Daryl Davis, a Black pianist, dismantled KKK racism by engaging members like Roger Kelly and Bob White—convicted cop-turned-Klan leader—exposing their pseudoscientific justifications (e.g., The Bell Curve) and turning hate into curiosity. His method of calm counterarguments led Klansmen to quit after years, including one who couldn’t name a Black serial killer but listed white ones like Dahmer. Davis critiques rebranded extremism ("alt-right") and Charlottesville’s race-war provocation, linking radicalization to online echo chambers and demographic fears as the U.S. shifts to majority non-white by 2042. Holidays like Black History Month, he argues, now divide rather than unite, while schools fail to teach inclusive civics—leaving ignorance to fuel hatred. His work proves dialogue can outlast propaganda, offering a path forward for those trapped in extremism. [Automatically generated summary]
I was playing at a bar one night in Frederick, Maryland, an all-white bar.
And when I say all-white, I don't mean that blacks couldn't go in.
What I mean is that blacks chose not to go in.
They weren't welcome.
And here I was in this bar with this country band, a friend of mine's band.
I was the only black guy in the band, only black guy in the bar.
And upon finishing the first set, I'm walking to the band table, and somebody came up and put their arm around my shoulder.
I turn around to see who it was.
It was a white gentleman, maybe 15, 18 years older than me.
And he says, yeah, yeah, I really enjoy your all's music.
I said, thank you.
I shook his hand.
And he pointed at the stage and said, you know, I've seen this here band before, but I've never seen you before.
Where'd you come from?
And I explained, yeah, you know, they told me they've played here before, but this is my first time in this place.
I just joined the band.
And he said, well, man, I really like your piano playing.
This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.
And I wasn't offended, but I was rather surprised, because as I said, this guy's maybe 15 years older than me, and he did not know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis' style of piano playing.
I explained it to him.
I got it from the same place Jerry Lee did, from black blues and boogie-woogie piano players.
Well, the guy was incredulous.
Oh, no, no, no.
Jerry Lee invented that.
I never heard no black man play like that, except for you.
So I'm thinking, okay, well, this guy never heard of Little Richard or Fast Domino.
And I said, look, man, I know Jerry Lee Lewis.
He's a friend of mine.
He's told me himself we learned how to play.
The guy did not buy that I knew Jerry Lee.
He didn't buy that Jerry Lee or anything from black people.
But he was so fascinated that he wanted to buy me a drink.
It was like a novelty to him.
So I went back to his table.
I had a cranberry juice.
And then he announces, this is the first time I sat down and had a drink with a black man.
And now I'm the one who's incredulous.
Like, how can that be?
You know, I've sat down with thousands of white people, anybody else had a meal, a beverage, a conversation.
How was it this guy had never done that?
And innocently, I asked him, I said, why?
He didn't answer me at first.
He stared down at the tabletop.
And I asked him again.
And his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him in the side and said, tell him, tell him, tell him.
I said, tell me.
I'm trying to figure out what is this mystery.
He looks at me just as plain as day and he says, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Well, I burst out laughing.
You know, because it was getting weirder by the second half.
And I knew a lot about the Klan.
I'd been studying racism since I was a 10-year-old kid because of an incident that happened to me back then.
And I bought books on black supremacy, white supremacy, the KKK, the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, to try to understand this mentality.
And I knew a Klansman would not come up and just throw his arm around some black guy's shoulder and praise his talent and want to hang out with him and buy him a drink.
So, you know, this guy's jerking me around.
So I'm laughing, and he goes inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet and produces his Klan membership card.
I looked at it, and I recognized the Klan insignia, which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the center of the cross.
And I realized, oh man, this thing's for real.
So I stopped laughing.
It wasn't funny anymore.
And I gave it back to him.
And we chatted about the Klan and different things.
But the dude gave me his phone number.
And wanted me to call him whenever I was to return to this bar so he could bring his friends, meaning Klansmen and Klanswomen, to see this black guy play like Jerry Lee.
I'm not sure he called me a black guy to his friends, but I said, I'll call you.
So I would call him every six weeks on a Wednesday or Thursday.
I said, hey man, you know, we're down at the Silver Dollar, you know, Friday and Saturday, come on out.
He'd come out both nights, and he'd bring Klansmen and Klanswomen, and they'd come and gather around the bandstand and watch me play the piano, or get out there and dance to our music.
Now, you know, they didn't come in robes and hoods, right?
They came in street clothes.
And on the break, I would go to his table and say hello.
Some of them were very curious.
They'd hang out there and want to meet me and talk to me.
Others would see me coming and get up and take off and go stand some other part of the room where it's like, I just want to see you.
I don't want to deal with you kind of thing.
So that was fine.
And I decided later on I would write a book.
Because I'd been looking for an answer to a question that I had formed when I was age 10. My question was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me?
And this was a result of having marched in a Cub Scout parade at the age of 10, being the only black scout in this parade.
And while most people on the streets and sidewalks were cheering us, we were marching from Lexington to Concord, Massachusetts, to commemorate the ride of Paul Revere.
And people were like waving flags and yelling and screaming, the British are coming and all a good time, except for one small pocket of people who were throwing rocks and bottles at me.
And at age 10, my first thought was, oh, those people over there don't like the scouts.
That's how naive I was.
It wasn't until my den mother, my cub master, my troop leader all came rushing over and huddled over me with their bodies, these white people, and escorted me out of the danger that I realized I was the only target because nobody else was getting this protection.
And they kept, you know, shushing me, telling me to hurry up, move along, it'll be okay.
So they never answered the question as to why this was happening.
When I got home that day, after this parade, my mother and father, who were not there, were putting mature chrome and band-aids on me and asking me how did I fall down and get all scraped up.
I told them I didn't fall down.
I told them exactly what had happened.
And for the first time in my life, my mom and dad sat me down and explained to me what racism was.
At the age of 10, I had never heard the term racism.
Every two years, you go to a country, you're there for two years, come back home for a few months, and then you get reassigned to another country.
So when I was overseas, In elementary school, my classes were filled with kids from all over the world.
Anybody who had an embassy in those countries, all us embassy kids went to the same school.
My class was full of kids from Nigeria, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, you name it.
If you were to open the door to my classroom and stick your head in, you would say, this looks like a United Nations of little kids, because that's exactly what it was.
And we all got along.
Then I would come home after that two-year assignment and I would be in either all black schools or all white schools.
I'm sorry, all black schools or all black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated schools.
And there was not the amount of diversity in my classroom that I had overseas.
Today you walk into a classroom, you know, you can't tell where people are from, from all over.
So literally, Between 1961 and like 1968, 1970, I was living about 12 years into the future when I was living overseas because that multicultural scene had yet to come to this country.
And when it did, of course, I was already prepared.
Unfortunately, many of my peers were not.
So I didn't experience racism.
Had I lived here my whole life, I might have had a different perspective and not taken this path.
So I was very curious about it and fascinated with it.
Like, how can somebody hate you when they don't even know you?
It was just beyond my comprehension.
And I knew something was wrong because the people who did this to me did not look any different than my little French friends, my Swedish friends, or my fellow Americans from the embassy, or for that matter, my fellow Americans right there, you know, at the school where I went, where we did the march.
So I knew it wasn't a color thing.
In fact, when my parents told me this, I did not believe my parents.
I thought for some reason my parents are lying to me because my 10-year-old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me, had never spoken to me, knew nothing about me, would want to inflict me.
No other reason than the color of my skin.
So I did not believe them.
