Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 387 - Converting Klansmen ft. Daryl Davis

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Daryl Davis is an American musician, pianist, activist, and author. He has extensively studied the subject of racism, the Klu Klux Klan, and has successfully influenced over 200 Klansmen and Klanswomen to give up their robes. He has been able to do this through developing relationships and friendships with many of these people. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/power25 Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 25% off and free shipping on orders of $29! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project crew, thank you for checking out today's episode. Today's episode was recorded on May 8th, and what an amazing episode we have for you today. Today's guest is the one and only Daryl Davis, and Daryl Davis has an amazing story. Daryl has helped over 200 Klansmen turn in their robes and kind of turn a new leaf, all by just having simple conversations with them. Daryl is also a musician and author, and of course, he writes about his interactions with KKK members and, you know, some of the ins and outs of the actual organization. And like I said, it's just, it's extremely interesting, his point of view on things, you know, the compassion,

the empathy that he displays is, it's unlike anything else we've ever, you know, we've ever seen. So, we dove deep into some of his experiences with these Klansmen that are essentially his friends now, which is a crazy thought. But he did all through conversations. We also dove deep into his music career. You know, he's a great musician. And so we got a good handle on who his biggest influences were or are and who his mentors were. So some really, really cool stuff. And we did get his take on the Ahmaud Arbery situation. So again, like I said, this is a very powerful episode. I don't want to take up any more of your guys' time. So if you

appreciate this episode, please reach out to us on Instagram at MarkBellsPowerProject, Instagram on Twitter at MB Power Project, and let us know what you guys think. And ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the show with the amazing Daryl Davis. And we're going. And we're good. If somebody wanted some snacks and they didn't want all the carbohydrates, where would they go?

Encema? Perfect keto cookies. No, I was saying like they would go to in sema like and just take a little nibble out of them because he's probably low carb i'm not a snack i'm not a snack i will not be eaten that's not my yeah yeah those perfect keto cookies are crackish like you you i gotta be careful with them i'm only gonna allow myself like to bring one pack home at a time and keep the rest at ST because they're too damn good. Yeah.

I don't know how you guys do that. Like, uh, James Smith, you know, he would call you mental by not like by putting half of the, uh, the package back or whatever it might,

might be. I see that box and I'm like, there's a good chance that that box might disappear. I remember we had, uh, Evan Carmichael. He liked to have like the stuff around the house on purpose to like build his willpower, to build his strength.

Remember he had like Doritos next to him or something, right? Yeah. It's a human being. Yeah. And you were saying that like, well, if you, if you smell that it might cause an insulin response. And he's like, Oh yeah. He's like, whoops. Yeah, I like the Perfect Keto bars a lot too. And anybody that's interested, anybody that wants to follow a low-carb diet or just wants a good snack that doesn't have a lot of carbohydrates in it and also doesn't have any artificial sweeteners, make sure you check out the stuff they got over at perfectketo.com. And you can do so at perfectketo.com slash power25 at checkout enter promo code powerproject for 25% off any order of $29 or more.

Who do we got on today, Mark? We got Daryl Davis on the show today. Really excited. Yeah, really excited to have him on there on our show today. He has converted a lot of Ku Klux Klan members. He has, I guess, like derobed them, so to speak. He's taken down a lot of walls and a lot of barriers that people have when it comes to

racism. And I'm super excited to talk to him about it today. I remember when I was a kid, I was probably about six years old and my neighbor friend, he was African-American. He was actually from Africa. And I remember asking him, I said, I said, Hey man, uh, why are you black? And he, and he looked at me and it was like a South park, you know, thing like where the South park characters, like they blink, you know? And yeah. And I, and he just says to me he goes he goes i don't know he's like uh why are you white and it like it made my mind explode because i wasn't even

thinking about that i was just kind of thinking of like why why are he and his family that color and what you know and then when he threw it back to me i was like that's a that's a really that's a really good question i'm like i don't know So I asked my parents and my parents were like, well, people are different colors. And my dad, who always like goes deep into explanation, he's like, okay, well, here's the equator. He's like, some people live closer to the sun and they get different color. And over the years, then I was really confused at that point. But I remember, you know, kind of like being curious of like, you know, why is he a different color? And then when he threw it back to me, it really opened my eyes like, oh yeah. Yeah. Kids are the best with that stuff. Cause like,

you know, they'll get, even sometimes they'll get part of it right, but also be just totally wrong, you know? And then, you know, also, yeah, like being kids, you just like, you don't really, I don't want to, I mean, the cliche is like, I don't like being kids you just like you don't really i don't want to i mean the cliche is like i don't see color but like kids literally don't care um they i know there has been some things where like they put like a face of like somebody who's not attractive versus they are like who do you want to play with and they always go for the attractive one right but they don't care what color the skin is until maybe later on down the road when they learn some now they just see that they're like that other person's kind of similar shape to me like yeah they're they're lower to the ground

like i am and i want to i want to play with them yeah yeah yeah now kids though they they can uh they can show us a lot of the the stupid things that we think because like if a kid asks you a question like why do you think that about that person? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like it's just out of pure curiosity and innocence, but it really does make you think of, and it makes you realize sometimes how stupid certain beliefs are because they'll ask those questions. You know what I mean? So this is going to be a good one. This is the reason I think, uh uh because i remember i thought about him when we put out that episode on batar and people were like you shouldn't even have a conversation with him like you shouldn't even give him a platform for a conversation and and i was thinking why is it

such a damn problem to just have a conversation with somebody even if you guys have differing beliefs and that's kind of what, that's exactly what he did with all the clan members that he was able to derail. Yeah. And he was saying like that, you know, people should be able to have a conversation at their dinner table. People should be able to talk about the things that are hard to talk about because, you know, nowadays you have so much access to communicate with so many people. You could about because, you know, nowadays you have so much access to communicate with so many people. You could text somebody, you know, here in California and you can text somebody who's in Japan or New York or Chicago and we can text funny things and say funny

things. Or we could put out a tweet or a post somewhere and have a lot of people see it, but we can't really talk to our neighbor. We just want to understand the people that we want to understand. And for some reason, we don't care about anything else. And I think that in America, that happens probably too often. I think that America is viewed as being very naive and very arrogant, just in general. Not arrogant, just ignorant, more so than anything else. And when I have traveled to a few different countries, our guest today has been in like 57 different countries or something like that. So that'll be cool to talk to him about travel. But when I've traveled,

you know, in the past and just, I, I just flat out ask people questions, you know, and, and I would usually just say I'm American, which is a sign to them that I don't know what I'm talking about because, you know, we have a good here. And so there's really not a lot of reasons to think about other people. We have a good every day. We probably don't really recognize. I've mentioned this before in this show. Most of the people that I know have a refrigerator full of food and a freezer full of food. And sometimes they got a second fridge and a pantry full of food. And we got air conditioning.

We got heat. We got automobiles. We have streaming videos that we can watch. We got entertainment. We have everything. So what's left? You would figure, okay, well, what's left after that would be to maybe think about the people that don't have that. But we don't really think that. We don't really go there. And it just creates a lot of ignorance and it can create a lot of, uh, a lot of divide, you know, when you don't know, when you don't know or ever question anything about, uh,

other ethnicities or other races, um, then all you're going to know is probably what you're taught. And in this country, there's been a lot of racism for a lot of years. And so to unwind all that, um, is, is taking a long time and it will probably go on forever because I think that I think racism has always been around. I don't think it's just the United States problem. I think, you know, we were talking before we jumped on here today, the your skin tone,

your skin color has, has been interpreted as an issue. So I, I think for a very, very long time, I mean, there's been slaves for very, very long time. And it's not always just African American, but it's people of people, people just of color period. I don't know why that has happened. I don't know, understand the, how it came to be, but it just is. And, uh, hopefully today with Daryl Davis, hopefully we can have a much better understanding of why this exists. And, uh, with that newfound understanding, hopefully we can, um, move forward and be more understanding of each other. Yeah. And what I also like about his approach or his, um, you know, like this, this grand

like idea is kind of taking like the taboo out of racism, like being okay with like talking about it, like to your kids and stuff. Like there's been, you know, like I can't think of a perfect example right now, but where like, I've been talking to somebody and I've been like, like, oh yeah, like, uh, my, my buddy in SEMA dude's jacked. He's awesome. Big black dude. And when I been like, like, oh yeah, like my buddy in SEMA, dude's jacked. He's awesome. Big black dude. And when I say like, he's black, like I get, oh, I get the eyes, you know, or I've heard other people trying to explain and you can correct me on that one in SEMA. Like if I, my, my thought process is incorrect, but like when I've talked to someone else

and they want to explain a black person, they'll kind of look around like they're black. someone else and they want to explain a black person they'll kind of look around like they're black and i was and i remember the first time i heard that being like like is it a secret that no one else can can hear that like saying the guy's skinny right i don't i just i was tall yeah yeah and then so like when when i described like somebody you know i just be like oh yeah he's you know black dude awesome like it's not the first thing i say but i don't have an issue saying it but however it seems like like you almost like can't say it and it's like well what's the like i don't get it my girlfriend and i were talking about that thing um and it's i think it's just uh something that's kind of developed

especially in u.s language right because you know you know, when we're talking about like a big dude, like, oh, he's a big dude. Usually, like, even myself, I'm not like, oh, he's a, like, when I'm explaining it to her or something, it's this big white dude or whatever. But when you're explaining somebody of another ethnicity, there's a distinction that needs to be made. And it's probably a distinction just because there's a majority and there's a minority. And when you're having to explain someone who's a minority, you have to explain, yeah, there's a big Asian dude that I met. There's a big black dude that I met. And when you do that, a lot of people, they, they look around and they're, they, they try to be careful because those types of people, they are well-meaning,

you know what I mean? It's not like they're, they're not, they're not trying to say anything bad. They're trying to just, they're trying to be careful with their language, you know? So. I think people are just trying to be respectful. Probably. They're not sure if they should, if they should say that. And I think maybe they're not sure the relevance of it, how relevant how relevant is it? But even even the name Nsema, you know, seems, quote unquote, weird. Right. But it's weird to us. But it's not weird to your it's not weird to where you're from. Right. There's a lot of other Nsemas, right? There's a few. And in Nigeria, the names look different than they look here, right? Very, very. Mr. Diggs.

We got our guy on. I wonder if he's going to sing for us or play some music. Can you imagine? Well, hello. Hello. There you go. Hello. Are you sitting at a piano, sir? I am not, hello. Hello. There you go. Hello. Are you sitting at a piano, sir?

I am not, actually. Oh, man. I was hoping that's the way we could start off today's show. I hear you. You should have told me. You should have told me. I would have done it for you. Oh, man.

It's absolutely fantastic to have you on the show today. Really appreciate your time. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we've listened to your story. And, you know, I love the message that you have of, you know, how could somebody hate me when they don't even know me? And I'll just propose what I think the answer to that question might be. propose what I think the answer to that question might be. I just think it's just a misunderstanding, a misconception. What are your thoughts and what have you come to recognize, you know, after 50 years? I know that's a simplification of everything, but after 50 years of digging through this from the time you're 10 years old, what have you come to the conclusion of, if you have come to any sort of conclusion?

Yes, absolutely. And the answer to the question is ignorance. And I have been in 57 countries on six continents, and I have performed in 49 of our 50 states. So I have literally been exposed to a multitude of ethnicities, religions, traditions, cultures, you know, socioeconomic statuses, etc. And all of that has helped shape my perspectives. And at the end of the day, what I've concluded is no matter what ends of the earth I go, how many different people I meet, at the end of the day, we all are human beings, and we all want the same things. Unfortunately, you know, what we have here in our country is somewhat unique. You know, there is a discrimination of different kinds in other countries. I'd say in Israel, of course, the Palestinians and the Jews, and Lebanon, the Christians and the Muslims,

Palestinians and the Jews and Lebanon, the Christians and the Muslims, in Ireland, the Protestants and the Catholics, in Rwanda at one time, the Hutus and the Tutsis, etc. So discrimination does exist. But what we have in our country is somewhat a little different because we owned people. We owned them as property, as slaves. And we've never gotten over that, and for good reason. We've never received an apology. A lot of it is, in fact, ignorance. But the thing of it is, is ignorance can be cured.

And we spend a lot of time addressing the wrong aspects, the stepchildren of ignorance, which are fear and hatred and destruction. We tend to address hatred. We tend to address fear. These are byproducts of ignorance, because I believe that ignorance is what breeds fear. We fear those things we don't understand, those things of which we are ignorant. If we don't keep that fear in check, then that fear will escalate and breed hatred, because we hate the things that frighten us. If we don't keep that hatred in check, that hatred in turn will escalate and breed destruction. So if we cure the ignorance, which we can, and there is a cure for ignorance, that is called education. If we cure the ignorance, then we have nothing to fear because we understand.

So if we have nothing to fear, there's nothing to hate. If there's nothing to hate, there's nothing to destroy. So we've got to go to the source. The source is ignorance just like you know if you have cancer uh in the bone you can't put a band-aid on top of your skin you got to drill down to the source you know i'm so curious about this because uh when you're talking about um educating people right right you derailed over 200 clan members. And, you know, thinking about most of us, like, I would not be willing to talk to that type of individual, number one, because

I would think that there's no way that they could be changed. That belief is so deep, right? That they hate you just because of the color of your skin or because of what you were born as. Most people wouldn't be willing to have a conversation with that type of individual or even to want to be in the same room as that type of individual. conversations with them but even as they were continuing to hold those beliefs about you they were looking at you and talking to you and they obviously felt a certain way about you and believe certain things about you that you were still willing to be friends with them not just talk with them okay well here's the thing you wouldn't want to have a conversation with those people, as you said, but yet you're having a conversation with me who believes in the power of change. Now, just like you, I grew up hearing the same cliches and quotes. A tiger doesn't change its stripes.

A leopard doesn't change its spots. Why would a Klansman change his robe and hood? You know, it's a good question, right? Well, the fact is, the leopard and the tiger were born with those stripes and spots. A Klansman or Klanswoman or neo-Nazi, because those 200 include also neo-Nazis. People just say KKK or whatever. But anyway, they were not born being racist. You don't inherit racism genetically. It's something that you acquire through learned behavior.

