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May 24, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:18:16
20210524_daryl-davis-on-getting-kkk-members-to-leave-the-kl
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Immersed in the Klan 00:01:50
All the enigma, we will be very up to the moment, and we will be able to get all the knowledge and the same knowledge.
Look at your forebearing up to the moment.
Hilstens, we will be able to get all the knowledge and the knowledge.
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show.
Today, Daryl Davis.
He is an RB musician.
Very successful, very well traveled.
He is a pro human activist.
This is a guy who's immersed himself in the Klan as a black man.
I use the term deprogramming Klansman.
He doesn't use that term, but you'll understand what I'm after there.
Over and over and over, he's been successful in convincing, showing people a different way of looking at race that leads them to leave the Klan.
I mean, hundreds.
When you hear what he's done, you're not going to believe it.
He's the author of a book called Clandestine with a K, KL, and Destine Relationships, a Black Man's Odyssey in the KKK.
And he's the host of a successful podcast called Changing Minds, the appropriately named Changing Minds, and star of the documentary Accidental Courtesy, Daryl Davis Race in America, which is well worth your time.
If you're sitting around one day and you know how you watch bad TV, find this instead Accidental Courtesy, Daryl Davis Race in America, because it sort of explains his journey.
And they've got all these Klansmen on there talking about Daryl and their own thoughts, and it's crazy stuff.
And he's been immersed in this whole thing since the time he was a very young child.
So you're going to love him and the way he looks at life and what he's done, his courage.
He's coming up in one second.
The Elvis Presley Connection 00:12:05
We're going to start kicking off a little bit of music.
And before we get to Daryl and his music and his thoughts on life, this.
I'm going back to the country.
Lord, that's where I belong.
When you wake up, say, girl.
This country, boy, we go home.
I'm gonna pack my clothes and I won't even say goodbye.
Honey, you know how I hate to see a city girl cry.
Yes, Daryl Davis, the one and only.
Talented in so many ways.
So glad to have you here.
Thank you, Miss Kelly.
Really appreciate it.
I'm excited.
And that was, that got us all.
Stomping our feet and sort of shaking our heads and ready for a great exchange.
Can we just start on the music?
Because I love your background and I can't believe you've actually played with Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis.
First of all, you don't seem old enough to have done all that.
Did you start playing in the cradle or what?
I wish.
No, I started after college.
Yeah, I was a late bloomer, but I didn't play with Elvis.
I saw him many times and I met him, but I played with his band after he died in some tribute shows.
But I worked with Chuck Berry for 32 years.
You know, I mean, originally as a kid, I always had in mind that I was either going to be a spy or a computer programmer.
And, you know, yeah, James Bond was my hero.
And back then, computers, you know, were as big as your office, you know, cafeteria or something.
Yeah.
And I knew, you know, they would get smaller in size and that's where the money was.
And each vocation was pulling at me in opposite directions with equal force.
So I couldn't go either way.
And then somehow I made a left turn.
Went to a concert.
I saw Chuck.
I saw Elvis.
I decided, you know, that's what I want to do.
So originally, I was self taught, taught myself how to play by ear.
And then I bought books, taught myself how to read music.
And I went and auditioned for college.
And by a stroke of luck, I was accepted and graduated four years later.
And here I am, a touring musician.
Wow.
How many instruments do you play?
Proficiently, piano.
I play some guitar and I sing.
Okay.
Yeah, I've seen you on the piano.
But it seems like most musicians who play piano can also do some guitar.
And they seem like easily transferable for some reason.
So, what can you just take us back to that?
Like in your movie, which I want to get to in a minute, but they talk about there's Somebody in there saying, you know, Elvis is the king of rock and roll.
Elvis invented rock and roll.
And you were like, are you serious?
And gave him a little lesson about Chuck Berry.
So, can you just take us back to that time and how music was evolving and what you saw?
Sure.
Well, you know, rock and roll evolved out of people like Chuck Berry taking elements of country, of blues, and boogie woogie and combining it and putting a backbeat to it.
Before Chuck Berry, there was no backbeat to the music, it was swung, swung, and shuffled.