Well, a month and a half later, that same year, 1968, on April the 4th, Martin Luther King was assassinated.
And I remember it very well.
We were in Massachusetts, same place, and nearby Boston, Washington, D.C., my hometown, Chicago, Illinois, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Richmond, L.A., all burned to the ground.
With violence and destruction, all in the name of this new word that I had learned called racism.
And so then I realized my parents had told me the truth.
This phenomenon called racism does exist, but why?
I didn't understand why.
Okay, so it's here, but why?
And so that's when I formed that question.
How can you hate me when you don't even know me?
And so I've been looking for the answer to that question now for 51 years.
I'm 61 years old.
So after I met this Klansman, oh, maybe, I don't know, three or four months later, I quit that band and went back to playing rock and roll and blues and R&B. And then it dawned on me, Daryl, you know, the answer that you've been seeking since age 10 fell right into your lap.
Who better to ask that question of how can you hate me when you don't even know me than to ask it of somebody who would go so far as to join an organization whose whole premise has been hating people who do not look like them and who do not believe as they believe.
And this organization has been around for over 100 years.
Somebody who would go that far to join the KKK Should damn sure have an answer to your question.
So get back in contact with that guy.
And why don't you write a book?
Because I had every book, I still do, every book written on the Klan.
And they all were written by white authors, obviously, because a white author would have, you know, less fear of ramifications, talking to a Klansman, or interviewing them, who would have easier access, or could join the Klan undercover.
Get the story, get out and write about it.
So my book became the first book ever written by a black author on the Ku Klux Klan from the perspective of sitting down face to face.
I decided I would go around the country, interview Klan leaders there in Maryland where I live, up north, down south, midwest, and west.
And I said I would start right there in Maryland.
So I got a hold of that guy and I wanted him to introduce me to the Klan leader from Maryland.
Because they may have been in the same clan at one time and something happened.
Somebody embezzled some clan dues or didn't get promoted, you know, whatever.
So anyway, if you have a chapter of your particular Klan group in another state or in multiple states, you may then consider yourself or your group to be a national Klan group.
Therefore, you must have a national leader.
So overseas, all the states in which you have a chapter of your particular group.
So we call our national leader the president.
In clan terminology, that person is known as the imperial wizard.
Anybody who is prefixed with the word imperial means that person is a national officer, wizard being the top.
All right, so imperial wizard would be like a president, and imperial clalith would be like a vice president.
And you have secretaries, treasurers, whole nine yards.
And then the next level down would be state, the head of the state, which we call the governor.
That person is known as a grand dragon.
Anybody grand is on the state level, state officer, dragon being the top governor.
A grand claliph would be like a lieutenant governor, and then secretary treasurer.
And then within the state, you have counties.
The county leader is known as the great titan.
Anybody on the great level is on the county level.
Within the county, you have districts, what they call claverns, and we would call a district leader a mayor, a councilman, alderman.
So I said, "You know, Mary." And she said, "No, no, I want to go." I said, "All right.
You know, you've got your own risk." She said, "All right." So we drove up there this particular Sunday evening.
It was about an hour and a half from my house.
And my guy gave me perfect directions.
There's the place right there.
Boom.
We locked the car, walked up these little steps, and I told her, I said, look, I'm going to walk in first.
You walk right in behind me.
If I turn around and face you, start running, and I'll be behind you.
And she says, all right, let's go.
So we walk in about 7.30 on a Sunday evening.
The place was practically empty.
I would say maybe no more than six or seven people in there.
A couple guys in the back playing pool, a guy or two sitting at the bar, and the guy had told me this was a Klan bar.
And what he meant by Klan bar is the Klan doesn't own it, but that's where they hang out.
And he described it to me, that when you walk in the door, to your left will be a row of booths, and the first two booths closest to the door where you come in are reserved for the Klan.
So, you know, I looked over there and nobody was sitting there.
So I'm looking around to see if I recognize Roger Kelly.
And I didn't see anybody who looked like him, which did not mean that some of these people weren't Klan.
But I figured, you know what, and to my right was a long bar.
Behind the bar was a mirror.
And Scotch Tape to the Mirror was a picture, an article from the Washington Post newspaper, had a picture of Roger Kelly.
They'd interviewed him about something.
The NAACP was suing them over some kind of cross-burning ceremony or something.
And I recognized the article.
I said, wow.
And there's a big Confederate flag on the back wall like you have the U.S. flag right there.
So I knew I was in the right place, or the wrong place.
I didn't see anybody who looked like Roger Kelly.
I drove an hour and a half to get up here.
I don't want to go home empty-handed, but I didn't want to just walk up to somebody and say, hey, excuse me, sir, are you in the Klan?
So I said, Mary and I are standing in the middle of this bar, basically looking stupid.
And not knowing what to do.
So I said, come on, Mary.
Let's go over there and sit in one of those first two booths.
Because if the Klan is in here, they will come to us.
And then we'll know.
And then we can ask them, hey, you know, we want to see Roger Kelly.
So we went over and we sat down.
Nobody bothered us.
Everything was cool.
Eventually we migrated over to the bar.
I chatted up the guy sitting next to me like I was lost.
Needed some directions.
Very nice.
Gave me directions.
We failed.
So we left.
The next morning, Mary walked out of my house.
I gave her Roger Kelly's number Monday morning.
I said, give him a call.
I said, tell him that you're working for somebody who's writing a book on the Klan.
Would he consent to sitting down with your boss and giving him an interview?
However, do not tell Mr. Kelly that I'm black.
If he asks, you know, don't lie to him.
But don't allude to it.
Don't give him reason to.
He'll be curious.
She understood.
And the reason why...
I did not want him to know that.
Was A, I figured, you know, if he knew that, he may not give me the interview.
But if he agreed to do the interview, then obviously he would see that I'm black when he meets me, and he could decide right then and there if he wanted to continue it or not.
But I want him to see me first.
And secondly, if he agreed to do the interview knowing that I was black, he may have different answers prepared in the interim than he would have for a white interviewer as opposed to a black interviewer.
So I wanted to be spontaneous, candid.
So she understood, and she called him, and he agreed to do the interview.
So we set it up for the motel above the Silver Dollar Lounge up there in Frederick, Maryland at 5.15 on a Sunday afternoon.
And Mary and I got there, oh man, I don't know, several hours early.
I gave her some money, sent her down the hall to get some soda pop out of the machine, put it in the ice bucket, fill it with ice, get it all cold.
So, you know, I could offer...
Mr. Kelly, a beverage, a cold beverage.
I had no idea what this man would do once he laid eyes on me and saw that I was black.
Would he come in the room?
Would he attack me?
Or would he walk away?
You know, but in the event, I wanted to be hospitable.
So she got the soda pop, put in the ice bucket, set it on the dresser.
Just by happenstance, the way the room is laid out, if you are standing in the hallway, in the doorway of the room, looking into the room, you cannot see who's in the room.
You have to literally walk in the door and turn to your right, and the room is laid out back there.
So there's no way you can know who's in the room standing in the hallway.
And so I took advantage of that.
I took the lamp table, took the lamp off, and put it in the most obscure corner of the room.
And I put a chair on one side for me and a chair on the other side for Mr. Kelly.
And I had a little bag beside me, a little like duffel bag.
And in my bag, I had a cassette recorder, blank cassette tapes, and a copy of the Bible.
Because the Ku Klux Klan claims to be a Christian organization.
And they claim that the Bible preaches racial separation.
Now, I've read it through the Bible.
I've never seen that in there.