Now, granted, I agree with you. Sometimes it is very, very deep-rooted because it's been in their family for years. My grandfather was a Klansman. My daddy was a Klansman, so I'm a Klansman. My kids are going to be Klan people. You know, family tradition passed down. That's very deep rooted. But again, it's a learned behavior and it can be unlearned. And let me tell you something that happens with me when I give lectures. lectures a year all over the country and around the world, mostly universities, colleges,

sometimes corporations, companies, civic organizations, churches, synagogues, police departments, et cetera, but mostly colleges and universities. I've come to learn this. Two to three out of every 10 lectures I give, at the end, I'll do a Q&A. And, you know, I bring some robes and hoods with me that I've acquired from these people when they've given it up. And people will answer. I mean, I'll answer the questions at the end of the Q&A. I'm done. Still, there'll be students who come up to the podium to ask one last question or they want to touch one of the robes or whatever. Two or three out of 10 times, there'll be one student standing over there in the distance and i've come to learn what's going to happen he or she is waiting for the crowd to go away and when the crowd goes away and i'm packing up my robes and hoods and stuff that person will walk over to me and i know what's going to happen but i just play dumb

you know and just hey how are you blah blah blah oh hi mr davis you know i really enjoyed your lecture blah blah blah and then they get, Mr. Davis. You know, I really enjoyed your lecture. Blah, blah, blah. And then they get to the point. They look around, make sure nobody else is around where they can hear. They say, you know, my mother is in the Klan or my father is in the Klan. You know, and I was raised that way. And now I'm here at University of Georgia Athens or, you know, wherever I may be speaking.

Athens or, you know, wherever I may be speaking. And I'm dating this guy from Pakistan or my girlfriend's black or my boyfriend's Jewish. You know, I can't tell my parents they'll kill me or they'll disown me. And I can't tell my friend because they'll drop me. So they got this secret that's burning on their chest and they don't know what to do with it and they have to let somebody know so i'm the perfect person they want to know how to handle this what what do they do you know because see these people come from a neighborhood that is homogenous where people pretty much they go to the same high school they cheer the same sports team they swim in the same community swimming pool they all buy their groceries at the same market or grocery store, what have you. They vote for the same people.

So all that is embedded there. And then when they come to college or university, it's not the high school group there. There are people there from all over the country and all over the world. And now they are being exposed to something that was not in the neighborhood. And they're having to rationalize. They were told Jewish people have horns, black people have tails, and they're finding out this is not true. And what do they do with this education? You know, their parents wanted them to be educated, but they didn't want them to come home with a Jewish boyfriend or a black girlfriend, you know?

So they are learning. Exposure. Exposure. And when you say that you could never sit down and talk to one of these people, that's what we have to do. And I tell you, because at the end of the day, we're all human beings. You've got something to teach them. They've got something to learn. And we can learn from them, too, what is it that they fear. called The Travel Quote. And Mark Twain said,

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 cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. That is so true. I was very fortunate that I had the life that I had. My parents were in the U.S. Foreign Service State Department, American Embassy.

That's why I traveled overseas as a child. My father worked for the embassy. So every two years, we were in a different country. I lived in Africa for 10 years. I lived in Europe. I visited many countries in between, South America, Asia, etc. And so I got to see and experience all these things. And let me tell you something, as you probably know, in the 40s and 50s, a good number of Black Americans, even many famous ones, like Josephine Baker, Memphis Slim, Paul Robeson, Bertha Kitt, they moved to France. They took up residency in France.

Why? Because the French people treated us as equals, not as second-class citizens like we were being treated in our own country. Some Americans even took up their U.S. citizenship and became French citizens because of that equal treatment. So when I was overseas as a child, I'm 62 years old now. When I was overseas as a child, starting in 1961, I was in kindergarten. And then every two years, we'd come back and go back and forth to different countries. In my elementary school overseas in different countries, my classes were filled with other kids from Nigeria, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia,

anybody who had an embassy there, all of their kids went to the same school. Russia, anybody who had an embassy there, all of their kids went to the same school. So I was being multicultural before that term ever existed. In fact, you know, I remember when multicultural first came out, it was multi-cultural. That was all one word. But in 1960s, that term didn't even exist. All right. So if you were to open the door to my classroom back then and poke your head in, you would say, the all black school, or the newly integrated school, black and white. Because we didn't have the amount of diversity in this country that we have today. Back then, it was just black kids and white kids. We didn't see a lot of Asians, a lot of Hispanics, a lot of East Indians, etc. It was just black and white. So because I had already been treated fairly and equally by white people from my own country in the embassy overseas, or by little French friends, by little Swedish friends, by little German friends, et cetera, I could not understand why my own fellow Americans

here who were white were treating me differently. I knew something was wrong. So that's when I came up with the question, you know, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? After I had rocks thrown at me in bottles in a Cub Scout parade because I was the only Black person marching in the parade. But I've come to the conclusion that our society can only become one of two things. One, it can become that which we sit back and let it become, or it can become two, that which we stand up and make it become. So we have to ask ourselves the question, do we want to sit back and see what our society becomes, or do we want to stand up and make it become what we want to see? Now, I'm going to tell you something that the media tends to shy away from, but they better start talking about it because this is what's behind a lot of the racism that's going on today. It started a while back, but I can tell you what's behind a lot of the racism that's going on today.

It started a while back, but I can tell you what's behind it. And, you know, fact check me, okay? Because what I'm telling you has a lot of truth to it, and you'll see what I'm talking about. When I was a child, the black population in this country was 12%. Native Americans were 1%. Hispanics, between 2% and 3%. Asians, around 4%.

Today, black people remain at 12%. We've not grown. Native Americans are still at 1%. They haven't grown either. Asians are now at 6%, so they've grown a little bit. Hispanic people have grown astronomically. They're at, according to the 2017 census, because 2021 hasn't come out yet,

they were at 13%. So they have surpassed us. Now, if you take just 12% Black people, well, this country back then, when I was a kid, was like 84, 86% White. All right. Today, if you take just Black people, 12%, plus 13% Hispanic, right there, not even including the Native Americans or Asians, that right there is 25% non-white. So they're seeing this happen. And this country was built on a two-tier society, white supremacy, slavery. And as we progressed through the years, we progressed like this. We did not progress like this. Okay, we're still like this. We might be like this, but we're still down here, right? So when you have sat on the throne of power for 400 years, you don't want to get off.

Nobody wants to give up their throne, right? It's like if you have a hit record number one, you don't want to see your song go down the numbers. Now you're in the top 100. Now you're in the top 40. Now you're in the top 100 at number 99. No, you want to be at number one platinum, Now you're in the top 100 at number 99. No, you want to be at number one platinum. Okay? That's natural. So the people in charge, they don't want to get above the throne.

But as they see, the country is changing. That's why they call it white genocide through miscegenation. That's why they call it all the people that I know in the KKK and neo-Nazis and alt-right, what they tell me is, Daryl, I don't want to see my grandkids be brown. They call it the browning of America, white genocide, because they're losing their numbers. And it's well predicted by 2042, which is only, what, 22 years from now, this country is going to be 50-50. 50% white, 50% non-white for the first time in U.S. history. And shortly thereafter, guess what? It's going to flip. And whites will become the minority in this country. Globally, whites are already the minority.

There are more people of color globally than white people. But in this country, they are the majority. And that's about to change in the next two decades. And for many white people, they embrace it. They welcome it. Hey, that's great. You know, it's evolution. This is what happens.

But also for many white people, it's very disconcerting. It's very unsettling. And they don't want to give up that power. And that's why you see these groups stepping up and saying, come join us. You know, we're going to stop illegal immigration. We're going to build that wall. We're going to take our country back. Well, when they say illegal immigration, these particular groups, they're not talking about people from Canada or people from the UK or Eastern Europe. They're talking specifically about people from Mexico, South America, West Africa, because they don't care. There are plenty of people here right now, right now, who are here illegally from the UK, from Canada, and from Eastern Europe. Now, they may have come here legally, but they've outrun their visas or whatever. But we're not concerned about them because if I'm white and I'm a racist and my daughter or son were to marry one of them, that's not a problem. My grandchild is going to be white. But if my kid marries somebody from Guatemala or El Salvador or Nigeria, oh, I got a problem, you know? So that's what's happening here.

And that is freaking them out. So these groups are trying to step up their recruitment. You know, come join us. We're going to take our country back. And here's what happens. These people who freaked out, they, you remember, you remember in 1999, everybody was freaking out about Y2K. All right. All that anxiety, you know, the world's going to end, blah, blah, blah. Well, for white supremacists, white nationalists, white separatists, their Y2K is 2042. That's when it's going to change. All right. And they're freaking out.

Now, the world's not going to end, but they think it is. Their world is going to end for sure. All right. So they go and join these groups that promises to do all these things. And then the group doesn't do anything. So they get frustrated and say, you know what?

If the Klan can't do it or the neo-Nazis can't do it, I'll do it myself. And they walk into a black church in South Carolina. They walk into a synagogue in Pittsburgh. They walk into the Walmart in El Paso. These are called lone wolves. And I'm sorry to say this. Unfortunately, we're going to see more and more lone wolves as we get closer and closer to 2042, because these people are becoming unhinged. They are freaking out. And while we have agencies and intelligence operatives who can infiltrate these groups, you know, they can join undercover, get the information, get out and foil any kind of plots, et cetera.

And they have. It's virtually impossible to infiltrate a lone wolf because a lone wolf is only one person. You can get into a group, but how do you get into one person? So as we approach that, they are becoming unhinged. And that's why we need to be vigilant. We need to talk about this. We need to get to know one another or we're going to self-destruct. So I've chosen to stand up and make my country become what I want to see. change. No, there will be people on all sides who will go to their graves being hateful, violent, and destructive, and racist. There is no change in them whatsoever. It's not because they were born that way, but it's because of some sociopathy they may have. All right. So, you know, we have to realize, you know, there are always going to be serial killers. You know, there's always going to be rapists.

But there are those who we can talk to and expose them to something, give them an education, and they can evaluate and say, hey, you know what, I need to go a different way. Because the ones who have come out with me, some of them stay under the radar. You know, they don't want to speak out against it because they're fearful of retaliation. You know, they have young kids and things like that. Other ones who don't have children or their kids have grown, moved on.

Some of them come out on the road with me and tour with me and speak out against their former organization. So it's possible for people to change. Well, it seems like a massive reinterpretation of, you know, the stuff that we've heard for so many years. And it must be very difficult to reinterpret, you know, such hateful words and such hateful action. a few years ago. And Dennis Rodman, I forget exactly where he grew up. Um, but the N word was passed around a lot amongst the African-American community was kind of a normal thing. But then he moved in, um, with it through some weird set of circumstances. He moved in with another family that was white and he moved to Arkansas and he was still being called the N word, uh, you know, at this, at this

school that he went to, but now it was by white people and his friends, some of the other white people were like, like, dude, like, aren't you going to do anything? And he's like, about what? And he's like, they keep calling you the N word. He's like, well, he's like, yeah, my friends back home used to call me that too. So for him at that point, he didn't understand that it was even a derogatory term. And I've heard you speak about this before as well, how it's important to not give those kind of words power. And it sounds like to me like you have decided to do this for the betterment of society, for your own betterment, for the betterment of being able to help convert people and being able to spread the knowledge. But for many other people, that is a very difficult, very hard thing to do. So how can some of us reinterpret

what somebody's saying, whether they're calling us fat or black or whatever they're making fun of us for, how do we have the strength and the power to have a reinterpretation of what someone's trying? Because someone is, I mean, they're specifically saying that to try to chop you down, right? Right. Well, you know, first of all, we have to elevate our own sense of self-respect. So we shouldn't be calling each other, in my opinion, and of course I don't speak for all black people. You know, one of the things, one of the things, you know, I hear constantly when I deal with Klansmen and neo-Nazis and stuff,

they say, well, you know, if you're a black leader, blah, blah, blah. I said, wait a minute, you know, who are my Black leaders? You know, I speak for myself. I mean, there are people that I admire, certainly, but there is no one Black spokesperson who speaks for the entire Black, you know, populace in the country. Because if I were to say, you know, you're White leaders, you know, you would freak out. So, because, you know, you're white leaders, you know, you would freak out. So because, you know, you have a lot of differences with certain white people who are in power. We have to we have to respect ourselves if we want anybody else to respect us. And, you know, you know, and they say to me, well, how come black people, you know, can you use the N-word? And and when we use it, it's all freaked out.

Well, I give them the example of this. I say, you know, if you and your brother, as siblings will do, get into a fight, you know, your kids or whatever, you get into a fight, and your brother calls you an SOB. The point is moot because you both have the same mother. So if he's an SOB, so are you, you know? So it's nullified, right? So, but if I were to come in and I'm fighting with you and I call you an SOB, you're going to kick my B-U-T, T, right?

So if a black person calls another black person the N-word, it's the kettle calling the pot black. It's a moot point. But when somebody else does it, it has more of a sting to it. And the point is, we should not be insulting one another, regardless of whether we're the same color or not. But it starts at home. It starts at home. So if you don't want yourself to be called that, then don't be calling each other that. You remember Dick Gregory? The Bahamian diet person and comedian

activist? He was a good friend of mine. And we were on a thing one time and he told this, this story about, about my hometown, Chicago, where the, the Rolling Stones were coming to, to perform at the big,

you know, arena. And of course, you know, all you have to do is just say they're coming. You don't even have to advertise months in advance. You just say the night before, and a line will go around the block to buy tickets.