And so, you know, Elvis came out, and back then, you know, white radio stations would not play black records, most of them.
There were a few that would.
And in order to sell records, people have to hear the records and they hear them on the radio.
And of course, back in the day, they had to leave their house, go to the record store and get it.
It wasn't like you just go online and download the song back then.
So it was very hard for black artists to make a lot of money because the radio stations.
We weren't playing their records, and the black radio stations did not have the wattage that the white stations did to broadcast all across the state and on into other states before the FCC put guidelines as to how much wattage they could use.
What are we talking here?
50s?
60s?
50s.
Yeah, the 50s at the birth of rock and roll.
And then white kids began gravitating towards that music.
They were tired of hearing, How much is that doggy in the window?
That their parents were listening to.
Exactly.
And they wanted to hear whop, bop, loo, bop, a lap, bam, boom, and the stuff that was happening on the other side of the railroad tracks.
So they gravitated that way.
Well, the powers that be decided to pull them back by putting in white artists playing those songs, singing those songs, like Pat Boone, for example, singing Fast Dom, yeah, singing Tutti Frutti and Blueberry Hill and all these great rock and roll hits in order to pull the white kids back.
But then along comes Elvis Presley.
And Elvis, you know, Pat, don't get me wrong, Pat Moon's a great balladeer, but he is not a rock and roll singer.
Elvis had it going on.
Yeah, Elvis had it going on.
He had everything.
And that's why he was so controversial back then.
Even the white parents that would hear him on the radio thought he was black because of the way he sounded.
And he was doing this black music.
So the DJ had to call him into the station and say, you know, so Elvis, you know, how old are you?
19, sir.
What high school do you go to, Elvis?
I go to Humes High School, sir.
Well, that right there told the parents that this man was white, because of course, back then, you know, schools were segregated, and Humes High School was the white school in Memphis, Tennessee.
So that kind of calmed parents down a little bit until they saw him on TV, wiggling his knees.
Right, right.
You know, and so.
And so.
Hips going.
Exactly.
And all of that came from Chuck Berry, from Little Richard, from Bo Diddley, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly, all these other great musicians.
We were able to popularize it, but they did not invent it.
And of course, once they figured out how much money Elvis generated from playing this music, once they hated him, now.
They're appointing him king of rock and roll and saying that he invented it.
Yeah, that's right.
But would you say then that he helped open the door in a way to these other guys becoming more popular because they weren't getting airplay prior to him?
Absolutely.
No question about it.
He popularized it more than anybody else.
I remember growing up in the 1970s and Elvis movies were everywhere, both before and after his alleged death.
I have to say, my friends who are conspiracy theorists about it.
You saw him in Burger King?
You know, there's been a couple randos.
You never know.
Hope Springs Eternal in Vegas many times.
And I mean, every little girl was in love with him because he was so good looking.
I mean, I speak pretty much of young, thin Elvis, but he was there was an appeal when he was older, too.
And, you know, it was just like between the movies and everything.
That's sort of how you got to know your parents' music, right?
In this 1970s, which is a great decade for music.
On television, you were seeing more of that genre and Jerry Lee Lewis.
I would say, even back then, though, not so much Chuck Berry.
Right.
I think it took a while for black music to catch up overall in the music industry in the mainstream.
Yeah.
And I mean, even later on than that, in the 80s, when MTV came out, they did not put black artists on there.
They only put one on there for a long time.
That was Michael Jackson.
Yeah.
I was going to say, Michael Jackson, who couldn't be avoided.
I mean, he was just one of the greatest talents we've ever had.
Right.
Indeed.
So, how did you do in the music scene?
Did you, in the early days, have any trouble getting booked?
Was race a Factor at all for you, or was it just all about the music?
If you were good, you got booked.
If you weren't, you didn't.
No, I mean, I got booked quite a bit.
But yes, race was definitely a factor.
You know, I remember going to a club and I went to see a country band.
And I came in there, you know, and they were playing and the people were dancing.
And I'd asked people, you know, if they would, you know, if I could dance with them.