So I want to be able to pull out my Bible when he brings it up and say, here, Mr. Kelly, show me, please, in this King James Version, chapter and verse where it says blacks and whites must be separate.
So I'm all prepared, right?
Right on time at 5.15.
Knock on the door.
I'm seated there where you can't see me until you come in the room.
Mary hops up, and by the way, Mary's white, as I mentioned before.
So she goes around the corner, opens the door, in walks what is known as the Grand Nighthawk.
Nighthawk in clan terminology means bodyguard, security.
So, you know, and today that same Klan member is in a federal prison.
He'll be there for a long time.
He would later commit a hate crime, which landed him in the federal penitentiary.
So, anyway, we got on with this interview.
And within 10 minutes, Mr. Kelly let me know why he could hate people like me.
Black people are inferior.
We are prone to crime.
We're criminals.
That is why there are more blacks in prison than whites.
Now, that's a half-truth.
There are indeed more blacks in prison than white people.
It's not because we're prone to crime, like you said.
It's because of inequity in our judicial system, where whites in the same predicament either don't get the same jail time or don't go to jail or whatever.
Anyway, so I'm a criminal.
He also said that black people are lazy.
We don't want to work.
While we prefer to scam the government welfare system, we're looking for handouts and freebies and all that where white people, you know, they work, etc.
And also, this book called The Bell Curve had just recently come out.
And because it was unexpected and it was so short, I couldn't discern it.
You know, I went into self-protect mode.
And acumen hit the table.
Well, when you fear for your life, as I said, you know, you go into survival mode.
And in survival mode, you know, you can only do like one of four things.
Some people, they just pass out.
They faint.
Because the fear is so great, their brain cannot process it.
And it shuts down, and they pass out.
Other people, their muscles contract and they get tense and they can't move.
And you can be punching them, kicking them, and they won't even be deflecting the blows.
They're all constricted.
That's called paralysis by fear, that you're too afraid to move.
The third thing people will do is to run away.
from whatever the fear is and that is your best option when something scares you that bad take off Separate yourself as quickly as you can from that fear Put as much distance between you and the fear as you can and that would have been my choice Had it been an option, but it was not an option for me because you cannot outrun a bullet in a motel room, right?
So I was not armed My secretary was not armed.
The only person who I knew for sure who was armed was a Nighthawk.
You can see his gun right there.
And I didn't know if Mr. Kelly had a weapon up under his suit jacket or not.
All I knew was, I don't want to die today.
So, I chose the fourth option, which was to do a preemptive strike.
You get them before they get you.
So, when I flew out of my chair, I was going to dive across the table.
I was going to grab Mr. Kelly, grab the Nighthawk, and slam them down to the ground and take away the Nighthawk's gun.
Whoa!
No, it was going to happen that quickly.
Okay?
I think pretty fast.
Sometimes a little too fast.
But I'm glad I hit the table because I'm looking right into his eyes, trying to figure out, like, what did you do?
I didn't say one word to this guy, but my eyes had locked with his eyes.
It was like I could see right through him.
And I let my eyes do the talking.
I knew he could hear my eyes.
My eyes were shouting at him saying, what did you just do?
Well, his eyes had fixated on my eyes.
He didn't say a word either, but I could read his eyes.
His eyes were saying to me, what did you just do?
And the Nighthawk had his hand on his gun looking at both of us like, what did either one of y'all just do?
Mary was sitting to my left on top of the dresser because there were no more chairs.
And she realized what had happened.
And she began explaining it to us when it happened again.
I mean, yeah, you know, the tension had de-escalated, all that kind of stuff, as we got more into the hour.
But I think, you know, we each were aware, you know, this is not a normal situation, you know, a black kind of Klan leader.
So, you know, each one was still, you know, a little wary of the other kind of thing.
But we were mutually respectful, okay?
So then...
It happened again, and we began laughing.
We began laughing, all of us, at how ignorant we had all been.
I won't say that this was a learning moment, but it was a teaching moment, and the learning would come later.
What was taught was this.
All because some foreign, an underscore highlight circle of the word foreign, entity of which we were ignorant, that being the bucket of ice cans of soda, We're good to go.
That fear in turn will escalate and breed hatred because we hate those things that frighten us.
If you don't check that hatred, it in turn will escalate and breed destruction.
We want to destroy those things that we hate.
Why?
Because they frighten us.
But guess what?
They may have been harmless and we were just ignorant.
And we saw the whole chain unravel to almost completion.
The last component being destruction.
It stopped just short of that.
Had I pounced across the table and hurt one of them, or had the Nighthawk drawn his gun and shot one of us, you know, that would have been the destruction.
Fortunately, that did not happen.
We did see that, that whole chain unravel to completion.
Three years ago, on August 12th, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is like two hours from my house.
On August 12th, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, there was a lot of ignorance in Charlottesville.
There was a lot of fear in Charlottesville.
There was a lot of hatred in Charlottesville.
And what did it culminate in?
It culminated in destruction when a white supremacist got inside his vehicle and drove full force into a crowd of counter-protesters trying to murder them.
He succeeded in injuring 20 and murdering a young lady named Heather Heyer.
So that whole chain is there.
If you want to solve this problem of racism, we need to stop focusing on the symptoms.
Don't worry about the fear.
Don't worry about the hatred.
Those are just symptoms.
That's like putting a band-aid on cancer.
You've got to go down to the bone and treat it at its source.
The source of all this is ignorance.
Ignorance can be cured.
The cure for ignorance is called education.
So you fix the ignorance, there's nothing to fear because you fear what you don't know.
When you cure the ignorance, you know something.
There's nothing to fear.
If there's nothing to fear, then there's nothing to hate.
If there's nothing to hate, there's nothing to destroy.
So we need to focus on the ignorance, and we address it with exposure and education and conversation.
We spend way too much time in this country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, talking past the other person.
Why not just spend a little bit of time talking with the other person?
So, like I said, we carried on with the conversation, had a good time.
Nobody got hurt.
Everybody laughed.
And I thanked them, shook their hands, and they told me to keep in touch.
It has that big red circle with a white cross and blood drop.
And they have candles, things like that, and a cross.
And the cross has either candles on it, so it's like a flame, or light bulbs.
So, anyway, and a sword laying across the table.
I take pictures, take some notes.
And then he began inviting me to Klan rallies.
So I'd go to these Klan rallies, and they'd have this big wooden cross.
The wooden cross is wrapped in burlap.
The burlap has been soaked in what they call clan cologne, which is actually diesel fuel or kerosene.
And the Klansmen and Klanswomen are all in their robes and hoods, and they have these torches.
The torches are lit, and they walk in a big wide circle around this cross, which is in the center.
And then either the Imperial Wizard or the Grand Dragon will shout, you know, Klansmen halt!
And they'll all stop in place.
Klansmen face the cross, and they'll all turn in and face the inner circle.
And then he'll say, for my God, and they all repeat, for my God, and bow.
For my race, for my race.
For my country, for my country.
For my clan, for my clan.
White power, white power.
Klansmen approach the cross.
And they all close in, and now they're all right there at the base of the cross.
Klansmen light the cross, and they drop their torches at the foot of the cross, and whoosh!
This thing is aflame.
And they stand there and admire this burning cross, and then they give some speeches from the podium, and then they have hot dogs and hamburgers, and the rally is over.
But, you know, I knew what to expect, pretty much.
I read all these books.
So, you know, I mean, I know that's what they do at Klan rallies.
They burn crosses.
Now, let me explain something to you that I learned.