And back then, you had to go to the mall to Ticketron and buy tickets. There was no online internet download stuff. So people had camped out all the way around the mall, all the way around the block, to spend the night so they'd be first in line in the morning when the stores opened up to go inside and buy the ticket from the Ticketron. And the next morning, this black guy pulled up in his car, pulled up to the front of the line,

and he got out and walked to the door, to the front of the line, and these white guys who were at the front of the line, they'd been sleeping there all night, said, hey, hey, hey, the line starts way back there, man, you just can't be cutting the line. And they, like, you know, pushed him back. And he came forward again to try to get, you know, to the front of the line there, and they picked him up and carried, a couple of them picked him up and carried him back out to the tarmac where his car was and threw him on the ground and said, you want to get in here,

go to the back of the line, you inward. I'm sorry, you stupid inward. So dude got up, brushed himself off, got out his car keys, got in his car, started the car, and then he got back out. And he said to those people, you can call me stupid and you can call me an N-word, but I'm the stupid N-word that has the key to that door to let you all in. had to key that door to let you all in he got inside his car and drove all the way to the end of the line and opened the door on that side of the mall and let all those people go in first you know you know words are powerful man words are powerful yeah i was curious if you knew like where it originated from like the discrimination not even just for like a black person but also like the skin tone like exactly how dark the skin color is before you got on we were talking about that like it's not so it's not

enough that it's just a black man or a mexican but like it seems like the darker the skin the more discrimination they receive do you know where that's universal pretty much uh you know i mean it comes from you know from the word negra you know latin and uh and uh spanish meaning black and then of course negro negroid etc um and then an aberration of that word which would become derogatory at first the n-word simply just meant a lazy person and then it was always applied to black people And then an aberration of that word, which would become derogatory at first. The N-word simply just meant a lazy person. And then it was always applied to black people. So that's when it became derogatory.

But, you know, black has always universally, but especially in this country, been associated with something negative. For example, what kind of cat crosses your path is bad luck. A black cat. All right. Back in the days of old Westerns, the bad guy wore black. Look at the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger wore white, even wore a white mask and rode a white horse named Silver. Right. And all the dudes he shot up and arrested were dressed in black.

You have black magic, which is evil. You have white magic, the Wizard of Oz, the White Witch of the North, and the Black Witch, which was the evil witch, all right? If you were to tell a lie, that's bad. But if you tell a little white lie, it's okay. All right? When you play pool, billiards, right? All the balls on the table are different colors. The good ball is the cue ball. The cue ball is white. And the idea is to take the little white ball and knock all the other balls into the pocket, into the pockets, all the different color balls. But the one ball that you stay away from of all the colors is which ball? The eight

ball. And what color is the eight ball? Black. So when someone says I'm behind the eight ball, they're in trouble. They're having a bad day. The only time it's good to be black is when you're talking about money. It's better to be in the black than be in the red. That's the only time black is positive. So we are subliminally conditioned from day one to associate black with negativity. People say I've had dark times. I've had dark times. Okay. When you go to a funeral, that's not a happy occasion. People are generally dressed in black. A wedding is new birth. You know, everything's great. You know, the bride is dressed in white, whether she's a virgin or not.

You know, I was curious about this too. You're probably the only person that has talked to that many individuals that were actively in the clan at that point and that had those beliefs. So was there, other than ignorance, which we mentioned, is there a common through line of understanding that you found, see, this is a theme while I'm talking to these people. This is a theme of belief that can help us understand individuals that have that type of belief towards us or that, yeah, that have like massively differing beliefs. Okay. So let's start by saying a Klansman or a Klanswoman or a racist for that matter is not stamped out of a standard cookie cutter. They come from all different walks of life. Just like, you know, we can't say all black people are alike. All races are not alike either.

And even though they try to lump us all in one category, which is wrong, we can't lump them all in one category. Their common thread is racism. But they come from all different walks of life, all different educational backgrounds, from the third grade dropout who pumps gas down the street, all the way to president of the United States. President Warren G. Harding was sworn into the Ku Klux Klan in the green room of the White House. President Harry Truman had joined the Klan for a very short time before he became president. He didn't like it. He got out and he went on to become president.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was in the Klan when he got the appointment to be on the Supreme Court. He had to drop out of the Klan in order to become a Supreme Court justice. Senator Robert Byrd, who just died a few years ago, he was the oldest living senator from West Virginia. He was a Klansman back in the 1940s. He eventually gave up those beliefs, et cetera, and became who he became. So all different educational backgrounds.

There are different reasons for joining the Klan. Like I just gave you one a minute ago with the family tradition, you know, grandfather, father, on and on. I'll give you another couple of examples. Okay, let's say you have a depressed town. Let's say a coal mining town. And the company, you've worked for that coal mining company for generations, from your great grandfather on down. And, you know, as soon as you get out of high school, or you might even quit school and go work at the coal mines, 15 years old. That's all you know. If I were to give you a broom and tell you to sweep up my floor, you wouldn't know how to do it.

Because all you know how to do is dig coal. All right? And you've been doing that. You're happy. You're not racist. You're making your money. You're paying your rent. You're putting food on your family's table. Everything's good. When people are happy, they tend not to be negative towards other people. OK, so the company decides, hey, you know what?

There are a bunch of immigrants here, you know, and they come from these countries where they make no money. You know, so, you know, let's lay off our workers and hire them, whether they're legal or illegal, they'll work for that much. Right now, we're paying our people this much. So, you know, it's called greed, right? Capitalism greed. So we're going to hire these illegal Mexicans or illegal Mexicans or people from South America or whatever, and give them these jobs, teach them how to dig coal, and we'll just pay them that much and we'll make tons of money. That happens all the time. So they lay off, you know, most of these coal miners are white. So they lay them off and they hire these other people.

So now these people who don't have any other job skills, they cannot get another job. They were never racist. Now all these bills are coming due. They can't pay their bills. The bank is going to foreclose on their trailer or whatever place they live in. The kids need new clothes and they can't buy them. They can't even buy them from the Goodwill place. They don't have any money.

So the Klan will come into a town like that, one of those rural towns, and hold a rally. And they'll say, look, the blacks have the NAACP. The Jews have the ADL. Nobody stands up for the white man but the Klan. You come join us. We'll get your jobs back. You know, your job's not gone, but you're gone. And some damn N-word or some damn S-word or whatever has your job. Why do they have your

job? You've been working there since you were a great, great granddaddy. Why do they have the job? They just got here yesterday. You know, so these people who were never racist are listening to this and they're thinking, you know, maybe they got a point. Okay, give me an application. Sign me up. And they join that way. Or if you move into a town that is a Klan stronghold, just like, you know, if you move into a block that this gang controls, you know, you join the gang if you want to stay on that block, you know, or you try to open up a business on a block that's run by the mafia.

You've got to pay them protection, you know, so nobody breaks into your store and hurts you or something, right? So you move into a town and you want to set up business, you need to get along with the townspeople. You join the local chamber of commerce, you join the local country club, and you join the local Ku Klux Klan. So people come into it those ways as well. Now people who have it ingrained in them from family, as you were pointing out, that deep-rooted thing, they may be a little harder to get through to,

more so than the ones who just came into it because they moved to a different location or they just lost their job a couple months ago. What do you think of the situation with Ahmaud Arbery? I'm sure you've been made aware of that. Absolutely. I think it's a very good thing somebody had that video. I don't know who had the video or why or how it was been reversed, where there was a video of two black guys chasing a white jogger, father and son, it would have been a whole different story. A whole different story. And, you know, this kind of stuff needs to stop.

It needs to be exposed. And we need to stand up and educate people. You know, this is the only thing that's going to change. And people need to be exposed. And we need to stand up and educate people. You know, this is the only thing that's going to change. And people need to be punished. They need to be severely punished. I think, you know, I think hate crimes against a fellow man, whether it's a white against a black or vice versa, or against a Jewish person or whatever, you are committing a crime against a black or vice versa or against a Jewish person or whatever,

you are committing a crime against another American. And for no other reason than hating that person. And to me, that's on par with treasonism. You know, I think it's treason to turn against your fellow American

and destroy that person for no other reason. I mean, if he's breaking into your house, you catch him in the act, something like that. That's a different story. But these incidents, you know, from and we've been complaining about these incidents long before Rodney King. Rodney King was perhaps one of the first videos because George Halliday, who was the videographer, happened to have a video camera. And back then, nobody had video cameras but TV stations because they were so expensive, thousands of dollars. Now everybody's got one in the form

of their cell phone, you know, and they wear it on their hip all the time. So, you know, we're seeing more and more and we're bringing truth to what we've been complaining about long before Rodney came. And this has to stop. Our judicial system is broken. Now, those two prosecutors recuse themselves. And one of them even said he thought it was something like self-defense or something, he thought it was something like self-defense or something, or the guy trying to make a citizen's arrest. Those two guys were twice the size of this jogger.

If they really thought he was a burglar, why didn't they just tackle him and restrain him? You know, they could have overpowered him. And then I think it was MSNBC went down there to the scene, the following, you know, I guess just recently, and somebody started spraying, making a semi-automatic machine gun fire. Did you see that? No. Oh, yeah, yeah. Check it out.

So Martin Savage, the reporter from MSNBC, he and his crew went down there to that block just to film. And from the house where those guys lived, they came to the sound of a semi-automatic machine gun fire. So they got the heck out of there. What's that all about? It's terrible that it happened, and apologies to everyone who was affected by it. But when I see that, I get full of some crazy emotions. Your approach to things is unlike anybody else that I've ever heard of or seen, you approach things with like the utmost empathy, the utmost like understanding or understanding how,

how can we, but I mean also like how do you see something like that? And you don't like go on a tirade on social media. You don't want to essentially clap back, right? Like how can you calmly state your opinion and not be full of rage? I am full of rage. Trust me, I am full of rage. I mean, this goes on way too much, you know, and as soon as this one's over, there's going to be another one somewhere.

So I am full of rage, but I direct my rage in a positive direction, okay, to try to educate and perhaps prevent the next one. And, you know, and that leads me to another thing that is controversial. And again, I don't say I speak for everybody. I've been saying this now for almost 22 years, and there are people who agree with me and people who vehemently disagree with me. I think that we need to get rid of Black History Month. And I'm going to tell you why. First of all, there was a time when we needed Black History Month because no black history was being taught in our school system. What was being taught was called American history.

And for all practical purposes, it may as well have been called white history because that's all it was. Black people, white people were getting credited with things they did not invent and things they did not discover. And black people were getting dismissed, not even mentioned. So our history is, you know, part of it was a lie. And we would learn certain things at home that were not taught in school. We had to fight and fight and fight to get our history into the classroom. Finally, we were given one week.

It was called Negro History Week. And that was established by Carter G. Woodson. Negro History Week. So one week a year, they would talk about black history. We fought even harder, but that's not enough. You know, nobody's going to give us all at one time, right? It's all doling out little by little.

So we fought harder and harder. And finally we got a whole month. Not even a whole month. 28 days, right? We got the shortest month of the year. February. Now, that's not by coincidence. We didn't get a 31-day month. got 28 day month, except for once every four years, we get that extra day on leap

year. But we accepted February. A, it was all they were giving us. Plus, B, it was the birth month of two of our heroes. Abraham Lincoln was born in February, and Frederick Douglass was born in February. So we'll take that month. We'll honor them as well. Then we became complacent. We stopped fighting. And as I said, we needed Black History Month because we had nothing and people needed to be educated. But now we're at a point where I believe that it is now detrimental to our educational system to continue with Black History Month. Why? Because we are subliminally brainwashing little black kids and little white kids and any other kind of kids into believing there is only a handful, half a dozen black people in this country that ever did anything. Every February, they only study the same half a dozen black people.

Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm S. You know, and then by the time you got to six or seven, oh, February's over. We did our black thing. Let's move on. And we never revisit those people until next February. And next February, it's the same Black people every February. So what you're telling people is there were only six people in this country, six Black people in this country that ever did anything. What about Garrett Morgan, who invented the traffic light, who invented the gas mask? What about C.J. Walker? What about, well, you know, we didn't have time. We only had February 28 days. Okay. There are thousands of black people who have contributed to the building of America.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not taking anything away from those six people I just mentioned. They are some of the icons. Absolutely nothing should be taken away from them, and they should always be included. But if you only include them, you are sending a message that there was nobody else, which is simply not true. And that's number one. Number two, we learn about white people who've made history all year long. Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key, on and on and on. And

they are reinforced all year long. We only talk about black people in February. So if I were to say who was the guy who flew the kite and lightning hit the key and now we have electricity, everybody knows it's Ben Franklin because we hear about it all year long as a kid.

But you ask some little kid in June, right before he graduates from sixth grade or seventh grade or whatever, you say in June, who was Harriet Tubman? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember her. She was that woman, that black lady who refused to give a receipt on the bus. They got her confused with Rosa Parks because there is no reinforcement. So we need to get rid of Black History Month, take the content that we had in February and put it under the umbrella of American history where it belongs and and teach it all year long like anybody else, and include other people. Look, when I was a kid, we had the Miss America beauty pageant, as we still have today.

But when I was a kid, black women were not allowed to compete in Miss America. Why? Because they were told they were not beautiful enough, they were ugly. And the fact of the matter is, the judges were all white males at the time. Today, you have women judges, everything else. But back then, white male judges, they did not want white males judging on the beauty of a black woman walking across the stage. All right. And there were only two categories, the evening gown and the swimsuit. Women were objectified as objects of beauty, sex objects, et cetera. They didn't have talent. They didn't need to write an essay or prove how smart they were. All we want to do is just look at you in your evening gown and bathing suit and vote on you.

All right. That was Miss America when it started out. Now, it started out before I was born, but I was there when it was only the swimsuit and the evening gown and white male judges. And so Black women, what happened to them? Their self-esteem went down because they did not, you know, they were told they were ugly. They were not beautiful.

So how did we elevate their self-esteem? We created the Miss Black America beauty pageant to give black women something to aspire to. Why do we need that? It's like a couple of years ago in Mississippi, a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, had a black prom and a white prom. What the heck? What's that all about? You know? So Miss America was doing the exact same thing, right? We had Miss Black America, we had Miss America. So finally, finally, Miss America

opened, came to a census and opened its doors. And now any American woman, regardless of their color, can compete in Miss America. And since that time, we have had several Miss Americas who've been black, starting with Vanessa Williams, and then Debbie Turner. I can't remember the names of the others. But so now that Miss America is on even ground, we don't need Miss Black America. When are we going to stop needing Black History Month? President Barack Obama became the first Black president of the United States. Does that mean we can only talk about him in February? Come on, let's get real. Let's take black history and put it where it belongs as American history and teach it all year long. the Ku Klux Klan, did you, were you encouraged to, uh, pursue it more? Were you encouraged to like, because you learned more about it or did it get more frightening as you started to read more books and you started to investigate, uh, was there something that like led you to believe,

Hey, if I go talk to these people, this is a good idea. Or, uh, you know, are you reading things about like lynchings and crazy stuff like that that where you're like, Oh man, this could, this could end very badly for me. Like what, what was the dialogue like in your head to, uh, to, I understand why you did it, but, uh, how'd you have the courage to do it? It sounds like it would be, I wouldn't go to, like, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't, uh't want to be anywhere near those people just from my own perception of them. Yeah. I mean, you see my name in the media. Black musician converts 200 plansman, blah, blah, blah. No, I didn't even convert one. I am the impetus for over 200 leaving those organizations and giving up that ideology. those organizations and giving up that ideology. I planted the seed. They converted themselves.