And they were like, no, you know, they didn't want to dance with me.
Well, one of the people in the band recognized me and asked me on the break if I wanted to sit in.
I said, sure.
So I got up there and I played some country songs with them on the keyboard.
You know, the keyboard player stepped aside for a moment.
And when I came off, then everybody went to dance with me.
And the club owner came over to me and asked me, you know, if I had a band.
And I said, yeah.
And he said, you know, I'd like to book you.
And so he takes me to his office, puts out his calendar.
And back then, you know, we used to carry like little notebooks, you know, we didn't have cell phones with calendars on them and write down these dates.
And after he gives me several dates, you know, right on the spot, he says to me, do you have a mixed band?
Now, when he's, I'm a little naive, right?
So when he said that, I'm thinking, you know, is it male and female?
Like, you know, female vocalists, you know.
And I described, I said, no, you know, I got five guys, but I can bring in a female vocalist if you like.
He goes, no, no, no.
How many blacks, how many whites?
And I said, well, it varies depending upon who I hire for the night.
He goes, well, try to keep it, you know, more white or, you know, or mixed, you know, half and half.
Wait, what state was this in and what year was this?
We're talking Maryland.
Maryland, right outside of Washington, D.C.
And this was in 1982, I would say 1982.
And because he was afraid that his customers would not like, you know, a predominantly black band.
Now, back then, the Moose Lodge had a rule, it was a written rule.
No blacks were allowed in the Moose Lodge, not as guests, not as members, nothing.
And I was working with another band at the time before I had my own.
And they got booked into the Moose Lodge.
And so, about two weeks before the gig, The governor of the Moose approached the band leader or called him and said, Hey, you know, all my members know Daryl.
You know, they've seen him play before and they all like him.
But however, you know, we have a rule.
We can't allow him in here.
Can you bring a white piano player?
And the band leader said, No.
Where we go, Daryl goes.
So the Moose Lodge in Rockville, Maryland rented an outside facility.
Oh, no.
Yeah, just to have the band.
Now, I'll tell you a funny story.
So, you could get in so that you were there, but you weren't actually in the lodge.
Is that the thinking?
Precisely.
Precisely.
Oh, my God.
I mean, he was just following the rules, whatever.
So, we did the gig.
And then, oh, I don't know, maybe eight, 10 months later, the same band, we're doing the Elks Lodge.
And the Elks Lodge didn't care what color you were, they didn't have those rules.
But a lot of members of the Moose are also members of the Elks.
And so, a lot of those same people were there.
It was some kind of bowling league tournament for the Elks Lodge.
And we were on break.
And the governor of the moose walks over to me and he says, Hey, Darryl, can I talk to you for a second?
And I said, Sure.
And I just remained sitting in my chair and he kind of like stood there.
So it indicated to me he wouldn't talk to me in private.
So I got up and I walked with him and he apologized for what happened, you know, at the moose lodge.
He says, You know, but I'm working on it.
I'm going to get you in there.
And I'm thinking to myself, you know, I could care less about whether I get into the moose lodge or not.
You know, it's not going to make me or break me.
But the funny thing is, he didn't know at the time I was running around with his daughter.
Wait, this is a white man, and so he has no idea that you're dating his daughter?
Yeah.
I mean, I wasn't dating her exclusively, but you know, we were very good friends, used to hang out a lot.
That's spectacular.
I didn't even know there was a moose lodge.
I knew about the elk.
Why is everybody naming their lodges after Montana animals?
Defining Black and White 00:10:08
Like what's next?
Bighorn sheep lodge, the bear lodge.
Yeah, your guess is as good as mine.
I never heard of them.
So, you know, when I'm listening to you talk about this, one thing I'm taking away is I don't sense bitterness, and that's One of my main takeaways in watching Accidental Courtesy, I sense no bitterness.
And when I watch scenes in that movie in which people are talking to you, Klansmen, or even some of the fights you had with some BLM activists, I was getting angry.
I'm getting angry on your behalf.
You seem to wind up in that place.
How is that?
Like, are you just really good at controlling your anger, or does it not surge in you in the way it does in a lot of us?
