience. You know, like, you know, how much longer

do we have to put up with this? Well, you know what? The Civil War ended in 1865. And we're still going through this stuff. We're still being held down. And, you know, so how long is it going to take? Well, maybe if we change our approach, because whatever it was we were doing for the last 150 years has not worked. So maybe we need to spend the time educating one another. Let's

get rid of this concept, I'm not my brother's keeper. Let's become our brother's keeper. And maybe we all can be happy. And what about all of us, no matter what the color of our skin or the place that we come from? What can we do? Our society, our country, can only become one of two things. One, it can become that which we sit back and let it become, or two, it can become that which we stand up and make it. And so we have to ask ourselves the

question, do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes, or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see? And I've chosen the latter. So, you know, you have to get into the thick of it. And you cannot get this stuff out of a textbook. You've got to go there and be in the thick of it. You have to understand empathy. And understand, you know, where a lot of this is coming from and be willing to rise above all the negativity, all the insults, all the BS. If you spend five minutes, just five minutes, with your worst enemy, you will find something in common. And if you spend 10 minutes, you'll find even more. And this is why this is so important. We have to learn how to have, how to have civil discourse. You know, and again, yes, we are going to debate things because we're not going to agree on everything,

but that's not frame it as a debate. That's frame it as a conversation, because when you say the word debate, people get their wall up. They're ready to bring it on kind of thing. But you say, hey, let's just talk about it. How do you feel about this? And then you listen, then you tell how you feel. That's a thing. Who you say, hey, you know, let's just talk about it. You know, how do you feel about this? You know, and then you listen, then you tell how you feel. That's a conversation. You know, you're challenging one another, but when you use the word debate, it has a little more of aggressive tone to it than just having a conversation on different points of view.

just having a conversation on different points of view. That's a great way to end. Darryl Davis, thanks very much for joining us on Let's Find Common Ground. Well, thank you both very much for having me. I really, really appreciate it. And I think we found some common ground between the three of us. Yeah, I hope we do it again.

Yeah, it's gonna be a great talk. We will consider this part one. Now I'll be looking for part two. Terrell Davis. Our podcast is a reproduction of Common Ground Committee. Find out more about our work at commongroundcommity.org. Subscribe to Let's Find Common Ground wherever you listen to podcasts. Reviews and downloads help many more people find us.

Thanks for listening.