But my original mission, I never, believe it or not, I never set out to convert anybody. I did not want to meet with them to try to talk them out of their beliefs. All I wanted to know was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? All you see is this, the color of my skin, and you make all these assertions about me. Please explain to me why. That's all I want to know. I'm not here to argue with you and try to take your robes, et cetera. I just want to know why so I can understand. And I really did not think anybody was going to change because I was under the belief that a tiger doesn't change its stripes, a leopard doesn't change its spots. So I was not there to change anybody. I was just there to try to figure out what makes somebody feel this way. Well, as the conversations continued, they began seeing a humanity in me. They began seeing a humanity in me. And they began slowly but surely rethinking their positions and their ideology. And then next thing you know, they these people. And so even after my book was done and out, published, I continued it because people were leaving through these

conversations. I thought, well, damn, you know, maybe I need to keep doing this. So that's why I continue it today. You know, the book came out in 1997. I'm working on my second one now. But even then, you know, I mean, now we're in 2020. I'm still doing it. You know, along those lines, as you were doing this with all of these people, you were never trying to you were never trying to shut them up. You were never trying to like, I guess. Yeah, you were disputing what they were saying, but you weren't canceling them. Nowadays, how do you feel about how things are now where if someone says something kind of, you know, it's kind of odd or actually some people say things that are blatantly racist immediately, like media platforms will cancel them, they'll shut them up, etc. And kind of, I guess, negate their ability to say those things.

And kind of, I guess, negate too scared of letting those things out. So instead, they'll go and they'll they'll find groups where they can do these types of things in secret without so that other people don't know. And in essence, it's kind of like a worse way to go about it. Yes, you're absolutely you're spot on. One hundred percent. You know, everybody, I don't care who you are. We all want to be heard. We all want, we all have a voice. And therefore, you know, we want to use it. We want to speak and we want to be heard.

And, you know, when you shut somebody up or try to shut them down, then you are pushing them into that corner where they're going to explode or they're going to go seek out, you they're, where they can have a platform. And the next thing you know, that platform is going to grow and grow and grow. And then you have this, this group, this gang, this coalition or whatever, that's going to explode. And you know, that's a bad thing. Even, I mean, you know, if, you know, there's hate speech and there's freedom of speech and things like that. And sometimes the line is a little gray. But we have to let people speak. We have to listen to them. I mean, we can choose not to listen to them, but we have to allow them to speak if we want our own voices to be heard. is the only way you're going to change somebody.

You know, like, for example, if you made a statement at the beginning of the program that, in fact, the first statement you made was you could not and never would sit down and talk to one of these people. So if I were to figure, OK, well, you know what? I'm going to make you talk to one of these people. I'm going to come and beat the daylights out of you until you talk to one of these people. So if I were to figure, okay, well, you know what, I'm going to make you talk to one of these people. I'm going to come and beat the daylights out of you until you talk to one of these people. That's not going to make you talk to them. But I might have a chance, if I converse with you, I may be able to plant some seeds that might persuade you, or at least get you thinking, well, you know, maybe I can have a conversation.

I'll think about it, you know. But if I'm beating on you, all I'm doing is driving you away and reinforcing what you already know that you don't want anything to do with these people. So that's part of the problem. We cannot beat the Nazi out of a Nazi. It's just that simple. I mean, it may feel good to go punch a Nazi in the face or something, but it's not going to change them.

One of the things I, one of the things I love about, you know, what you're doing is, and Andrew pointed it out, is that you're not allowing your feelings to take over. So you have these feelings, you're acknowledging feelings. You're like, this pisses me off as much as the next person, but you're trying to find solutions to it. And in your opinion, the solution is to educate. If, if people know more as they got closer to you, um, I've heard you, uh, have statements before where you've said, you know, some of the things you've heard about African Americans are they have smaller brains, they're not as smart and things of that nature. And once you start to

communicate with these people, they're like, oh my God, like he's really eloquent. You're an amazing musician. You know, you have all these, all these talents and all these skills and you're really kind of like Eminem does in his movie, Eight Mile, you're taking everything they ever thought of you and you're pulling it all away. You're pulling all of that away from them. So they no longer have it as armor. And then plus, on top of that, to start things out, you're really listening to them. You're listening to the things that they don't understand. And then I would imagine from there, it's probably a process of you trying to untangle maybe some of the thoughts that they've had. And how do you kind of manage that part of it?

Well, exactly. Because, you know, I can't see when they see me, they see the enemy. You know, I'm a black person. They have their ideology. Their wall is up. They're ready to fight. They're ready to defend white patriotism and whatever else, you know, they got going on. All right.

I, you know, I'm there to attack them. It's us against them. That's their mentality. But when I come and I'm just chill and I'm listening to them and I'm allowing them to say whatever they want to say, my buttons are not getting pushed, et cetera, they get thrown off their game. And they have to go home and think about that. Well, you know, damn, you know, that guy speaks the same language I speak. You know, he didn't get all bent out of shape. He listened to me. He wants the same things for his family that I want for my family.

You know, and they keep seeing this over and over again. But I always make sure, you know, I've had them in my living room. I invite them over to the house, whatever. All right. We sit down and we talk. And once I trust them, you know, that, you know, they're not going to come blow up my house or shoot me or whatever. All right. We sit down and we talk. And once I trust them, you know, that, you know, they're not going to come blow up my house or shoot me or whatever. I will invite over some of my other friends, some of my black friends, some of my Jewish friends, some of my other white friends, you know, so they can engage in conversation with them as well. Because it's very important that they don't, because if you don't do that, they will think, oh, well, you know, Daryl is the exception.

It's the other black people. You know, you don't want that to happen. You know, you don't want that to happen. Every every white person's like my doctor's black or my. This is why they point out that the one is black. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not racist. I listen. I listen to black music. You're like, oh, my God. Yeah. So, you know, I make sure, you know, that I expose them to other people who who disagree with them and who, you know, have the same attributes. You know, they want the same things. And so that way, you know, I'm not saying you're wrong. You know, this is a bit of a I'm just letting see this. And they go home and they figure that out themselves. I said, maybe I need to reevaluate.

I'll give you a couple of examples. When I first interviewed the first one for the book, he came in with his armed bodyguard into the hotel room. And, you know, he's the one who first said, you know, you know, I asked him, you know, you don't even know me. You interviewed a Klan's like leader, right? Yeah, exactly. And at that time, this book called The Bell Curve had come out. Very racist book that more or less, you know, said black people did not have the IQ that white people had, et cetera.

So anyway, he wouldn't know he hadn't read the book, but he'd heard that. That's all he needed to build his case, right? And anyway, he said that black people had smaller brains than white people. Therefore, their capacity for IQ was less. Black people are lazy. We don't want to work. We prefer to scan the government welfare system. And black people are more prone to crime than white people. That's the reason why blacks, there are more blacks in prison. So, I mean, that obviously there must be more black criminals.

It doesn't seem to get people to enslave, right? People that are lazy. Right, right. And of course, he's not considering, you know, the inequity of the judicial system, which is why, you know, there are a lot more in prison than there should be. But all he has to see is the result. And then he can he can write his own narrative about it. So. Even though he's he's sitting right across the table from me and saying all these things about me, I did not react negatively to him. And that freaked him out because he's so used to fighting, you know, with Black people on those points. And I'm just sitting here listening to him.

And then at the end, I pointed out, well, you know, Mr. Kelly, I have never been in, you know, I don't have a criminal record. I have never been on welfare and I've never measured my brain, but I'm sure it's the same size as everybody else's. And I knew that I had more education than he and his bodyguard put together. So what do I have to prove? And then now when he was sitting across from me, he was in a suit and tie.

And he had a little suitcase with him, which was sitting on the bed in the motel. And something told me, I just sensed it, something told me that his robe and hood were in that case. And so at the end of the interview, I asked him, I said, do you have your robe and hood with you? He said, yes. You know, he pointed to the case. I said, would you mind putting them on for me? So I can take a picture off of my book. He said, okay.

So I'm sitting at the table. He pops open his suitcase, pulls out the robe and hood, takes off his suit jacket, puts on the robe and hood, walks over to the dresser where the mirror is. He's standing in the mirror, you know, fixing himself, his bodyguard is fixing his cape and adjusting his hood and all that. And I'm sitting at the table, you know, looking at him. And now I've seen Klansmen and Klanswomen march up and down the street

in a Klan, you know, march. But I'd never seen, I never had one put on their robe and hood right in front of my face, you know, with, you know, less than five feet away in my room. It's very hard for me to describe to you what I was feeling. But I was feeling all kinds of feelings all at once. I felt very angry. I felt very sad. I felt very bitter. And I'm ashamed to say it, I felt very violent. I knew I could jump across that table and take that guy down

for all the atrocities that people like him wearing robes and hoods, just like that had done to my ancestors and other members of my ethnicity, the color of my skin, because of that robe and hood. And I had to remind myself, Darrell, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down. Settle down, you know. Number one, you, calm down. Settle down. You know, number one, you invited him here. He didn't have to come, but he came. He gave you the interview. You asked him to put on his robe and hood. He complied with your wishes. So what are you going to do? Are you going to ask somebody to do something for you? And then they oblige and you beat them up for it?

No, you can't do that. That's stupid. You know? So, and then I said to myself, you know what? He is the exact same person who 45 seconds earlier was sitting across from me in a suit and tie. And he was saying, I had a small brain. I'm on welfare and I'm a criminal. Why didn't I slap him then? And now he puts on the robe and hood, and I slap him? He's the same person. The robe and hood is nothing more than a piece of material. It means nothing. There are people in suits and

ties who feel the same way. There are people in uniforms with a badge and gun who feel the same way. There are judges in black robes who feel the same way. There are gun who feel the same way. There are judges in black robes who feel the same way. There are doctors who feel the same way. So don't let the material throw you. The material is not, the material that the Roman hood is made out of is not empowered with any kind of superpower or magic. What we have to consider is not what somebody is wearing on their body, but what is here and what is here. In other words, what they feel in their heart and what they think in their mind. That's what we need to focus on, not a stupid Robin Hood. Because I'll tell you what, I would rather see somebody coming up the sidewalk towards me

in a Robin Hood and know where they're coming from than somebody in a suit and tie or police officer's uniform and think I know where they're coming from and they stab me in the back. Okay, so we know what the Robin Hood stands for. And let me tell you something. When I got my first Robin Hood, I got a bunch of them now. But when I got my first one, I didn't know what to do with it. I never had a Robin Hood before, you know. So I brought it home and I kept looking at it. And, you know, and they feel very powerful in the Robin Hood. It's almost like a Clark Kent Superman thing.

You know, the Meek Mile reporter from the Daily Planet in his little suit. And then he puts on, you know, he gets off the suit and I'm Superman, that kind of thing. You actually see that. And so I took that robe and hood and guess what I did with it? I put it on. Yes, I did. I put on the robe and hood

and I stood in front of my mirror to see what I look like. And I look stupid. So I took it off. Hey, you want transparency? I'm being honest with you. Do you do you do you think maybe the only interaction that some of these people may have had previously with people of other ethnicity is maybe just kind of like at these rallies and at these like protests place places that they may go and they don't really or they may have like hate crimes against other ethnicities but they don't really like they probably haven't communicated or talked to someone

right they probably haven't had a conversation right exactly uh now and understand i mean yes in some cases they've never had a conversation with somebody. In other cases, yes, they are aware. Like, for example, the leader who came in the hotel room, I was just telling you about, he works, or at the time, he worked with black people because, you know, you have to have a job if you're going to pay your bills. But working with them is one thing, but he doesn't go out and go to happy hour with them after work.

He goes about his business. He has to do certain things in order to draw a paycheck. So if there's a project and some black guy is on the project with them, so be it. He does his job. I do my job. We get it done. We get our paycheck.

And then we go our separate ways. Or I go to happy hour or I go to lunch with one of my white coworkers. And did you maybe ask? Yeah, just like you see in metropolitan, even in metropolitan cities, let's say Chicago or right here, Washington, D.C., New York, Baltimore, you have a company where you have different workers and they're upstairs working on a project. They might even share the same cubicle. they're upstairs working on a project. They might even share the same cubicle. But what happens at 12 noon? They go downstairs to the cafeteria and Blacks sit with Blacks,

Whites sit with Whites, and Spanics sit with Hispanics. Does that mean that they're racist? Not necessarily. Sometimes, yes, but not necessarily. People tend to self-segregate because they feel more comfortable around people with whom they share a language, a culture or a look. Now, if it gets too, too much, like I don't want that person sitting at my table, then we have a problem. One of the best things that happened in my family when I was really young, you know, I'm not proud to say I've had many family members say racist things, you know, at dinner tables and at parties and things like that. And, you know, not not it was not joking. You know, I was like, you know, these are derogatory terms that are, in my opinion, are gross. But when I was young, I just didn't I didn't know what any of it meant. But I think I was probably about 12 or 13 years old. And my aunt came home. She met somebody that she fell in love with and he happened to be

African-American. And so that was a, that was a really interesting thing for my family to be a part of, because I don't think at that time many of my family members had any association, had hardly any affiliation or knew any people that were black. You know, they would just use the N word and they would just say it here and there. Where my family grew up in New York is kind of near New York City and about 45 minutes outside of New York City. And it's very segregated. The white people live over segregated. The white people live

over here, the black people live over here. And when I was young, when I was a kid, you know, I was born in 1976. When I was a kid, even then, even in the 80s, like the white people did not go into the black area and the black people did not go into the white area. It was very rare. As you're talking about, as you're pointing out, they might work together here and there, and there might be some circumstances. Um, but the whites thought what they thought about the black people, the black people thought what they thought about the white people. But, um, once my aunt, um, ended up eventually marrying this man, you know, I remember it was like a, it was a thing with my, my grandpa, you know, he had to, uh, he had to get over it, but they became best friends. They hung out all the time. My grandpa loved to smoke cigars. And so, uh, this man came into our life and he,

he forever changed the kind of the dialogue of, of a lot of my family members. And I think it was, uh, important for me to see that as a young man to hear, you know, some, cause I could have gone the other way, right? Like if this never happened, I could have believed some of the things that they believed in. And luckily, luckily it never turned into that for me. And there's, there's a case for exposure, exposure and education, you know, you know, that, that black guy could not have come in to your aunt's life and beaten the racism out of your grandpa. That never would have worked. Yeah, I remember a time, too, when my aunt, she came into town and where I live in in California, there's not many African-Americans.