There are two times, two occasions upon which they set the cross aflame, as they put it.
They have a cross burning and a cross lighting.
The difference being, a cross burning is when they take a 5 or 10 foot cross wrapped in that burlap soaked in kerosene and put it in your lawn because you're an interracial couple, you're gay, you're Jewish in a white neighborhood, whatever the deal is.
That is meant as intimidation.
It's a warning.
We know who you are.
Cease and desist.
Move out.
If you don't, next time we come, we mean business.
In other words, they're going to bomb your house or something.
When they do that, that's called a cross-burning.
A cross-lighting is when they do a 20- or 30-foot cross at a ceremony, and they parade around it and give a lecture.
I'm saying to him, look, Mr. Murray, anytime you want to prove something, you find something that fits your narrative.
You can find some black person who has a very low IQ. If I work for Ford and I want to prove that my car is better than Chevrolet, then I'm going to find a Chevrolet that doesn't run very well.
I'm going to do it that way.
So I refuted Mr. Murray and his partner, the two guys who wrote the book, Their documentation.
And see, they go by things that they can see and understand.
I'm going to give you an example of something that's going to help you understand.
This cyclops was riding around in my car one day with me.
He's sitting in my passenger seat, right?
And we're driving.
I'm driving along.
And somehow we got on the topic of black crime.
And he made a statement.
He said, well, you know, we all know they say that, again, that they, authority, say that black people have a gene in them that makes them violent.
And I'd heard that before from other Klan people.
That's one of their narratives.
And, you know, the wild black savage kind of thing.
And I said, what are you talking about?
He says, well, who's doing all the drive-bys and carjackings in Southeast?
He was referring to Southeast Washington, D.C., which is a predominantly black area.
Some whites live there.
It's predominantly black, very high crime-ridden.
I said, okay, it's black people.
I said, but that's what lives there.
I said, who's doing all the crime in Bangor, Maine?
White people, because that's what lives there.
I said, you know, you're not even considering the demographics.
He's like, no, no, no, no.
You all have this gene, blah, blah, blah.
So, you know, he's going to shut me down.
And I said, look, he's right here.
I said, look, I'm as black as anybody you know.
I said, I have never done a drive-by.
I have never done a carjacking.
How do you explain that?
This man did not wait one second.
He answered me like that.
He said, your genius latent hasn't come out yet.
How do you argue with somebody who's that far in that field, right?
I mean, you can't even bite into that and chew on it, right?
So I'm dumbfounded, and I'm speechless.
I'm just driving along.
He's over here all smuggling, you see?
Nothing to say.
So I thought about it.
And I said, you know, They say, I use his authority, I said, they say that all white people have a gene that makes them a serial killer.
He said, how do you figure that?
I said, name me three black serial killers.
He couldn't do it.
I said, here, I'm going to give you one.
I named one for him.
I said, here, just name me two.
He couldn't do it.
I said, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam.
Robert White used to be the Grand Dragon of Maryland for another Klan group, which was a rival to Roger Kelly's group.
All right?
When I first heard of Bob White, I was in my late teens, and I heard about him on the news.
He had been busted, arrested, and put in jail for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore up on Liberty Road, the Liberty Road's synagogue.
And he was convicted.
He went to prison for four years.
This is before I started writing the book.
I just remembered him.
And then he got out after doing his time, continued running the Klan, and then some years later, he got busted again.
Assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun.
All right?
Now, understand something.
As a plan leader, you don't make any money, or not a lot, unless you're embezzling money from the dues.
And a lot of people do that.
That's what causes these splinter groups.
If you're a leader, like a wizard or a dragon, you might get like a small stipend out of the dues, but not enough to pay your rent or put food on your table.
So you have to have a regular job.
You know, Cyclops, Wizard, Dragon, whatever, these are all just titles, like Boy Scout Leader.
You have to have a regular job to pay your rent and mortgage.
This man's regular job, when he was doing all this nonsense, bombing places and stuff, Baltimore City police officer.
Whoa!
This is his police officer uniform, okay?
Yeah.
He was not an undercover cop in the Klan gathering intelligence.
He was a bonafide Klansman on the Baltimore City police force, okay?
And there are more.
There are more.
But he went on.
This guy was vehemently, vehemently anti-Semitic and racist and very, very violent.
But he went on to become one of my best friends.
And he gave me his Klan robe, gave me his police uniform.
I do a lot of lecturing all over the country and stuff.
Well, let me give you an example of why people joined the Klan.
There are different reasons.
In some cases, it's my grandfather was in the Klan, my daddy was in the Klan, so I'm in the Klan, and my kids are going to be in the Klan.
It's a family tradition, right?
Passed down.
And when you are dealing with somebody with that kind of tie, you know, that generational thing, it may take a little longer for them to come out, because it's hard to break family tradition, right?
Another reason why people would join You take a depressed town, like a coal mining town in West Virginia or Scranton, Pennsylvania or something like that, where people who are not racist They're hard workers.
They dig coal all their lives.
Grandfather dug coal.
Father dug coal.
Now you dug coal.
Dig coal after high school.
That's all you know.
If I were to hand one of those people a vacuum cleaner and say, vacuum this rug, they wouldn't know how to do it.
All they know is digging coal.
And they're happy.
They're making their paycheck.
They're feeding their family, paying their rent, whatever.
They're not concerned about people's color.
They're happy.
But then the company gets greedy and decides, hey, you know what?
We can save money, make a lot more money if we lay off our employees and hire some of these immigrants, whether they're illegal or illegal, because they'll work for less than half of what we're paying our people, right?
And so they lay off these people and hire these people who just came over to the country looking for work.
And they pay them next to nothing.
So now these white people who were never racist are out of a job.
The bank is going to foreclose on their trailer or their house or whatever.
They can't put food on their table.
The Klan sees these things.
And the Klan will come into a depressed town like that and hold a rally and say, the blacks have the NAACP.
The Jews had the ADL.
You know, nobody stands up for the white man but the Klan.
Come join us.
We'll get your job back.
You know, that was your job.
Your job's not gone, but you're gone.
And now some nigger or some spick's got your job.
You know, why is that?
Come join us.
So these people, like I said, who were never racist, you know, they began thinking, well, you know, they're right.
My job is still there.
And I worked that job for 25 years, you know, and I got laid off for no reason.
And somebody else is doing my job.
So what do I have to lose?
Give me an application.
And they sign up.
So they're like, you know, coercing into this group.
They may be a little easier to come out, you know, talking with them.
Then a third reason why people would join, if somebody relocates to a town that is very clan-oriented, a lot of people who kind of live there and stuff, if you want to do business in that town, you've got to assimilate.
You join the local country club, the local chamber of commerce, and the local KKK. So those are different reasons why people will join.
And again, depending upon how strong the ties are or why they join can determine their longevity or their hold on it.
And even though in the media it will say a black musician converts 200 Klansmen or X amount of Klan members, I didn't convert anybody.
I didn't even convert one of them.
I will say that I am the impetus for over 200 leaving the Klan.
Yeah, I know that for a fact.
And people have told me, yeah, I'm out because of you and things like that.
But I did not convert them.
They converted themselves.
I gave them reason to think about their direction in life.
And they thought about it and thought, you know, I need a better path.
And this is the way to go.
Because what would happen would be this.
It's like, you know, when you believe in something, some people just believe in it just because it's that person saying it.
Like, you know, we have a current president where no matter what he says, some people are going to believe and others are going to disbelieve.
All right?
And that can go for any president, really, if you're a big fan.