Well, yes to both of those questions, but let me give you just a little bit of background.
You know, my parents are US Foreign Service, so I was an American Embassy brat.
And I'm 63 years old now.
I began traveling around the world at the age of three.
You go to a country, you're there for two years, you come back home here to the States with the State Department, and you're here for a few months, maybe a year, and then you're back overseas again for two years in another country, back and forth, back and forth.
I did that throughout my formative years.
My first exposure to school was at the age of three, you know, kindergarten, preschool, and then first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade.
And my class, we're talking the 1960s.
My classes were filled with kids from all over the world Nigerian, Italian, French, German, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, whoever had an embassy in those countries, all of their children went to the same school.
So to me, that was the norm.
That was my baseline, right?
If you were to open the door to my classroom, you would say, oh, you know, this looks like a United Nations of little kids, because that's exactly what it was.
But every time I'd come back home here to my own country, I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated.
Even though desegregation was passed by the Supreme Court.
In 1954, you know, it didn't just happen overnight.
Sometimes it took a decade or so for it to happen.
But anyway, so I was not accustomed to this separation of people.
You know, I don't know if you, because you're kind of young, I don't know.
Do you remember black and white TV?
Of course, yeah.
Okay.
We had it at my nana's house for a while.
Oh, there you go.
Growing up in the 70s, there was still a hangover when it came to the televisions.
It opened up a whole new dimension and widened your perspective when it went from black and white to color TV.
And it was great.
Well, my coming home from overseas back to this country was just the opposite.
It went from color to black and white.
Because we did not have the diversity in the classroom here in this country in the early 60s that I had overseas.
It was just black kids and white kids here, very few Hispanic, very few Asian kids in the classroom.
Today, you walk into a classroom, it's the United Nations again.
So I was living practically 10 years ahead of my time.
When I was overseas.
And even though we came from different countries, spoke different languages, looked different, we all got along.
We played together, worked together, had slumber parties together, all that kind of thing.
And so when I came back here and saw all this separation, I couldn't understand it because I knew it worked.
I knew it worked because I lived it, you know?
And so I think.
Integration.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I think, you know, that has a strong element of how I am.
You know, when you ask me, How do I remain calm and these kinds of things?
Because I know it works, and I realize many of the people that I'm talking to, whether they're BLM, whether they're Klan or neo Nazi, alt right, whatever, they have not had those experiences.
So they're only reacting to what they know.
It doesn't make me a better person because I've traveled more.
As a kid, I traveled around the world.
Now, as a musician, I travel around the world.
When you combine those two travels, childhood and adulthood, I've been to 57.
Countries on six continents.
I've played in 49 of our 50 states.
So I've experienced a multitude of ethnicities, colors of skin, ideologies, persuasions, religions, et cetera.
And all of that has upshaped who I've become.
And I know we can get along.
So when people have not experienced that, you know, they don't have that capacity to see it.
It doesn't make me a better person.
It just gives me a broader perspective.
And that's why I don't get angry for somebody not having what I've had.
Wow.
Well, I mean, we're going to have to talk more about how to control that because I would say, as an Irish woman, I don't like it.
You got that temper, huh?
I feel it, you know, and then somebody's going to get it.
And I just, yeah, but I admired how, in the face of someone insulting you, someone saying deeply racist things right to you, you just maintained your cool.
And it didn't even seem hard.
It seemed like it came naturally to you.
Well, you know, I know who I am.
If my parents were to say some of those things to me, perhaps I would, you know, take heed because, you know, they brought me into this world, they know me better than anybody else.
But somebody just walking in the room and seeing my black skin is going to call me lazy, criminal, and worthless, and whatever else.
You know, hurt people hurt people.
So somebody doing that is obviously very hurt themselves, and they want to reach out and hurt somebody else.
You know, misery loves company.
So I keep my emotions behind me.
I know who I am going into that room.
And if you don't know who you are before you go in, you got no business going in because they will tell you who you are, and you might leave there believing them.
You know, this is what's so frustrating about our society right now.