But I remember his name is Bill and Bill and my aunt, Susan, they came to visit me and Bill brought like probably about 20 of his friends, which probably looked, which probably looked pretty funny. I was walking down, all walking down the street together in Davis, California, where, as I mentioned, it's mainly, mainly Caucasian and Asian. Yeah, I've been to Davis, California. You know, sir, I'm really curious about your thoughts on this, because me and my friends, we have discussions like this a lot. And some of them went like have had very bad interaction interactions with white people were like, like racist things were literally said. And from that,

from those instances, they come to the point or they come to the conclusion, like, yo, I fucking hate white people. I hate these white people. And they, in some of their statements, it sounds what it sounds kind of racist. Now I'm curious, do you, because some people believe that people of color can't be racist because they're not in positions of power. But do you think that that's irrelevant? It doesn't seem like, I mean, if you are a person of color and you hate someone because of, yeah, they may have people in there of like of their race may have mistreated you. But if you hate the group because of that, isn't that inherently also racism? Yes, it is, in my opinion. Yes.

I've heard that before, too, that it's usually black people saying it, you know, that we can't be racist. And, you know, yes, we can. You know, if if if somebody has done something to me and certainly there have been white people who've done things to me, no question about it. And sometimes what they did was indeed racist and may have ended up in a fistfight or something. I may dislike that individual, but I'm not going to dislike everybody that looks like him. If I did, then I would be racist. Absolutely. So, yes, black people can be racist. Anybody can be racist. Absolutely. So, yes, black people can be racist. Anybody can be racist. And, you know, and then I hear a lot about, you know, you know, what is reverse discrimination is reverse racism,

blah, blah, blah. Well, reverse racism is there's an equal reaction to every to every action. You know, that's that's the law of physics. Every action is an equal reaction. You know, that's the law of physics. Every action is an equal reaction. Nothing can be put into reverse unless it goes forward first. But otherwise, what would be reverse, right? You must have forward in order to have reverse. So the forward was the racism.

The reverse was the reaction, all right? And reverse racism is just as bad as racism. You know, we can't fight racism with racism. We have to, you know, we have to educate people and we have to gain allies. Just like I tell you, Obama, Obama was not put in the White House by black people. White people put Obama in the White House. That's a fact. Okay. How is that a fact? Because the black population in this country is only 12%. And not all 12% of black people are eligible to vote. Some of them are children. Some of them are felons. Okay. So the percentage of black voters who are registered,

some of us are eligible to vote, but we never registered, all right, is less than 12%. So even if every Black person in this country, including babies and their dogs, voted for Obama, that would not have been enough to put him in the White House. It took a lot of the white vote to add to that, to put him in the White House. 20 years ago, the white mentality overall, I don't want to paint with a broad brush, the majority was not ready to put a black man in the White House. Yes, there were Black people who were qualified 20 years ago. There were Black people who were qualified 50 years ago. But the mentality was not ready.

By 2008, there were those who were willing to take a chance. Yeah, you know, what he's saying makes sense. Yeah, yeah, he's got my vote. We needed that number to put them in the White House. How did they arrive from all that racism, from slavery, all the way to 2008? And that change of attitude come to where they were ready to entrust their lives and their country to a black man. their lives and their country to a black man. Because by that time, there were enough of them who had come to know. They had been exposed. They had gone to schools. Integration had worked. They were working with them on the jobs. They were getting to know them. They were dating them. They were out having lunch with them, whatever. That exposure, that education is what prepared them.

So, yes, sitting down and talking with people and having that conversation can work, just like his grandfather, just like the people that I talked to, even the most vehemently racist people. I mean, somebody who is so racist, they would go and join an organization that practices racism. You know, it's not enough just to sit at your house and cuss out black people on TV. You know, you want to go join an organization, get the robe and do all kinds of stuff. How has music helped transcend race for you? Music. Music is universal. Even Klan people like music. I'm just being honest, okay?

So, you know, people say music soothes the savage beast. Yes, it does. But let me give you an example. Okay, today is Friday. So let's say I want to go out dancing tonight. So I know this club down the street, either has a DJ or it has a live band. I can dance. So I go down there and you know,

music is playing the dance floor is full and the song is playing, you know, that I like and I want to dance. So the first thing I do is I look around the club to see if I see a single lady who's not attached to some guy or something, right? And I see this lady, she's sitting at the bar and she's tapping her hand on the top of the bar and beat to the music. So obviously she likes that song too. I don't know her. I'm going to walk over to her and say, hey, excuse me, you know, would you like to dance? She says, yeah, because she likes the song. So she comes off her bar stool. Now, I don't know her.

She and I are on the dance floor. If it's a slow song, we're wrapped around each other, and we're turning slowly around on the floor. If it's a fast song, we're shaking apart from each other or whatever, right? I don't even know this woman. At the end of the song, being the gentleman that I'm supposed to be, I'm going to escort her back to her bar stool. And I'm going to say, hey, you know, my name is Daryl Davis. She says, my name is Sally Smith. And she says, so I say, you know, what do you do, Sally? And she tells me she's the VP for the East Coast division of Microsoft or something.

Whoa. You know, she's making half a million dollars a year or something. She says to me, you know, so what do you do, Daryl? And I say, I'm a cashier at McDonald's. You know, I'm making, what, $9,000 a year? So where would two people that diverse on the spectrum come that close that we're like this? Music brought us together.

And it was music that brought me together with the first Klansman that was friendly towards me. The very first Klansman I met, I beat him up. I didn't know he was a Klansman, but I beat the daylights out of him. That's another story. I beat him up. I didn't know he was a Klansman, but I beat the daylights out of him. That's another story. But anyway, I was playing in this club,

and I had just recently joined a country-western band. It was half country, half bluegrass. And country music had made a resurgence back in the 80s. There had been a movie out called Urban Cowboy with John Travolta, and it had a mechanical bull and all these line dancers and stuff. So just about every club and bar went from top 40 to country overnight. And so if you wanted to make a living playing music, which I wanted to do, I joined the country band. And I like country music.

It was very easy to play. Same three chords as the blues. and I like country music. It was very easy to play. Same three chords as the blues. So I played country and everybody in the band was white except for me. And this bar, it was called the Silver Dollar Lounge up in Frederick, Maryland, about 40 miles outside of Washington, D.C. And it was a truck stop. He froze a little bit. We'll get him back. and in the bottom of the

motel was silver dollar lounge and it was known as an all-white lounge not meaning that black people could not go in but um that black people were not welcome there and you know black people did not go in there they knew that so for the most part here i was in the silver dollar lounge and we had just finished playing the first set of music and we're taking a break and i'm walking to go sit down with my bandmates when i felt somebody from behind put their arm around my shoulder and i didn't know anybody in there so i turned around to see who's touching me and it was this white gentleman maybe 15 15, 18 years older than me. And he says, hey, I sure like your all's music.

I said, thank you. And I shook his hand. And he points at the stage and he said, I've seen this here band before, but I ain't never seen you before. Where did you come from? And I explained, I just joined the band a couple of months ago. Yeah, you probably did see them because they'd been here before, but it's my first time. He goes, man, I sure like your piano playing. 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 rather surprised that this guy who was older than me, who had probably grown up with

Jerry Lee Lewis, not physically, but, you know, in Jerry Lee's heyday, did not know the origin of Jerry Lee Lewis's music, which is black blues and boogie woogie. That's where rock and roll, rockabilly, you know, came from. And I said to him, I said, well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play? And I wasn't trying to be facetious. I was just curious. And he goes, well, Jerry Lee invented that. And I said, no, man, he learned from the same place I did. And you know, black blues and

boogie woogie. I never heard no black man play piano like that except for you. So I'm thinking, okay, well, this dude has never heard Little Richard or Fats Domino. You know, all he knows is Jerry Lee. So I explained to the guy, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis is a good friend of mine, which he is. And he has told me himself where he learned how to play. I told the guy that I knew Jerry Lee and where Jerry Lee learned how to play. The guy did not buy it. He thought I was lying to him. But he was curious about me because he'd never seen, I was a novelty.

So he wanted to have a drink with me. I don't drink alcohol, but I went back to his table and I had a cranberry juice. And he took his glass and he cheers my glass. And he says, you know, this is the first time I ever sat down and had a drink with a black man. And now I'm curious because, you know, in my 25 years on the face of this earth at that time, I was 25 years old. I had sat down with literally thousands of white people or anybody else and had a beverage, a meal, a conversation. And this guy was probably 18, 15 years older than me. He'd never sat down with a black guy before. I mean, how is that? So I asked him, I said, why? And he didn't answer me at first. I asked him again. He stared at the tabletop and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and said, tell him, tell

him, tell him. I said, tell me. And he looked at me just as straight up plain as day. And he said, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I burst out laughing because I did not believe him. I knew a lot about the Klan at that point. And I knew Klansmen just didn't come up and put their arm around a black guy and want to praise him and praise his piano playing, want to hang out and buy him a drink. It doesn't work like that. So I figured, okay, this guy's joking me. He thought I was joking him about Jerry Lee Lewis,

so he's going to joke me about the Klan. So I'm laughing. He goes inside his pocket, pulls out his wallet, and hands me his Klan membership card. I took this thing. I look at it. Ooh, I recognize the Ku Klux Klan insignia, which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the center of the cross. This thing is for real. I stopped laughing, and I gave it back to him. And we talked about the Klan and some other things, And I gave it back to him.

And we talked about the Klan and some other things. And he gave me his phone number and wanted me to call him whenever I was to return to this bar, this band. Because he wanted to bring his friends, meaning his, you know, Klansmen and Klanswomen friends, to see this black guy play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. Now, I'm not sure he called me a black guy to his friends, but that's what he wanted to do. So I would call him every six weeks on a Wednesday or Thursday and say, hey, man, you know, we're going to be out at the Silver Dollar Friday and Saturday. Come on out. He'd come both nights, and he'd bring Klansmen and Klanswomen. And on the breaks, you know, I would go to his table, say hello. I would meet some of these Klansmen and Klanswomen. Now, there were those who did not want to meet me.

And when they would see me coming, they would get up and scurry away, go to the back of the room. You know, so it was like, you know, we want to look at you. You know, we don't want to talk to you, which is fine. You know, others were curious and they wanted to talk to me. And we'd sit down and talk. And that's how that started. And then, you know, I wasn't really realizing what was happening at the time. I was just being friendly.

And then it dawned on me sometime later, after I'd quit that band, I'd quit that band and gone back to playing rock and roll and blues and R&B and whatever else was going on the following year. It dawned on me, Darrell, oh, whoa. You know, the answer to your question dawned on me, Darrell, oh, whoa, you know, the answer to your question that you've had that's been plaguing you since age 10, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? The answer fell into your lap

because I'd been looking for that answer and had never found it. But the answer fell into my lap. Who better to ask than someone who would go so far as to join an organization who hates people, who don't look like them and who don't believe as they believe? That person or those people would know the answer to my question, why we hate you when we don't even know you. So I need to get a hold of that guy. And I have in my basement right now that I've been collecting since I was a kid, every book written on the Klan. And I've read them all.

I have books on black supremacy, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, Adolf Hitler, Nazism, you name it. So I'm trying to understand that mentality. None of those books answered my questions. And all the books written on the Klan were written by white authors, except for two books, one that were written by black authors, but they were not about the Klan specifically. Each author detailed how he escaped a lynching, one in the 1930s and one in the 1940s, but not from the perspective of sitting

down face to face, questioning there would be lynchers. That's what I want to do. I want to have the same experience as a white journalist and sit down face to face with somebody who would lynch me just because I'm black and say, why? Why would you lynch me? Tell me to my face. So I figured, you know, I'm going to call that guy up and get him to hook me up with the leaders of the Klan. I'm going to start here in Maryland, where I live, go up north, go down south, go to the Midwest, go to the West, and interview different Klan leaders and members and get the answer to my question and put it in a book. Then my book will be the first book written on the Ku Klux Klan by a black author from the perspective of sitting down face to face and having an interview,

not having to run and hide from a lynching. Those books are important as well. So, you know, I hadn't seen the guy since I quit the band. I had to dig out his phone number from somewhere. I called, the number had been disconnected. It took me a couple of weeks to track him down. And it turned out that he had moved and he didn't have a phone, but I got an address on him. So there was no way for me to alert him that I was coming over. And so I went to his apartment one evening and I knocked on the door. I hadn't seen this guy in a while, right?