No matter what you do, what you say, you have a base that's going to believe you.
So I would tell these people when I saw fault with what they were saying in their ideology, I said, well, let me tell you why I think this is incorrect.
And I'd lay out the facts for them.
Now, they may not concede right then and there, but when they go home, they check it out, and it rolls around in their head, and they begin thinking, you know, Daryl does have a point, but he's black, but he does have a point, but he's black.
So even though they know it's true, they don't want to believe it because I'm black.
So it's like that cognitive dissonance thing going on.
So they have an internal struggle, and they have to make up their own mind Do I continue living a lie?
You're a very articulate guy, and I'm sure a lot of these people are not very educated, so the continued exposure to you is probably confusing to them as well.
Because you're so good at forming sentences and speaking and calm, and the words flow so smoothly out of your mouth, and you have this wonderful grasp of the English language.
I mean, there's humor in everything, but we shouldn't take racism—we need to take it more seriously than we do.
And I'm going to tell you something.
Our country—I'm going to tell you where it's headed so you understand.
Our country can only become one of two things.
It can become number one, that which we stand up, I'm sorry, that which we sit back and let it become, or number two, that which we stand up and make it become.
So we are charged with this question.
Do I want to sit back and see what my country becomes?
Or do I want to stand up and make my country become what I want to see?
And I've chosen the latter because I don't like the direction it's going in.
Well, you've chosen a very noble, not just the latter, but a very noble path.
I mean, what you've done is pretty incredible in the amount of time and energy that's required for you to get close to these guys and the fact that you could be doing a lot of other things.
But you chose to spend an extraordinary amount of time pursuing I would much rather be on stage playing music and making people happy and causing them to jump up and dance and carry on and sing along than attending Klan rallies.
But I find it more and more necessary because we have dropped the ball.
You know, the topic that you and I are discussing right now...
20, 30 years ago, it would have been taboo talking about it on radio or whatever.
People did not want to discuss it.
And I know we can't talk about that just to keep it in the closet, because out of sight, out of mind, denial.
And denying it does not make it go away, just because you can't see it.
It's always there.
So now we're forced to address it.
But let me tell you where it's going, which is what a lot of people do not talk about and don't understand.
Well, first of all, Let's define what it is.
Back in the day, there was only one group, the Ku Klux Klan.
They were the first and the largest gang, if you will, of racists.
At one point in time, they had four million members.
Yeah, it was a Klan, but the ideology was called white supremacy.
And a lot of – it started in 1865.
A lot of violence, a lot of lynchings, bombings, dragging people behind vehicles, all that kind of stuff began happening.
And it became a lot of baggage with the term white supremacy where a lot of white people did not like black people or did not like Jewish people.
They did not want to participate in this night riding, you know, lynchings and murder and all that kind of stuff, either for moral reasons or legal reasons, whatever.
The membership began dwindling.
People began dropping out, all right?
It was too violent for them.
This white supremacy word became unpalatable and became negative.
So when the membership decreased, they had to rebrand.
So they changed it from white supremacy to white separatism.
I'm a white separatist.
I don't hate black people or Jewish people.
I just love my own.
Blacks and Jews should be able to have their own schools, their own neighborhoods, their own churches, their own workplaces.
We should be able to have ours, and that way we don't have to mix.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I like that idea.
Sign me up.
I'm a white separatist.
Membership began increasing.
And of course, you know, the more people you have, somebody's going to start acting up.
So here comes the violence.
So now the term white supremacy also became unpalatable and people began dropping out.
So membership went down again.
And then they had to rebrand.
Next, they call themselves white nationals or white nationalists.
All right?
Now, what is a nationalist?
A nationalist is someone who loves their country, like a patriot.
So, you're a nationalist.
I'm a nationalist.
Why do we have to say white nationalist?
Why can't we just say I'm a nationalist, right?
But no, white nationalist.
So, yeah, I love my country and I'm white.
Sign me up.
Here comes the violence.
So, once again, they rebranded and now they call it the alt-right.
I hate to use a cliche, but as they say, a rose by any other name is what?
Because I knew that it still existed, but I didn't think they would show themselves publicly like that in the age of the internet and walk down the street with tiki torches.
I just had probably heard it on the news or something like that that was going on.
And then when I saw the KKK showing – were those guys, the Charlottesville guys with the torches, were those KKK or was it another white supremacy movement?
And I had a conversation with somebody about it that those statues, most of them were very cheaply made and they were actually put up during the Civil Rights Movement.
The white supremacists have been predicting and have been preparing for a race war.
Just like Dylann Roof was trying to start the race war, that's what he said, when he went to that black church and gunned up the place.
This is the guy who shot all those people in El Paso.
He said the race war.
All right?
Here's what's, you know, anytime you want to occupy a piece of public property because you want to have a rally, a demonstration, or even if you want to set up a lemonade and hot dog stand, if it's going to be on public property, you must have a permit, right?
You go down to the city, get an application, fill out your name, and state your purpose.
You cannot very well say on the application, I want to start a race war.
You will not get the permit.
So you provide some quasi-legitimate excuse.
My great-great-great ancestors fought in the Confederacy.
That's my heritage.
I don't want you messing with it.
Okay, that's legitimate.
Sign off.
Here's your permit, sir.
And now you can occupy that corner of 12th and Main from 12 noon to 4 p.m.
or whatever.
Okay?
So they went through all the procedure.
They legally got a permit to have their Unite the Right rally under false pretense.
All right?
Now, two things.
Anybody who knows American history knows that they were also blacks, And also Jews who fought in the Confederacy.
Black slaves had to fight for their slave owners.
In the South, there were a number of Jewish slave owners.
They didn't want to give up that free labor.
So blacks, Jews, and whites fought together in the Confederacy against blacks, whites, and Jews in the Union.
My great, great, great ancestors were slaves who also fought in the Confederacy.
I have ancestors who fought in the Confederacy.
My parents are from Virginia, Roanoke and Salem.
I was born in Chicago because that's where my dad was working at the time.
But Virginia was the seat of the Confederacy.
So there are black people today and some Jewish people.
Who honor the Confederacy.
They don't condone slavery, but they honor the Confederacy because of their great, great ancestors.
They're just honoring the Confederacy because their ancestors were in it and died in it or whatever.
I honor my ancestors.
However, I don't honor the Confederacy, me personally.
If some of the Blacks and Jews want to do that, that's their business.
I don't do it.
So, and ironically, ironically, this is a historical fact, the Confederate army was integrated.
The Union army was segregated.
All right?
Which doesn't make any sense.
Okay?
So here, you know, we're fighting to free slaves, and the Confederate Army has blacks and Jews and whites fighting together, and the Union has them all segregated.
If blacks and Jews and whites could fight together 150 years ago, Why can't they march together in 2017?
Wouldn't it make more sense and give more credibility to your cause?
If your cause was truly to preserve those statues, why not invite descendants like yourselves of blacks and Jews to march with you in Charlottesville and say, hey, that's my heritage too.
So, instead of including blacks and Jews, you know, heritage shouldn't include everybody in that heritage.
You want to preserve the Confederacy?
Well, guess what?
There were blacks in the Confederacy.
You know that.
That's a historical fact.
There were Jews in the Confederacy.
The Confederacy was simply a reflection of the South, okay?
So instead of including them, they excluded them, and they marched through the University of Virginia campus with their tiki torches and the streets of Charlottesville yelling and screaming anti-Semitic and racial epithets.
What does that tell you?
It tells you their protest was not about heritage.