Extraordinary focus on race as the be all end all defining trait of all humans, and the teachings in schools that you are an oppressor if your skin is white, you are the oppressed if your skin is black, and locate yourself on the oppression matrix for all the white people.
It's like We're, of course, as you know, going away from the principle of try to be colorblind or don't make race the defining characteristic of your life.
Right.
You know, we should not make race the defining characteristic of anyone, you know, their whole life or any part of their life.
You know, we should strive to, as Martin Luther King said, you know, be judged on the content of our character and not the color of our skin.
And I think, you know, there are some schools that do that, others that don't do that.
And that's where.
You know, where the problem comes in.
Yes, you know, there is a lot of racism in this country.
There's no denying it, no turning a blind eye to it.
It's definitely here.
All right.
We've come a long ways, but we still have a very long ways to go.
And this is not the way to address it by making, you know, race what, first of all, I believe there's only one race, the human race.
And, you know, the races, black, white, Asian, et cetera, are man made constructs.
But we should not use that to define somebody's mental ability or their traits or profile them that way.
I think the vast majority of parents just don't want race to become such a huge focus.
They're worried about creating racism against their kids, in their kids, right?
It's just the messaging is very damaging.
Yeah, I agree with you.
But I think that, you know, demonizing people because of what happened, you know, hundreds of years ago is wrong.
You know, no one today is to blame for what happened long before they were even born, but it needs to be taught what did happen.
And what is still going on in our country so that it can be addressed.
We can't turn a blind eye to it.
Like, for example, you might remember the state of Texas, I understand some other states tried to remove the word slave from the history books and wanted to replace it with immigrant workers, was the term.
And there was a big time.
I don't remember that.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, look that up.
All the textbooks in Texas public schools were changing the term slavery to immigrant workers.
And it kicked up a storm, and they had to recall all those books and reprint them.
Okay, but let me ask you this because that's insanity.
And it's just factually inaccurate on top of that.
But I don't see that as a massive problem in terms of our textbooks.
What I see as a massive problem right now is this infiltration of critical race theory, where you've got schools, it used to be this sort of one off thing that was lived mainly in universities and obscure academic journals.
And now it's becoming the default ideology in our public schools and our private schools, in our universities, of course, in our corporations and so on.
And when you look at what they're actually teaching kids, it's downright disturbing and really divisive.
I'll just give you one example because this one I talked about on Bill Maher, but in Buffalo, New York, the public schools there, in kindergarten, the children are first being asked to compare their skin color with an arrangement of crayons.
This is from Chris Rufo's reporting.
An arrangement of crayons, and then they watch a video that dramatizes dead black children speaking to them from beyond the grave about the dangers of being killed by racist police and state sanctioned violence.
By fifth grade, students are taught that America has created a school to grave pipeline for black children, and that as adults, one million black people are locked in cages.
Now, to me, that's insanity.
You don't show videos like that to kindergartners and Just the messaging in general is us versus them.
It's pitting whites against blacks on the oppression matrix and on the, you know, the whites are the dominant culture that, you know, you have to learn how to be a white abolitionist if you really want to be an.
Joining the Cub Scouts 00:03:41
Ally to your black friends.
Meanwhile, they abolished the requirement to turn in homework on time in places like San Diego because they think homework on time is racist.
That's another place in San Diego.
Teachers are being taught whites are directly responsible for the plight of, quote, dark children.
In my school that I pulled my boys from, they were, the message was, and I quote, in every school where white children learn, there is a future killer cop.
This stuff is madness and it has to stop.
It's becoming widespread and widely accepted.
Yeah, I've heard that definition before as well.
And I've heard other definitions of critical race theory that seem to be somewhat along those lines, but just the opposite, where it's being supported by white supremacists or people of that mindset.
Well, they're two sides of the same coin.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So, how did Daryl get connected with the Klan?
How does one meet a Klansman and start exposing them to new ideas?
He spent his life doing it, so we'll find out right after this.
Can we talk about how you came to take this on?
Because I haven't known a lot of Clan D programmers in my time.
But that's what I think you are.
That's one of your many gifts.