Dude opens the door and sees me. He's like, girl, what are you doing here? And he steps out into the hallway. He looks up and down the hallway to see if I brought anybody with me. Well, when he stepped out of his apartment, I stepped in. So he turns around, he comes back in. He goes, what's going on, man? Are you still playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, around, he comes back in. He goes, what's going on, man? Are you still

playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still playing. I said, but I need to talk to you about the Klan. He says, the Klan? I said, yeah, you're a member, right? He goes, well, I was. He has since quit the Klan. And he gave me some long dissertation as to why he quit. I later found out some other stuff about that. But anyway, I said, so, you know, where's your clan stuff? And he says, you mean my robe and hood? I said, yeah. He goes, well, they came and got it. I said, what do you mean they came and got it? I mean, don't you own your robe and hood? And then he explained to me, which I later found out to be true, when you join the clan, if you can afford it, you can pay outright right and you own your robe and hood and all

the other stuff that goes along with membership if you cannot afford it you can still take it it's yours but you add extra money every dues period until you pay it off okay so it's like you don't lay away but you take it home and so apparently he had not paid off his robe and hood, so they came and repoed it. Right? So he said that when they came to get it, he had been unable to find the mask that attached to the hood to cover the face. But he had since found it, and he had to return it. I said, let me see it. So he went down the hall to, I guess, his bedroom, and he returned, and he had to return it. I said, let me see it. So he went down the hall to, I guess, his bedroom and he returned and he handed

me this mask. I'm holding it and looking at it and I said, do you know Roger Kelly? Yeah, I know Roger. Roger was my grand dragon. So now let me give you the hierarchy of the plan. Okay, first of all, today, there is no such

thing as the Ku Klux Klan. And why is that? There are many, huh? Why is that? Has it been, like, dissolved or something? No, no, no. It's been splintered. Not dissolved, but splintered. So, you know, back in the day when it was first formed, there was one Ku Klux Klan and chapters of that Ku Klux Klan. Okay, today, it has disintegrated into multiple chapters, but they all are autonomous. There's no one headquarters. Each one, it's like Black Lives Matter. There's no one headquarters. There are all these different

groups that are not connected. Okay, so that's the Ku Klux Klan. They all use the same colors on their robes that designate their rank. They use the same secret handshake, the same passwords, the same titles, basically the same bylaws, and the same name, Ku Klux Klan, but they are autonomous. You might have the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Rebel Knights, on and on.

These are all separate Klan, the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the rebel knights, on and on. These are all separate clan groups. And if you see them together in public, they will hold a united front. But behind closed doors, they are rivals with each other. They hate each other. Each one thinks we're the real deal, you know, they're wannabe clan people, that kind of thing. A lot of rivalry. So anyway, if you have a chapter of your particular clan group in your state and in another state or in

multiple states, you may then consider yourself to be a national clan group. And as a national clan group, you must have a national leader. So like, you know, who oversees all the states in which you have an affiliation. So we call our national leader, the president. In clan terminology, that individual is known as the imperial wizard. He oversees all the states in which there's a clan chapter of that particular clan group.

So each state must have a leader. We call our state leader the governor. They call theirs the grand dragon. So all grand dragons report to their imperial wizard. Within the state, you have counties. The county leader is known as the great titan. Anybody on the great level is a county officer. Anybody on the grand level is a county officer anybody on the grand level is a state officer anybody on the imperial level is a national officer within the county you have districts a district leader which we would call like a mayor a councilman alderman that person is known as the exalted cyclops and then below that you have rank and file regular Klan members. Sorry, is there a, where did they get, is there a root for all of this? Yes, there is. I'll tell you. Okay.

Now, let's make sure that we don't paint it with a broad brush. The original Klan, Ku Klux Klan, was formed in 1865 at the end of the Civil War by six Confederate soldiers. Now, they were of Irish-Scottish descent, which is where the Masons came from, you know, the secret Masons. And the Masons have a lot of these crazy Grand Poobah type names. So what they did was they borrowed or appropriated things like that because they wanted a secret organization themselves. So now that's not to say that all masons are Klansmen. No, they're not. OK.

Yes. Are some? Yes. But no, that's not what the masons are about. All right. But the Klan appropriates things from different places. So they took that idea and began calling people grand, exalted, you know, and so forth, imperial and all that kind of stuff. So that's where that came from.

The word Ku Klux Klan comes from two languages. In Greek, the word Kuklos, K-U-K-L-O-S, kuklos means circle, all right? Clan, C-L-A-N, is the Irish Scottish word for like a family. Like I would be the Davis clan, you know, or the Bell clan, or Mark Bell or something, right? So what they did was, because they were of Irish-Scottish descent, they had a lot of clans. Kuklos, circle,

and then clan. They took the C in clan and changed it to a K for uniformity. Kuklos clan. They couldn't spell Greek, so they changed the K-L-O-S to K-L-U-X. So it means circle of family, circle of close friends.

Ku Klux Klan. Wow. I'm really curious about this, too. And it kind of ties into what Mark asked you before, if you were like, you know, scared or whatever. But I've seen pictures of you at Klan rallies where they're burning a cross. At times when I've been like pulled over i was kind of scared then you know i was being very careful but you were at clan rallies were you not in fear of like someone because like i mean you're you're around so many individuals probably some of them own guns

or maybe brought guns out right you're a lone black man just chilling like what was going through your mind in those situations because you've been to multiple clan rallies right plenty of them you want to go to one i'll take you to one one i'm serious i'm serious really yeah i i can hook it up for you i would actually yeah that'd be okay try that. All right. I will get that. Maybe in the fall. Okay. After all this Corona stuff is over. Yeah.

Because I was invited to one. I'll just say, hey, I want to bring some friends of mine. I'm serious too, by the way. Okay. I believe you. I believe you. Okay. Okay. So, no, I was not afraid.

And I'll tell you why. Now, there are two kinds of rallies there are public rallies and there are private rallies and i've been to both a public rally is when the clan you know goes and gets a permit to have a rally in the park down the street you know you have to go to the city and get a permit to use their park right and um and if it's you know it's a public park, so you can go, I can go, whoever can go. Now, of course, if there's a lot of tension, you know, the police are going to keep the, you know,

the opposing parties away from each other. If it's some rural town, you know, then there's probably no problem. You know, there might be white people who don't like the Klan, you know, who might be there trying to talk them down or something, or black people, you know, I mean, there might be white people who don't like the Klan, you know, who might be there trying to talk them down or something. Or black people, you know, protesting.

But it's not like New York City where there's going to be 50,000 people protesting and 10 Klansmen. So the police are going to, you know, have a barricade to keep you away. So I've been to some of those. And, of course, at those kind of things, you know, tensions are high. Protesters come with baseball bats and bricks and chains, and they're ready to fight in the street with the white supremacists. At the private rallies, you have to be invited by the Grand Dragon or the Imperial Wizard. All right. And if you were a guest of theirs, you know, there will be some people who will, who will not like you there,

but they have to abide. It's like a chain of command. If the general tells you, you know, to tell us his Sergeant and Lieutenant and captain or whatever, this guy is okay. Regardless of what the Sergeant and captain may think, the guy's okay. You don't, you don't mess with them. So if I've been invited onto private property, yes, they will respect me. Wow. Are you still, are you still playing? You still, are you still a musician these days or?

Well, not, not these days. I'm locked up in my house, but, but yes, I'm still a musician. I love to, trust me. I love to play. Trust me. I love to play. I'd rather be on stage playing some rock and roll than be at some Klan rally with a burning cross and hearing all these white supremacist speeches. Okay. You know, music is my love. But this is necessary. It really is.

Because, you know, I don't want to see this country go down the cubes. And that's where it's headed. But we've got too many good people here who, you know, who need to come together, coalesce and take care of this problem. And we can. You know, we are a very resilient country. But we've been more reactive than we've been proactive. And that's the problem.

What's some of your favorite music? The kind I get paid to play. Well, I'll tell you, rock and roll. Now let's talk about music for a second. You know, you can touch my heart. You know, a lot of people under credit rock and roll or don't give rock and roll any credit at all for what it has done to improve race relations in this country. You had segregated water fountains and bathrooms and, you know, things like that. Music halls, music venues, concert venues. If they allowed black people in at all.

But someone said, no, no, no blacks in here. Those that allowed black people in at all were still segregated. There were ropes going around the seating sections with signs hanging off that say seating for white patrons only, colored seating only. So you could not cross sit. You know, if you cross sat, it was against the law. You get arrested and go to jail. So black sat with the blacks, white sat with the whites. And that was prevalent through Jim Crow, et cetera. That law, you know, if you want to go see Frank Sinatra or the Dorseys or Glenn Miller band or

whoever, you sat in your seating section as designated by the color of your skin. How crazy is that? But that was this country. That law was still just like, you know, the law on the bus. You had to sit in the back of the bus or you get arrested. That was a law, a stupid law. But anyway, in the back of the bus or you get arrested. That was the law. The stupid law. But anyway, that law was still in effect in the 1950s. But two phenomenons happened.

One was the invention of rock and roll by black artists like Chuck Berry, my boss. I played for Chuck Berry for 32 years. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Sats Domino. OK, these are the guys who invented rock and roll. It was popularized by great white artists like Jerry Lee Lewis, like Elvis Presley, like Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and others. And that's the first phenomenon that happened. The second phenomenon that happened was this. For the first time in the history of this country, when this new music,

these artists came out and began playing this new music on stage, the beat, the beat was very infectious. It caused white kids and black kids to jump up out of their seats and knock over these ropes and signs, and they began dancing and boogieing in the aisles together for the first time in the history of this country. Black and white kids were dancing together. See, these were kids that were going to this rock and roll stuff, because rock and roll was black music. They were not hearing that in their house with their parents.

They were hearing Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, easy listening, smooth, silky black music like Nat King Cole and all that kind of stuff. You know, smooth stuff and not this raucous, you know, sexualized energy. So these kids, you know, were dancing with each other. That was forbidden. That was illegal. The police would come in and pull the plugs, shut it down right in the middle of a concert. Uh-uh. Done. And they would even fine the promoters or put the promoters in jail for allowing miscegenation, for allowing race mixing. So a lot of rock and roll concerts were getting banned in this country, not just down south, but even up north, because it was causing race mixing. So now, these black pioneers and these white pioneers of rock and roll, they are just as much responsible for civil rights, because while Black adults and white adults like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and many other Black and white activists were working very hard through marches, protests, demonstrations, sit-ins to bring white adults and Black adults together. These rock and roll artists were achieving that by bringing white kids and black kids together with their music. In fact, you know the term cover song?

You know, somebody tells you, I have a band, and you say, well, you play originals or you play covers? Do you know the origin of that term cover? The origin of the term cover song, a cover record, was when a white artist covered a black song. Because white kids were gravitating towards this black music. And the white record companies had to lure them back.

So what they began doing was putting out white artists to cover those songs and play them. And they would put the money pushing Pat Boone singing, Wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom-tootie-fruity, all right, instead of Little Richard, to lure the white kids back. And ultimately, the white artists would sell more records than the black artists, but the white kids still wanted to hear the original and kept going that way.

And that has gone constantly. Even today, we see that. You know, when you think of heavy metal, hard rock, distorted guitars, you know, you envision some white guy with long blonde hair and spandex pants and a distorted guitar. That's the image that we have of heavy metal, hard rock. He didn't start it. Let's try Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix did it. And Jimi Hendrix was black. I'm sure Elvis wasn't the first person to shake his hips either.

No. And I love Elvis. OK, I love Elvis. But no, he was not the first, you know, the king of the blues. You know, they give it to Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, et cetera, et cetera. to rave on, et cetera, et cetera. These guys assimilated what they heard from Muddy Waters, from B.B. King, from Robert Johnson, from Howlin' Wolf, you know? So every time we had a form of music, and I'm not faulting anybody, I fault the people who do not give credit where credit is due. Music is to be shared by everybody, regardless of what color you are,

what religion you are. If music is good, everybody should play it and share it. But if you're going to do something by somebody else, give credit. All right. So we created the blues. We created rock and roll. We created jazz. then the the king of uh jazz became um benny goodman all right what about mr ellington and mr basey they didn't get the title king they got the title duke and count which is a little bit lower than King. All right. White people, the establishment, the parents, hated Elvis Presley. They accused him of dancing like a black person and singing that black music, that N-word music.

And that's what he was doing. The white kids loved it. All right. But then, but then when they saw how much money Elvis could generate, all of a sudden they loved him. And they appointed him king of rock and roll. So it's like, you know, a lot of hypocrisy going on there. All right. So we moved on from rock and roll. We created soul music.

Because we were not getting the airplay that white people were getting playing rock and roll. We created soul. All right. White kids gravitated there. And then they put out Rare Earth. Get ready because here I come and all that. And a lot of white kids began playing soul, which was fine. But credit was not being given and money was not being allotted to push the original. We left soul. We created disco. The very first disco song was a song called The Hustle by Van McCoy. Do the hustle. Do the, do the, do the, do the, do the, do the, right? Okay. Black people were doing that in the hood for a couple

years. White kids heard about it. They began doing it. And then a movie was made called Saturday Night Fever, again with John Travolta. Right? And every club in the country became a disco. And disco became

white. You there? We're still here. I lost video white. You there? Yep, we're still here. I lost video. Okay, there we go. Well, no, I still lost my video of you, but if you can hear me, that's fine. Yeah, we got you. Disco became white. You know, there was only, in fact, in the movie Saturday Night Fever, I think there's only like one black person. That was Donna Summer, right? God. Oh, no. No no i'll try to reach out we've had too much fun we blew up the internet there you go you hear me now yes sir okay all right so yeah so

um you know these cover bands we're getting all the play and the black artists were failing. And so, but white kids were still gravitating towards the original. And so we would leave this genre of rock and roll, create funk, like I said, like, you know, Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament, Funkadelic, et cetera. And then when white kids started doing that, the record companies would put out people like the Average White Band, Wild Cherry, play that funky music, white boy, and all that kind of stuff, right? And then we left funk eventually. We created rap, started with three big black guys with gold chains around their neck, standing on the corner called Run DMC. Yeah.

Okay. And they were doing this for a while. And when white kids started digging them, the companies put out three white guys with gold chains, called them the Beastie Boys. And they just took off like a rocket. Okay. and they just took off like a rocket. Today, the highest paid and most successful rap artist of all time is a white guy named Eminem.

We put out iced tea, they put out vanilla ice. So I'm not faulting the musicians. If you like music, it's great music, do it. But give credit where credit is due. And if you go to any major record company, Warner Brothers, Sony, whatever, all right, you know, they have a country section. They have a pop section, et cetera. And they have what they call the urban music section, which is just code word for black. And the budget for urban is a lot smaller than the budget for all the other genres.

Who's your favorite and why I'm trying to pin you down. Now, there we go. So he was, he was your mentor as well, right? He was my mentor, my friend, my hero. You know, I love Elvis Presley as well. Jerry Lee, Little Richard, all the pioneers. I love the blues. I learned how to play piano.