It was about hate.
That's number one.
Number two, nobody in Charlottesville or anywhere else ever met their great, great, great ancestors who fought in the Confederacy, right?
Those people were long dead and gone by 1865. And these people weren't even born then, right?
Now, you tell me.
But it's okay.
You know, you can honor people that you don't know.
All right?
That's fine.
But how do you honor your great, great, great ancestors in the Confederacy?
And at the same time, you dishonor the very ancestors who you do know, the very ones who raised you, your fathers, your grandfathers.
These people, many fathers of these people in Charlottesville, many fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers lost their lives fighting, not in the Confederacy, but fighting in World War II. And who were they fighting in World War II? The Nazis.
So how do you tell me you're going to honor your great-great-great ancestors and you're going to walk down the streets of Charlottesville side by side with people wearing swastikas?
We went to war against the Nazis.
Why are you marching with Nazis and flying swastikas?
Now, what did the Nazis have to do with our heritage?
The Nazis had no heritage in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In fact, the Nazis weren't even in existence during our Civil War.
Adolf Hitler was not even born during our Civil War.
So what were the Nazis doing in Charlottesville?
It wasn't about heritage.
It was about hate.
And that's what the media failed to tell us, because what the media did was they went to City Hall, because it's a public record, just pulled the permit and read, oh, they're there to protest the statues.
misguided people that were there because they really thought they were protecting their southern heritage and they were lumped in with all these other people that used it as a ruse to sort of set up this hate meeting.
Susan Brough is the mother of Heather Heyer, the girl who was murdered and run down by James Fields.
That 20-year-old boy threw his life away.
And it was premeditated.
You know, he had said stuff on the internet before even going there.
And praised Hitler and so forth and so on.
You know, these are things, you know, that we have to be very much aware of.
And which is why...
Today, you know, I'm helping an organization as an advisor.
In fact, we're putting on a festival of ideas this year in June.
We've already got Cornel West and Tim Pool, Bill Oppmann, and several other people who have already committed to doing this festival of ideas to de-radicalize the Internet.
And there's a new internet platform that's been around just for over almost two years.
It's already gotten two million members called Minds.
Don't get me wrong, there are some of those people.
There are some horrific monsters on all sides, some of whom will go to their grave being hateful, violent, and racist or anti-Semitic.
There is no change in them whatsoever.
But I can tell you this.
If somebody of that attitude or that belief, they're there and you're here on the spectrum at opposite ends, if they're willing to sit down and have a conversation, no matter how extreme they may be, there is the opportunity to plant a seed.
But the important thing is, anybody can plant a seed, but the follow-up is what's important.
You have to nurture that seed.
You must water it so it grows.
When you're here, you think you have nothing in common.
But if you spend five minutes with your worst enemy, you will find something in common.
You will find something in common.
And then you begin nurturing those commonalities.
Okay?
And you're closing that gap.
So now you're about right here.
So now you have formed a relationship.
You've gone from here to a relationship.
And now you begin nurturing that relationship, and you're closing it in.
And when you get about to here, you found a lot of commonalities.
And now you've made a friendship, all right?
And when you get there, the trivial things that you have in contrast, such as the color of your skin, or whether you go to a church, a temple, a mosque, or a synagogue, begin to matter less and less.
You'll begin to see that.
You know, I, and I'll be honest, you know, the most important thing that you have in any endeavor is your credibility.
Your credibility.
You only have one opportunity to make, especially in this kind of thing, to make a good first impression.
You may have a second or third opportunity to impress somebody, but you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression.
And most people would judge you by their first impression of you.
So when I would meet these people, I'm as transparent as I can be.
I'm honest.
I don't lie to them.
I let them know where I stand, but I'm willing to listen to them.
I want to hear why.
I'm saying, enlighten me.
Teach me why.
I should believe the way you believe and see things.
Now, I will say, you know, Joe, I have been between traveling with my parents as a child in the Foreign Service and today as a professional musician playing all over this country and around the world.
When you combine those travels together, I have been in a total of 57 different countries on six continents.
So I've been, you know, three years old all the way to, I'll be 62 in March.
I've been exposed all my life to a wide variety of Of religions, cultures, traditions, ethnicities from all over.
And no matter how far I've gone from the United States, no matter how many different people I've met, I can conclude at the end of the day, we all are human beings.
We may practice different things, have different cultures, different beliefs, but we all are human beings.
And one of my very favorite quotes of all time is by Mark Twain, and it's 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.
And that is so true.
Perhaps if I had not done that traveling and been exposed to different things, would I be doing this today?
Maybe not.
But I think the future of this are things like what Bill Oppmann has put together, this Minds.com.
People should check it out at Minds.com or also go to change.minds.com.
They can follow me there at Daryl Davis, where it's a platform for free speech, free speech, and where you can come and express your ideas, not be kicked off and all that kind of stuff.
There's going to be protocol where you're not going to be able to threaten people and cause them harm and things like that.
That's the credibility that I'm talking about because You know, if, like for example, I don't meet somebody one time and next thing you know they're stripping themselves of their robe and hood.
Or seen things online about me and then have emailed me.
I got tons of emails.
People in the Klan, people in Nazi movements or whatever will say, hey, you know, I appreciate what you said.
You know, you gave this person a fair shake.
I wasn't really expecting that from a black person or something like that and it wasn't that I was you know kissing up to somebody No, you know, I'm gonna be fair and be transparent and because of my credibility That affords me a second visit with them and a third Because if they didn't like me if their first impression of me was this guy's an ass, you know, and I say, you know Can we meet next week now?
I'm getting off Facebook because I hate all this arguing and so on.
And you can come here and talk to some.
Listen, people have a hard time getting together for Thanksgiving.
Because of our current political climate, where somebody, you know, voted for our current president and some other family member did not vote for that person.
People should be able, families should be able to talk about that and respect the fact that your brother or sister voted for our president and you didn't.
That's one thing that I've learned how to do by doing this podcast.
Learn how to talk to people better.
Learn how to really listen to people.
When I first started this podcast 10 years ago, I wasn't very good at it.
I didn't really have any experience doing it.
Mostly what I was doing was me talking.
I was doing stand-up comedy or I was talking to my friends.
The social, civil discourse, like being able to sit down with people and calm each other down and have genuine compassion for each other and just listen to each other, is one of the lost arts in human interaction.
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the worst times for interaction face-to-face.
I mean, I've never seen a pie chart on the difference between the way human beings talk, but there is no question that the amount of people per capita that communicate through electronics versus the way just talking person-to-person over the last ten years has radically increased.
And so has our hostility towards each other in a lot of ways, particularly through those electronic mediums.
Hostility through social media is a relatively new thing.
Social media hate.
I mean, in these mob groups that just go after people, that's 10 years, maybe, max, right?
2010-ish?
This is a new thing in human history.
This, what you're doing, what you're talking about, just sitting down.
It's so old school.
Talking to people, becoming friends with people, speaking.
You've got these projects.
I mean, you've set this sort of friendship in motion with these people, and you've changed the course of their lives.
Because unfortunately, you know, when you have that kind of stigma, and you work for a company where the public sees you, and they go, oh, that's that guy.
And there are a lot of those formers who do that, especially if they don't have a young family, because oftentimes they can get ramifications, you know, for speaking out against their organization.
You know, you take an oath to join those organizations, and they'll come after you, or come after your family, things like that.
As soon as I got the pitch, I was like, I need to talk to you.