It goes back to your ability to hold your temper, to talk to people, talk to anybody.
And you've devoted your life to affecting change, to finding common ground.
How did this first come about?
Okay, well, at the age of 10, I just returned home from overseas with my parents on one of their assignments.
And I was in an all white school with another black kid in second grade.
I was in fourth grade.
And so all of my friends were white in fourth grade.
And a lot of my guy friends had joined the Cub Scouts and they invited me to join.
This is 1968.
And so I joined the Cub Scouts.
And we had a parade in which I was the only black scout in this parade the Girl Scouts, Brownies, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4 H Club, et cetera.
And people were smiling and cheering us and waving.
Everything was going on fine until we got to a certain point.
On this parade route, when suddenly I was getting hit with bottles and soda pop cans and small rocks by just a small group of white spectators off to my right on the sidewalk.
And having never experienced this, I had no idea why they were doing this to me.
At first, I thought, oh, you know, those people over there don't like the scouts.
I didn't realize I was the only scout getting hit, right?
That's how naive I was.
But see, that comes from my growing up in that multicultural environment, right?
I didn't experience racism.
So, anyway, it wasn't until my den mother.
And my cub master and troop leader all came running over and huddled over me with their bodies and escorted me out of the danger.
And I kept saying, What did I do?
I didn't do anything to them.
And all they would do is shush me and rush me along and telling me everything's going to be okay.
So they never told me why this was happening.
And I had no clue.
And when I got home at the end of the parade and stuff, my mom and dad, who were not at the parade, they were putting band aids on me and asking me, How did I fall down and get all scraped up?
And 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.
Now, believe it or not, at the age of 10, I had never heard the word racism.
I mean, there was no reason for me to.
You know, that was not in my sphere.
And when they told me this, I did not.
Learning Man to Man 00:14:48
This is again a man who was born, what, 19, what year was it?
58.
I was born 58.
Okay.
Yeah.
So at a time when it was pretty rampant in the United States, especially, but as you point out, you were overseas.
Right.
And I was around people from all over the world who didn't engage in that kind of behavior.
And so now I understood that this phenomenon does exist.
But I didn't know why.
Why are people racist?
So I formed a question in my mind at that age of 10, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me?
And as a teenager and through my adolescent years, I began buying every book I could find on black supremacy, white supremacy, the KKK, the Nazis in Germany, the neo Nazis over here, trying to learn where does that come from?
You know, how do people go this way?
But it all talked about it, but they never answered my question.
So lo and behold, fast forward, I graduated college in 1980.
At the age of 22, and I began playing professionally and been doing it ever since.
Well, country music had made a resurgence.
There'd been a movie out with John Travolta called Urban Cowboy.
Oh, yes.
And Deborah Winger.
You're a real cowboy, aren't you?
Got my 10 gallon Stetson, right?
And they had a mechanical bull and all the lion dances.
So, you know, if you want to work in music, you know, that's what was happening.
So I joined a country band.
And let me tell you something country music and blues.
Is the exact same music.
They're kissing cousins, the same three chords.
You know, it's society that separates us.
So, anyway, I joined this country.
What are the chords?
What are the chords?
The one, the four, and the five chord.
I'm an inspiring guitar player, so I don't know.
I only know like A, B.
Okay.
So, if you, what chords do you know?
I'll tell you.
What chords do you know?
A, C, D, E, E minor, F. I'm working on stilts and terrible experiments.
All right.
So, pick a key, any key.
D.
I like D.
Okay.
So if you're in the key of D, the chords would be D, G, and A.
The one, the four, and the five.
Those are easy.
I'm writing this down D, G, A.
Okay.
I can play those.
And tell your teacher to teach you how to play a 12 bar blues.
Are you volunteering?
Because I don't have a teacher at the moment.
Could we say that?
I'll be glad to.
I'll be glad to.
But you know, Hank, of course, you know Hank Williams Sr.
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
He was the father of country music.
And did you know that he learned to play guitar?
From a black blues street guitar player named Rufus T. Tot Payne.
What?
No, I did not know that.