I have a degree in music. I have a degree in jazz from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Nice. But I make a living playing jazz, but mostly rock and roll and country and blues. What makes Chuck Berry special to you other than the fact that he was your mentor? What kind of cements him in your head as one of the best? A lot of things. Number one, Chuck Berry was a genius.

And I don't say that simply because I played with him. I say it because it's true. Anybody can say, I played the guitar. I wrote a song. Here's my song. And somebody else sang my song. Very few people can say, I invented a genre of music. Beethoven can say that.

Jimi Hendrix can say that. Chuck Berry can say that. Chuck Berry invented rock and roll. There was no rock and roll before him. So everybody else who came after him plays these Chuck Berry licks. I think it's an extraordinary talent when you're able to marry different types of art together. Like that's what the best of the best do is they're able to, you know, pull from this era and pull from that era and then kind of make it uniquely their own. It's a beautiful thing to see. Indeed, indeed.

You know, and I love I learned to play piano outside of school from Johnny Johnson, Chuck Berry's piano player and Pine Top Perkins, one of the greatest blues and boogie woogie piano players ever who influenced everybody. And he played for Muddy Waters and everybody else. And he played for Muddy Waters and everybody else. So I am blessed in that I got hands on training from some of the people who invented the music, not second, third generation down the line I learned from. I got it right from Chuck Berry, right from Pinetop, right from Johnny Johnson. It'd be like a classical piano player getting lessons from Beethoven or Bach. Yeah. You know, I was, I want, I was curious on your viewpoint in this because you were talking about how the, I guess the media has a big effect on like, you know, how we see things these days. And there were two situations that like I've thought about in the past. One was when I went to Nigeria, cause my family's from there when I was 16 years old. Now, when I when i went there um i was playing soccer

out you know just playing soccer with some kids and a lot of the younger kids they were saying like they're saying what's up man all this and they're like so are you a blood are you a crib and they were trying to talk like the rapper nigerian kids these are nigerian yes yes you're trying to talk like the rappers that you see on tv here because and they're like they're asking me if i was a blood or a crib i I'm like, I'm not in a gang. And, and I was just like, okay, where are these kids getting this from? And then another situation happened when I was a little bit older. It was in a past relationship of mine. And the,

the father of the person I was dating wasn't from the United States. He was, he wasn't from here. He wasn't even not here for that long of a time. And after he met, after he met me, he's like, I like everything about Nsema other than the fact that he's black. Now, when I thought about that too, that had me, I thought a little bit about Nigeria. I'm like, this guy probably hasn't had that many interactions with black people or African-Americans. He hasn't, but he's probably seen a lot of stuff on TV and he thinks we're a certain way. So, you know, it's like the, when, you know, when we go back to what you were saying of how can you hate me, even if you don't

know me, you can, it's also what's portrayed of us through, through TV, through media, what people see of us is what they think of us on TV. Yes, absolutely. You know, and I'll tell you something, yes absolutely you know and i'll tell you something uh may you're right on it again um i i've been to nigeria i've been to lagos and um like i said i live in africa for 10 years yeah i live in ethiopia ghana guinea and senegal and visited many countries in between um and when i was a kid uh you know over there the the the African kids, they would always want to imitate Americans. And that's a common thing. You know, it goes back to the grass being greener on the other side. You know, what kind of perfume do American women want?

French perfume. Well, guess what French women want? You know, American perfume. Well, guess what French women want? American perfume. And if you go out with your girlfriend or whatever, you want to order a bottle of wine, you want some French wine. Well, they want American wine. The grass is always green on the other side. And we try to identify with things that we look up to. Over here, Black Americans,

our history was stripped away from us through slavery. Even our names, you know? And so even our culture. And we had to assimilate. And so when we get our freedom, there are a lot of us who want to try to identify with something from our past that was taken away. And oftentimes, we don't get accurate information. You have done something that many Black people have not done. You went to Africa.

Most black Americans have never been. And you saw things that they have not seen. When I would come back as a kid and my little classmates would find out I lived in Africa or I was just coming back from some African country, guess what they asked me? Did you see Tarzan? Not only white kids, but black kids would ask me that too. Yeah. Because of the media, right?

And so over here, you know, we want to identify because we don't have roots. We want to make up our roots and identify and become Afrocentric. And a lot of times we do things the wrong way. You know, the hairstyle, the Afro that used to be big back in the late 60s. Guess what? That did not come from Africa. That was invented right here in the United States. Even a lot of Black people think the celebration Kwanzaa is African. It's not. Okay. It's not. It was invented in California by Ron Marenga. OK, and he's putting together different traditions that are somewhat Afrocentric, et cetera, to give us something to identify with.

But it's not African. So there are a lot of misinformation that the media puts out. that the media puts out. You know, and then, you know, Klan people tell me I should be grateful for being here, even if I was a slave, because if I hadn't come here, I'd still be living in a hut. Well, obviously, you know, they haven't seen, you know, the cities in Africa.

And a lot of people think Africa is one big country. It's not. It's one big continent with many countries, and each country has many cultures, you know. So there's a lot that we're ignorant about here, all of us. And this is why education is so important and why travel is so important. Otherwise, we begin creating things that don't exist. And when we perpetuate them, they become a reality in our mind because you know one's perspective is one's reality.

And there is a saying, I forgot now who said it, but it's something to the effect of the mass promulgation of a lie no more makes it the truth than the mass disbelief of the truth makes it a lie. No more makes it the truth than the mass disbelief of the truth makes it a lie. How do we have conversations with our kids about this, you know, at the dinner table? I doubt that these things will be really taught in school because they may have too much controversy surrounding them. So how do we communicate with our children about racism and how do we help them to maybe not grow up like some of our ancestors have? I say, you know, kids, kids are our future

and they love sponging information. And that's what kids do. You know, they absorb. And the dinner table is the perfect place because that's where conversations are solidified and remembered. And we should not be afraid to to be not politically correct at the dinner table. I personally, I don't believe in political correctness. I've been just being straight up honest. You know, political correctness shuts too many people down. They're afraid to talk because they might offend somebody I don't want to step on somebody's eggshell or whatever but it's our responsibility as parents

to instill certain things in our kids if we want them to grow up and have the tools that they need to navigate society outside of school because school only teaches certain things when I was in school, I was not discriminated against. I read the same books as my white counterparts. I had the same teachers. I got roles in the school plays. You know, I thought I was just like anybody else. I didn't find out I was different until I graduated. And then people out there,

outside of school, treated me differently. I got turned down for a job at the drugstore, you know, and I was told to come in and apply by one of my fellow classmates who said, hey, you know, my boss is hiring people. You know, he wants me to bring in my friends. So I came, and next thing I know, I'm being turned down. And it wasn't that the job wasn't available. The guy didn't want any black people, you know? So, you know, it's like women, for example, women, and it's our responsibility again, to prepare our daughters. daughters. Women today are still making 79 to 81 cents on a man's dollar for the same amount of work, right? So how do you tell a woman in school, do your best? You know, B is not good enough, get an A. A is not good enough, get an A+. Work your butt off and do hard.

And so these girls work very hard. And maybe they even become class valedictorian on graduation day or something. And then they get out there. And just because of their gender, they don't get the job. And some guy gets the job who may be less qualified than they are. Or they get the job, but the guys are getting the promotions and are getting paid more. And they're thinking, well, what did I go to school for and work my butt off? And this guy's not even as qualified as I am,

and he's getting promoted. He's getting paid more money, and I'm doing the work. You know? How do you tell black people? Yeah, work as hard as you can. But then when you graduate, that's not going to matter. You're not going to get paid equal with us anyway. You know, we don't teach that in school, but we have to teach kids that not that they should not work any less.

We always want to strive to do our best, whether you're a female or black or whatever. But we have to prepare our kids to realize that outside of school, they may and most likely will be treated a little differently. How do you tell your daughter she might undergo some kind of sexual harassment on the job? You know, that's not taught in high school. All right. So it comes as a shock to them. It's our responsibility as parents to teach our kids that which they don't learn in school, because we want them to be successful and be able to navigate through society. That's why parents have what's called the talk with their kids. And as you know, we hear a lot about Black parents having the talk with their sons. White parents have the talk with their kids also.

It's a different kind of talk, though. When Black people refer to the talk, it's what to do when you get pulled over by a cop. That's the talk that Black parents are referring to. The talk that White kids get has to do with sex education. You know, don't come home pregnant. You know, use prophylactics, things like that. Because, you know, I don't want to be a grandmother at age 33 or whatever. So, you know, these are things that we may not be taught in school, but it is our responsibility to to make sure that our kids get a full 360 education. Darrell Davis, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

You gave us a lot of great information, a lot of stuff to think about. Where can people find you? And also, when is your when's your new book going to come out? Well, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. I'm still working on the new book. Hopefully it'll be completed by the end of this year and come out. It will be a sequel to the last book. I'll have some of the old stories, a of updates on people where they are now and some new stuff because when the first book came out we didn't have a black president, we didn't have the amount

of illegal immigration, all the things that are driving white supremacy you know, we didn't have Charlottesville we didn't have Donald Trump so there's a lot to talk about in the new book so it'll be out, well it'll be completed by the new book. So it'll be out. Well,

it'll be completed by the end of this year and hopefully be out maybe by the end of this year or beginning of next year. People can find me at Darrell Davis.com and Darrell is spelled with one R D A R Y L Darrell Davis.com. I hope you guys will just consider this to be part one. I'd love to do part two sometime. We would love that. Most all right yeah and and just really quick because you just touched on uh charlottesville and i heard you in the past you know because that whole thing at least on the surface it would appear because of like the people wanting to take down the confederate statues

um and you know i i know when people see the confederate flag it it evokes a certain type of emotion but you say that that's american history and we shouldn't take it down no no i didn't say we shouldn't take it down i'm saying we should not destroy it destroy it sorry okay thank you yeah yeah the confederate flag is American history. So is slavery. So, you know, we don't want to deny slavery and not exhibit things. You know, our history is good, bad, ugly and shameful. And all of it should be displayed because it is American history. And every country has their good, bad, ugly and shameful.

I don't believe the Confederate flag. You know, first of all, this country is called the United States. It only has one flag. And that's the flag that should be flown, especially over the state capitol. You know, and they were flying the Confederate flag over the state capitol in South Carolina, which I thought was wrong. But that does not reflect all the people in South Carolina. I believe that Confederate memorials should be taken down, put in a museum, or build a Confederate memorial park and stick the statues there, put the flags there. People who want to go do that can go do that. Now, there are, you know, that was the battle flag. And the Civil War was fought in the most part for keeping slavery.

And that flag represented that. Now, there are those people who say, no, no, no, no, no, the flag represents Southern heritage, blah, blah, blah. Well, yes, but there are many things the South has to be proud of. Slavery is not one of them. the South has to be proud of. Slavery is not one of them. And maybe you can find something else to be proud of and show that rather than show the flag you were flying for slavery. But if you, and I've told people this,

they say, you know, it does not stand for hate, it stands for heritage. Okay, here's my challenge to those people. And I've told them this. If you believe that flag stands for heritage, every time you go to a Klan rally or just Google Klan rally and hit images, you will see Confederate flags with a robe and hood of Klansmen and even people wearing swastikas walking alongside a Confederate flag. Okay. If you believe it doesn't stand for hate, then, and you think you want to reclaim your flag for heritage, then you go to a Klan rally with me, and you tell those people to give you back your flag. It does not stand for what they stand for. If you do that, I will come over your house

and I will take your Confederate flag and I will hoist it up your flagpole for you. Thanks again. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much. Stay in touch, my friends. Take care. Thank you, sir. Bye-bye. Powerful stuff, guys.

Wowzers. That was awesome yo yo that's that was an awesome podcast i'm really happy that we were able to talk to him um god damn yeah invited me to a clan rally he did and you it yeah i get i get just even nerd like um i think i told you guys before i shaved my head um and uh i think i was like 21 or something like that and i was going to coffee bean with my brother and i i shaved my head all the way with like a razor and uh i would get like these other bald guys would kind of like give me like a chin thing like hey what's up bro you know kind of thing and i i would always kind of like give him a nod back and then my brother's like you shouldn't do that he's like i i think they they think that you're a skinhead i'm like why do they think i'm like oh

i have my head shaved real close and i'm pretty damn pale and stuff like that. So I, like, I even get a little nervous around stuff. Like, I don't, you know, I don't want to, um, I wouldn't even want to be, uh, anywhere near a rally like that of any kind, even being white, I wouldn't feel safe. I just don't, I don't like the unease of that. I certainly don't like what it represents, but, um, this gives you like an uneasy feeling because these people, what I'm imagining and I've never talked to them, so I don't know. But like, you know, they're giving off like kind of negative, bad vibes, you know, and I just wouldn't want to be around any of that. wouldn't want to be around any of that. Yeah. But you know, just like this falls perfectly in line with what we were talking about yesterday in terms of rational thought. Obviously, you know, this type of stuff makes him livid, makes him angry. Same thing. Like when,

when I see it, it's just, it's, it's frustrating. But, you know, having the courage and ability to just sit down and try to understand where somebody's coming from, you know, you wouldn't assume that somebody like you wouldn't first off think like, oh, their parents raised them this way. They haven't known anything else. Or, you know, exactly what he was mentioning, like a certain city, right, where a bunch of immigrant workers come and all their jobs are actually gone. And then someone's like, come, we have you, we'll be your friends, we support you. You know what I mean? Everybody comes from these different situations. And if more people were willing to just understand that and converse, and even potentially be a friend to that type of individual, right? It could make a big difference rather than stuffing them to the side, putting them in a box. Like I asked him the question of, oh, is there a common theme with all these people? And he was very quick to say, they're all individuals who come from different backgrounds.