Like, what you're doing is insane and amazing and very, very unusual for someone to have that kind of patience and commitment to something like that and to convert these people and without judgment and to be able to rationalize with them and talk to them reasonably.
But then the argument, the other way, is that you're radicalizing young people.
The argument is there's a lot of young people that would go on these social media sites and they're impressionable and they don't know any better, particularly YouTube.
They worry about that because these YouTube videos, they have music and it's a multimedia experience.
It's going to be compelling and with a really good narrator.
You can get people to be like, look at this fucking flat earth movement.
Where's that coming from?
It comes from a few articulate narrators who put together these videos on YouTube where they're the only ones who get to talk.
Scientists don't get to interject and go, stop, that's wrong.
That's not how.
I'll show you.
Nope, it's like this.
Look, here's a satellite photo.
Look, here's a hundred satellite photos.
Look, here's all the satellites that take pictures of the Earth.
They don't get to do that.
So these guys, they'll have this long, uninterrupted, narrated video that makes so much sense.
You listen to this guy, God, he's genius.
Oh my God, the world's flat.
I can't believe they're fucking lying to me.
So there's hundreds of thousands of people that believe in the flat earth now because they've been radicalized, because they've been converted by these multimedia things like YouTube.
This is what people worried about in terms of radicalizing them towards hateful ideologies as well.
We had to fight, fight for decades to have Martin Luther King Day.
There was a lot of resistance to that.
Do you realize that, and a lot of the resistance was the fact that Martin Luther King is the only American man in this country to have a holiday all to himself.
Well, not only that, like, why did it take until basically the latter half of the 20th century before people came to grips with the fact that he was an atrocious human being?
Like, when we were kids, when I was in, I'm a little bit younger than you, I'm 52, when I was in high school, it was Columbus, sailed the ocean blue, the Pinta, the Santa Maria.
So now, the only American man who has a holiday to himself is a black man, and they can't handle it, Martin Luther King.
And now, we had to fight for decades to give this man a holiday when he gave his life to bring this country together, yet we give a holiday to Christopher Columbus, who, as you pointed out, was a murderer, a serial killer, a pillager, a rapist.
Okay, who didn't discover a damn thing?
Martin Luther King never murdered, pillaged, and raped, but yet we didn't want to give him a holiday.
You know, so that's the inequity in this country.
And I'll tell you something else.
Now, there are a lot of people who would disagree with me.
And that's okay, because we're Americans, we can disagree.
We're all individuals.
But there are people who will agree with me also.
And I've been saying this now for 22 years.
One of the things that will help us to advance into the 21st century, because we are behind the times, we need, at this point, To get rid of Black History Month.
Now, I know a lot of people listening are going to freak out.
What's this guy talking about?
Let me explain, all right?
For the longest time, we needed Black History Month.
Black history was not being taught in our schools.
Now, you remember when you pointed out a moment ago that when you were in school, Columbus was a hero, looked up to him, et cetera, and then you go to college and you learn otherwise.
When I was in high school, it was not in our textbooks that we had interment camps with Japanese Americans.
I did not learn that until I got to college.
I'm like, what?
Are you kidding me?
I didn't believe it.
Now it's in the textbooks.
That's what I'm saying.
We're behind the times.
So anyway, we didn't have black history.
What we had was called American history.
It might as well have been called white history, because that's all it was.
And even in some cases, whites were being given credit for things they did not invent and for places they did not discover.
But we knew, we were told at home, things like that, but not in schools.
So we had to fight, fight, fight.
And finally, we got one week.
It was called Negro History Week.
Carter G. Woodson created that.
And schools had Negro History Week one week a year.
We continued fighting harder and harder.
Finally, we got one month.
You know, nobody's going to give us everything at one time, right?
They dole it out little by little.
So we got that one month.
Shortest month of the year, right?
February 28 days, okay?
No coincidence.
But we accepted it for two reasons.
It was the birth month of two of our heroes, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
All right?
So we accepted that.
And then we stopped fighting.
And that was a mistake on our part.
We became complacent.
And now it's my belief that Black History Month has become detrimental to us, to all of us, white and black.
I'll tell you why.
Yes, we needed it for a certain period of time because we had nothing.
But here's the problem.
We only study black history in February.
And each February, we study the same half a dozen people.
Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and one or two other ones.
By the time we get through half a dozen, oh, our month is over.
We did our black thing.
Let's move on.
Yet, we study Benjamin Franklin, Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key, all year long.
We're constantly reinforcing what they did all year long.
We never forget who flew the kite, and the lightning hit the key, and we have electricity.
We all know it's Ben Franklin, all right?
But yet, if you ask some kid in June, say, who was Harriet Tubman?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember her, yeah.
She was that lady who refused to give up her seat on the bus.
They got confused with Rosa Parks because there's been no reinforcement since February.
And then next year, next February, it's the same half a dozen people.
All right?
So you're constantly—I'm not taking anything away from those people.
They were some of the greatest.
All right?
But you're constantly reinforcing that there were only six or seven black people in this whole country who ever did anything.
What about the guy who invented the traffic light?
What about the person who invented the ironing board and so many other black discoveries and inventions?
Oh, well, we didn't have time for that.
We only have one month.
Yeah, but you got time to talk about Ben Franklin all year long.
Women's History Month is March.
We need to get rid of that too.
Take these things out of those months and put them where they belong under the umbrella of American history and teach them all year long.
That way kids get accustomed to this and they learn and they have more respect for each other.
Look, I remember when I was a kid, Miss America Beauty Contest.
There were only two categories.
It was all white women.
Black women were not allowed to compete in Miss America.
All the judges were white males.
Two categories.
The evening gown, evening wear, and the swimsuit.
That was it.
Women were objectified.
They were sex objects.
You know, they didn't have talent.
They didn't need to write an essay or show what else they can do.
They just looked at and judged on that.
So, black women were deemed not beautiful enough to compete in Miss America.
Plus, they didn't want any white man judging a black woman in a bathing suit or whatever.
So, black women began having low self-esteem because they were told they were not as beautiful as these other women.
So what did we as black people do to elevate the esteem, self-esteem of black girls?
We created the Miss Black America beauty pageant to give them something to aspire to.
And that worked for a while.
Finally, finally, Miss America, the big one, came to its senses and opened its doors.
I don't know the exact year, but I guess it was back in the 70s sometime, opened its doors to all American women, regardless of their ethnicity, color, or whatever.
As long as they were American, they could compete.
And since that time, we've had more than one Miss America who's been black, starting with Vanessa Williams, and then Debbie Turner, and I think maybe one or two other ones since that time.
So now, because Miss America has come into the time, we can get rid of Miss Black America.
We don't need it anymore, right?
We got the main one.
When are we going to come to American history?
We need to get rid of Black History Month.
We just finished the first black American president.
What are we going to do with Obama?
Are we going to put him in the February box?
Because he's black.
Only talk about him in February.
Don't talk about him in March or September.
Because he's black history.
Put him in February.
Well, you know...
I'm at a loss for words, man.
It's crazy how we do this.
Listen, we claim to be the greatest nation on the face of this earth.
I have a problem with that.
And don't get me wrong.
I'm a patriot.
I love my country.
But I do have a problem with that statement.
And I'll say that perhaps we are the greatest nation on the face of this earth technologically.
After all, we put a man on the moon.
We invented the technology to carry that man to the moon safely and allow him to walk around, get back in his lunar module, and come back to Earth safely.
We invented that technology.
Not only that, when Neil Armstrong was up there walking around and made that famous one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind quote, We were able to talk with them live all the way from Earth, NASA headquarters, all the way to the moon, live via satellite radio phone.