You can't just stuff them in and think they're all the same way. Just like some people think all the black people are the same. You can't just stuff them in and think they're all the same way. Just like some people think all the black people are the same. You can't do that. Yeah. The interesting thing is that some people might, might actually legitimately be going off of an experience. Whereas other people are just going off of just this kind of genetic, like ideology, you know, just gets passed down. It's not really genetic, but it's a, it's an idea that gets passed down from one generation to another, you know, one person may have a direct experience, you know, like I've heard Howard, Howard Stern talk about this before, where the school that he went to when he was a kid, I think he went to

school in like New York city. Uh, most of the other kids were African-American and he got beat up and made fun of all the time. Cause he was a skinny, nerdy, a little Jewish kid. Right. And that, that was his experience. So his experience was like, that's dangerous for me to be around, uh, other black people there. They want to inflict damage on me because I look so different than them. Whereas somebody else might have the exact reverse thing happen. And in both cases, neither one is necessarily correct, but at least it's an explanation. You know, I think that that's a decent explanation if you're going based off of some history where you had something happen to you. However, again, at some point, like you should be knowledgeable enough to recognize, okay, well, that was just that group of people that happened

to beat me up. And they could have been, because if Howard Stern went to a regular high school, and he looked nerdy and dorky, he would be beat up by the jocks anyway it wouldn't right it would he probably would probably think he was funny looking and uh different and they would tease and ridicule and and maybe beat his ass anyway right so um it makes some sense when people are going off of their experience a little bit but at some point you're gonna have to you can only ride out that ignorance card for so long yeah yeah you it's yeah man i'm i'm happy that he uh he wants to come on again later on it'd be great to have him in person you know yeah somewhere on sacramento yeah i'm, I'm still, I'm a little, a little speechless, man. That guy's amazing. Like, you know, the way he's able to take in some of the, uh, you know, current events and admit that, yeah, that it does infuriate me, but I'm not going to stoop to the

level and I'm not going to do anything that's not going to help improve things. You know, I mean, some of us might see a bad comment on social media and that'll like just ruin everything for us. And we'll just have a year long Twitter war with somebody over something stupid. And here is like one of the most difficult, uh, you know, things that anybody can deal with. And he's like, no, I'm going to go have a conversation with like at the epicenter of where this all starts. And it's like, holy shit, man. Like how do you even have the capacity to be willing to do that? You know, so hopefully this leads to maybe, yeah, you start to maybe think of, you know, what other men in history like stood for or stood up for. And you think about like

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And there's a lot of people over the years that stood up for things that, you know, put them in the line of fire. I mean, ultimately, you know, getting assassinated or getting, yeah, getting assassinated. And, you know, it's like Abraham Lincoln and things of that nature. And it makes sense what he does. You know, it makes sense how he's not trying to like throw a punch back, you know, because if if if someone was to say, hey, you suck at basketball. you know, prove that I don't suck at basketball is I can try to play you in basketball and I can try to beat you. But if you're saying that I'm dumb or I'm not capable of learning certain things or that I'm lazy, I can't, I can't refute that by trying to punch you, you know, like that doesn't, that's not helpful. The only way I can refute it is to show you examples and maybe give you a better understanding of who I am and where I come

from, then you might say, oh, well, you know, that person is, you know, Italian and I thought all Italians were this. And, you know, now you disproved their theory, at least on one level and say, well, let me show you a couple other examples. And then you start to kind of show people, hey, look, here's another example. Here's another example. We see that with training. We see that with nutrition, you know, um, the keto diet, right? I realized that the racism is a much more serious thing than your nutrition. But you know, when some of these diets come along, people like, there's no way that works. That's dumb. Anyone who does that is stupid. I don't even like people that do that. I don't like people that count calories or people that count calories don't like people that do a

carnivore diet. And they just assume that that person is a certain way that they have certain thoughts. They think certain things. And then later on, it's proven that you could lose weight this way. You could lose weight that way. You could lose weight this way. And then people are like, ah, I think in SEMA has come to some realizations through some of the stuff on this podcast with nutrition. And then I've come to some realizations with some things that we've had on this podcast, you coming from more of a macro background, me coming more from a background of, you know, it, it really matters more on like what you eat and you don't need to count the calories. I think both of us have kind of, um, have met in the middle somewhere and hopefully that's what people can do with all their beliefs because otherwise, um, if you just

always think the same thoughts and you don't allow, um, you don't allow other ideas to enter your mind, you don't entertain them at all, because you're stuck in your ways, then how are you going to ever make any progress? Exactly. It all comes back down to like education, like he said, you know, you have to look at some of these things. And it's, it's ignorance and lack of education. You know what I mean? And once you educate yourself on that, then you can actually come to a real informed decision, because in your mind, you now have a true understanding of what's going on. You know what I mean? And once you educate yourself on that, then you can actually come to a real informed decision because in your mind, you now have a true understanding of what's going on. You know, like back, like we're bringing this back to nutrition, even though it's not nutrition.

But like, you know, when thinking about when I was focused on just macros, I was eating a lot of bad food, but making it fit. Right. I wasn't feeling the best, although like I was able to maintain some semblance of whatever physique, right? When I realized like, okay, I shouldn't be having this many processed foods. It's actually doing this to me. I could no longer rationalize that wrong belief in terms of the foods I was eating because I educated myself more about it. So it's all about, especially when it comes back down to the race thing, some of these people just need more education in terms of the things that they believe. If you read a book and it says black people have smaller brains and that was in a book, you're going to believe black people have smaller brains. And if everyone around you is also saying the same damn thing, that's going to be your belief. So that is what it is.

I remember in football, I used to think like they couldn't be a black quarterback. Oh, yeah. You know, and then I think for a long time they thought there couldn't be a black coach. And I still think maybe there's not a an African-American owner in the NFL at the moment. And, you know, like those, those things that it, and unfortunately just, it takes, it takes a lot of time, you know, for these things to happen. But then you have a lot of people that have disproven that, that there's any truth to any of this stuff at all. You know, Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson, I mean, the list goes on and on.

You don't have to have that level of success to, to prove, uh, that these theories that people have had for years, um, about different races are false, but, um, these people like to prove it time and time again, we've seen it throughout our history. I don't know if you guys had a chance to see, um, the, uh, Harriet Tubriet tubman um movie it's on netflix it is it is fucking awesome i mean it's it's amazing i i had no idea i mean i knew some stuff i knew that she helped um free a lot of slaves but i didn't know to the degree and i didn't i never really i don't think i learned i don't remember really learning how. It's an insane story. And even just like some of the, even some of the way that it happens is very interesting because the slaves,

as you can imagine, will be in very, very good shape, right? And the slave owners, as you can imagine, are not in very good shape. And Harriet Tubman kind of understood, like, if I can just get these people some shoes, we're out of there. Yeah. Yeah. Because we can literally out, outrun them. Like we can get, we can get away, you know? And they, they, they show that in the, uh, in the movie where she brings them a bunch of shoes and they're able to, um, you know, they, they, they go like, I forget how far they had to go to get to their freedom, to get to another state. Um, but just an amazing story. I, I encourage everybody that's listening

to this podcast to, to check it out. You know, it's not one of those real, like, um, obviously there's a lot of dark stuff in there. Uh, you know, cause there's, uh, it talks a lot about slavery, but you know, sometimes when you, when you watch one of those type of movies, it's just so heavy. You like, you don't even want to watch it, but this one, while it is heavy in that sense it also you know has a story amazing story of harriet tubman so i think everybody should check it out yeah yeah i'll note this um check out that harriet movie but then afterwards just uh just google a harriet movie fact check because um that movie was hollywoodized a lot a lot there's a lot of just things in there that's uh just just it's it's a it's an enjoyable film but just read after that

read a little bit about harry or just just like look up harriet tubman uh versus movie or something so you can you know get an idea idea of some things in the movie that were Hollywood-esque. Yeah, I remember when I was watching it, I'm like, is all this true? And I Googled a lot of it afterwards and checked it out. And I was like, ah, okay. I kind of assumed that there was some stuff in there that was dramatized. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

After hearing some of his experiences with some of the uh you know the racists and stuff that he had been you know in conversations with it really is it's weird because i i just recently saw a movie that seriously pushes the narrative hard that it is a um like it's a um it's part of not heritage what's the word um oh shoot i just went blank um tradition sort of yeah yeah lineage yeah in regards to like the black community like in the in this story culture part of their culture something like like like a like a gene almost man my brain is destroyed right now um in the movie, the father was a druggie, went to jail, and then so naturally the son, that's the same path he's going to go down. No, I'm not.

No, I'm not. No, I'm not. And in the movie, they say, no, this is what happens because you're already predestined to go. And in the movie, he ends up in the same jail as his dad and watching it i'm just i was like like oh fuck like that that sucks like maybe it's environment whatever blah blah but after hearing what we heard today and then watching this i'm like damn is somebody pushing the same narrative that the you know some of these you know kkk members are like is somebody not going to be able to point to a netflix

movie you know and it has like some good actors in it too has a guy that was uh the rizza in uh the wu-tang clan documentary but uh it's just weird man like i think people need to like keep their eyes open for stuff like this you know like we talk about media pushing a narrative with you know this virus and stuff looking at this movie now i can see that they clearly were aiming for the same thing and i didn't even notice it until i heard this story from you know daryl today it's like holy shit man you know that's well that's why like it and it like you just look up google google this like um a lot of news articles from CNN and whatever. When there's a news story put on a black man that's suspected of doing a crime, it's like the title is gangster or whatever, blah, blah, blah, does this. It's a very misleading title, right?

And because you can find all this stuff too. When a white person is suspected of doing a crime or something like that, the title is like, oh, something student, you know, suspected of this or whatever. Like it's pushed in a different light to already make you look a certain way at the individuals that's being suspected of doing it. And this, this has been in count, like this has been recounted so many damn times you could find it right now. And it's just, again, it's the way the narrative is pushed forward. It's, it sucks. It really fucking sucks. Yeah. They, they, they they bent they bend it you know they

they bend it to whatever way they need to it's not necessarily false information but they may mention that you know someone who's white that had a crime went to usc you know so then that scholarship yeah that makes oh he went to a private university. Like he must have – yeah, he was on a scholarship. They're trying to soften the blow. And I wish we had a little bit more time. Maybe next time we have him on the show. I think I told you guys when I went to Washington, D.C., and they're explaining all the history,

how they're showing George Washington's property, and it was amazing to be on his property. And they, they're telling you about this historic thing and this historic thing. And this is where they had the animals. This is where I had this, this or that. And I'm like, yeah, that's where I have slaves over here. And then, so anyway, um, and I'm trying to ask some more questions and they're basically in not so many words, not a hundred percent said this way. They were like, he was like a really nice slave owner.

And I'm like, that's not really, you know, it's not really a questions I'm I'm asking. I I'm not even trying to judge any of that. I just I would just like to know more information about this. And it was funny the way they just tried to, not funny, actually, but it was interesting how they glazed over that as if like, that's not like, let's not talk about that part. And I'm like, well, why, why not? I mean, we're talking about everything else that he did. We're talking about all these great things that he did and how he's our first president and, and all these things. We should be able to talk about how he had some faults and how he's our first president and all these things, we should be able to talk about how he had some faults and how he's living under some misconceptions.

But I mean, a lot of people were at the time. That doesn't excuse it, but why not just talk about it a little bit more and talk about it openly? It's not like we don't know that it happened anyway. Yeah, my girlfriend was telling me the other day that it was a few years ago, but there was a push to try to take slavery out of the curriculum in school you know again that that is history that needs to be taught that that our country did that

because just like i think when we were you know bo high tower you know when all the history knows when you understand things that happen in the past that can prepare you for things that may happen in the future it could give you it can give you an understanding of the capacity of our government what like what we were willing to do you know so it's important yeah and and you know it's it's like it's the worst thing ever right like it had it's the you know biggest uh biggest in American history, right? Like, fuck, dude, that happened. Like, that's terrible. So, to not teach it in school, it's almost like, let's just wipe that part away and let's keep moving.

We're good, right? It's probably the most important thing to teach, really. Yeah. I mean, I really think it is. I think it is. It's important that we teach and we talk about our differences. And I think it's really important that we show the injustices because who cares about the things that are just? I mean, they're not a problem. They're not, you know,

why? That's understandable to be patriotic. It's understandable to celebrate some stuff here and there. I mean, I remember when I was a kid and they would talk about the different wars. And I'm like, did we win or did we lose? And I was always interested in that. And then thinking back on it, how dumb it is because war is just a giant loss for everybody. I'm not necessarily a tree hugger by any means. I do think that we need to stand up for our rights and things like that.

And we sometimes, unfortunately, we sometimes have to fight, but no one's really winning. Right. No one's really coming out on top and these kind of these kind of things. But I think it's super valuable to teach about slavery and all the different things that have come from that, valuable to teach about slavery and all the different things that have come from that, because it paints a picture. It sets things up for part of the reason why things are the way they are today. And you have, you know, the white people saying, well, they haven't had, you know, slavery for X amount of years. And, you know, you have both sides, you know, saying saying their piece, but neither side is really trying to learn from each other.

And that's more of what we need. Awesome stuff, guys. Yeah, that was awesome. Thank you, Daryl Davis. Appreciate it. And can't wait to get him on the show again. And also, maybe we can have an opportunity to listen to him play. I don't know if you guys had an opportunity to check out him playing the piano and stuff like that. But holy shit, man, that guy is talented.

That's cool. Yeah, I got to check it out. There's a lot of stuff on YouTube. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. We sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Perfect Keto, for sponsoring this episode.

for checking out today's episode. We sincerely appreciate it. Thank you, Perfect Keto, for sponsoring this episode. For more information on them, please check the YouTube and Facebook description as well as the podcast show notes. Please make sure you're following

the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at?

At Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. At Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark? There's so much to get out of today's podcast, but I think something that'll be useful and helpful to everybody who listened today and I think you can implement it into your game right away is, you know,

don't let the things that you hear, don't let them trigger an emotion. You can have the feeling. You can feel enraged. You can feel upset. You can feel emotion. You can have the feeling, you can feel enraged, you can feel upset, you can feel sad, you can feel mad, but ask yourself, you know, how is it helpful? Is it something that's going to help you to get to the end result? Is it something that's going to really help you to make progress? And if it's not, start to filter those feelings and start to make more sense of them and think about them in a more rational way so that you can combat these things with more knowledge. And the more knowledge that we have,

the more things that we're able to share with each other, the more likely we are able to affect a lot of change in one another. And I think that's, you know, that's really what a lot of us need at this moment. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weak. This week is never strength. Catch y'all later.