We invented that technology, Americans.
Everybody you know has a cell phone.
Everybody you know has email.
Hit a few words, hit a few numbers, hit send.
You're talking to people.
Next door in Nevada or over in Africa, China, Australia, wherever you want to talk, anywhere on the face of this earth.
We invented that technology.
So how is it that we as Americans can talk to people as far away as the moon or anywhere on the face of this earth, yet so many of us have difficulty talking to the American who lives right next door because he or she is a different color, a different religion, a different ethnicity, a different persuasion, a different whatever?
It seems to me that before we can call ourselves the greatest, Our ideology needs to catch up to our technology.
And when we get ourselves up there, both of them up there, then we can truly brag about how great we are.
Because we are living in the 21st century.
We are living in space-age times, yet there's still so many of us thinking with Stone Age minds.
Well, it brings me back to what you were saying earlier, that the problem is education.
The problem is ignorance, right?
And the solution to education is ignorance.
And this is sort of the same thing when it comes to radicalizing young people online, right?
One of the reasons why that works at all is because these young people are susceptible to other ideas because their intelligence immune system is very low.
So these people are willing to help on minds and help point out these different things, these little telltale signs as to what to look for, you know, so parents can spot, oh, this doesn't sound right, blah, blah, blah.
See, that is for better, I mean, whether it's correct or not, that's apparently the people that are really worried about people being radicalized online, they're more concerned with that than anything else.
And that's what they call the browning of America.
And the white genocide.
And see, what they're doing is these groups are stepping up their recruitment efforts now.
Because one of the main problems in this country, one of the main concerns is illegal immigration.
So these groups are saying, hey, we're against illegal immigration too.
Come join us.
They're getting on a legitimate bandwagon.
But when they say illegal immigration, it's a code word.
It's a code word for people from South America, Mexico, West Africa, because there are plenty of people here in this country right now We're here from Canada.
You know, and so they go and join these groups, and the group doesn't do anything.
So then what happens?
They say, you know what?
If the Klan can't do it, if the NSM can't do it, I'll do it myself.
And that's when they walk into a synagogue.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Or into a black church.
Boom, boom, boom.
Or El Paso.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Okay?
These are called lone wolves.
Now, we have intelligence agencies or whatever that can infiltrate some of these groups and get in there and get all the stuff and foil those plots, you know, gather intelligence.
But you cannot infiltrate a lone wolf.
There's only one person.
And as we get closer and closer to 2042, unfortunately, we're going to see more and more of these lone wolves.
And that's what we have to watch out for.
So you notice every time one of these white supremacist types gets busted and they go and raid his home, what do they find?
A whole cache of automatic weapons and all that kind of stuff.
Well it seems that if you could explain to kids how people get radicalized, if you could explain to kids what happens online, how they draw you in, what's the appeal of being a part of a tribe, which is a big part of it, right?
Well, when I say churches, I mean religious institutions, which would include synagogues, etc.
And, you know, I hate to get down on the clergy, but I'm telling you, they have accountability that they're not accepting.
And don't get me wrong, I'm a Christian, all that kind of stuff, and I was a deacon in my church at one time.
But here's the thing.
Whether you're Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, whatever, you have some form of Sunday school.
And so you go down in the basement in your facility, in your church or temple or whatever, and your Sunday school lesson, when you're four or five years old, they teach you that we're all God's children.
God made a rainbow, right?
And we accept that at four or five years old.
And then as we grow older, we reach puberty, adolescence, whatever, we move upstairs to the big congregation.
Now we're sitting up there with the adults.
The clergy, the rabbi, the priest, the minister, the pastor, the reverend, whatever, no longer teaches that Sunday school lesson.
They stop saying upstairs, we're all God's children.
What do you think would happen if the reverend or the priest would say to the congregation one Sunday morning, hey folks, guess what?
It's okay for blacks and whites to marry.
It's okay for Jews to marry Catholics.
Half the congregation would get up and leave.
And they wouldn't be putting their money in the collection plate because they're not hearing what they want to hear, right?
And because it has not been continued.
That Sunday school lesson needs to be continued upstairs so adults feel, hey, you know, we're all a rainbow.
We're all God's children.
But the priest does not say that or the reverend does not say that anymore because he's afraid of walking on eggshells and stopping the flow of money coming in the tithes and offerings in that collection plate.
People would be changing churches or firing him, right?
And then your kid is, let's say I'm Catholic, and now I'm in 12th grade, and I'm going to the senior prom.
So my mom says, so, Darrell, who are you taking to the senior prom?
I say, I'm going to take Susan Goldberg.
Yeah, you know, Susan's a nice girl, but don't you think you should take a nice Catholic girl?
Well, yeah, Mom, but I thought we were all God's children.
If we are to believe in the concept of God, then we are to believe that God did not make any exceptions and buts and mistakes, et cetera, little loopholes.
A lot of atheists and agnostics have excellent morals.
A lot of them do.
They have churches called ethical societies.
And I've spoken, and many of them before, you know, they don't believe in God, which is not something that I advocate, but I'm saying that they know right from wrong.
And you find less controversy and racism and more acceptance in these places, because it's about ethics and morality, more so than division.
Why do you have a white Baptist church and a black Baptist church?
What's that all about?
A Baptist should be Baptist.
It's the same King James Bible.
You know?
And why aren't they preaching the same lesson in Sunday school that they preach upstairs?
They're not concerned about telling little four- and five-year-olds that we're all God's children, God made a rainbow.
You know why?
Because little four- and five-year-olds don't have any money.
So they're not getting any money in the collection plate there.
It doesn't matter.
It matters where the money is.
You say what you've got to say to get the amount of money that you need.
I don't go to church, so that's an alien concept to me, but it's sad if that's the lesson, if that's the way they're structuring their lessons in a church or a synagogue or a temple, that that's how they're doing it.
They're structuring their lessons to achieve more donations.
And what you're doing by your amazing accomplishments is showing that even in the most radicalized of people, the KKK and the National Socialist Movement, you're converting people.
Well, I'm going to hook you up with some friends of mine, like Jeff Scoop, who was the recent leader of the NSM, Arno Michaelis, who co-founded Life After Hate, and he spends his whole life dedicated to de-radicalizing people.
Well, I'm hoping that just hearing it from someone who's maybe struggling with that, maybe they live in a very tribal community or they're in some sort of a toxic environment, their family dragged them in, and they're really trying to figure out how long they can do this and how they can get out and what's the steps to get out.
There has to be—and here's another thing that I provide for these people when they come out.
I provide support because oftentimes, you know, these people, if they come from a family that belong to these groups, you know, and they decide to leave the group or whatever, you know, they still got their family or whatever.
But— If they come from a family that was not racist, for example, there may have been some dysfunction or they just read the wrong book or made friends with the wrong person and went down that rabbit hole or whatever, and they give an oath and they join these groups, the family disowns them.
and you see how crazy it was and you quit, you get out.
Well, now you're left out there swinging in the wind because your biological family still doesn't want you.
You have disgraced them.
Your old friends from high school found out you had gone down that road.
They don't want to associate with you because you have that stench, that stigma attached to you.
You may be an ex-Clan member, but that ex-Clan member will always precede your title.
You know, like, for example, David Duke.
um He belongs to all kinds of different white supremacist groups, but whenever you see him listed in the media, so it's ex-Klan leader David Duke, blah, blah, blah.
It's never just David Duke, that title ex-Klan leader.