Okay, well, Hank was from Montgomery, Alabama, and Rufus T. Tot Payne was a black blues guitar player who would sit on the sidewalk with his guitar case open, and people would throw nickels and dimes in, and he played the guitar.
He could play the blues.
And Hank was very fascinated with him and would go there every day and hang around watching him play.
And he would bring T. Tot, which was his nickname, Bring him sandwiches in exchange for guitar lessons.
And even Hank Jr., his son, wrote a song called T Tot dedicated to Rufus T Tot Payne.
So it's no accident that these two genres bear a lot of similarity.
Exactly.
Exactly.
We all borrow from one another, but society is what separates us.
So anyway, I joined this already established country band in the area, and we played a place called the Silver Dollar Lounge up in Frederick, Maryland, which is about an hour and 20 minutes outside of D.C.
The Silver Dollar Lounge was known as an all white lounge, not meaning that Blacks could not go in, but Blacks did not go in.
And that was by their own volition because, you know, they did not feel welcome there.
And, you know, when you go somewhere where you're not, you know, where you're not welcome and alcohol is being served, it's not a good combination, right?
So here I was in this place.
It's like me at the NBC Christmas parties.
Well, yeah, I hear you.
Keep going.
So here I am in this place.
And, We just finished playing.
I'm the only black guy in the band, only black guy in the place.
And we just finished the first set and we're taking a break.
I'm following the band over to the band table and I feel somebody come up behind me and put their arm across my shoulder.
Now, I don't know anybody here, right?
So I turn around to see who's touching me.
It was this white guy, I don't know, 15, 18 years older than me, big smile on his face.
And he says, Man, I sure like your piano playing.
I said, Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And I shook his hand.
And then he says, You know, this is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.
Now, I was not offended, but I was rather surprised given his age being older than me.
He should know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis's piano style.
Right.
And I perceived.
Yeah.
And I told him, I said, look, you know, I got it from the same place Jerry Lee did, from black blues and boogie woogie piano players.
That's where rock and roll and rockabilly came from.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Jerry Lee invented that.
I had never seen no black man play like that, except for you.
He was so fascinated.
He wanted to invite me back to his table and buy me a drink.
I don't drink, but I went back to his table and had a cranberry juice.
He paid the waitress, then took his glass and he clinked my glass and cheered me and said, you know, this is the first time I was sat down and had a drink with a black man.
Now I'm totally mystified.
Like, how can this be?
Because in my years on this face of the earth, I had sat down literally with thousands of white people and had a meal, a beverage, a conversation.
And this guy had never done that.
So innocently, I asked him why.
He didn't answer me at first.
And I asked him again, and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and said, Tell him, tell him, tell him.
I said, Tell me, because I'm mystified.
And he looks at me, he says, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
I burst out laughing.
I burst out laughing because I didn't believe him.
Like I told you, I have all these books.
And in none of my books is to talk about how a Klansman will come up and embrace you if you're black and praise your talent and want to hang out and buy you a drink.
You know, it doesn't work that way.
So this guy had to be pulling my leg.
I'm laughing.
He goes inside his wallet, pulls out his Klan card, membership card, and hands it to me.
I looked at this thing.
I recognized the Ku Klux Klan emblem, 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 is for real.
So I stopped laughing.
I gave it back to him.
Now I'm wondering why I'm sitting at this table.
But he was very friendly.
Who was very friendly and very inquisitive.
I'd forgotten about him, a long time had passed.
And then it dawned on me Daryl, the answer to your question, how can you hate me when you don't even know me, that's been plaguing you since age 10, it fell right into your lap.
You didn't even realize it.
You know, who better to ask that question of than someone who would go so far as to join an organization that has over a hundred year history of practicing hating people who don't look like them and who don't believe as they believe?
Get back in contact with that guy.
And get them to hook you up with Klan leaders around the country or start here in Maryland, go up north, go down south, Midwest and West, and write a book about it.
Because no book had been written at that point in time by a Black author conducting in person interviews with the Klan.
So that's how that started.
And I'll tell you, I never set out to convert anybody.
When you see my name in the media, it will say, Black musician converts X number of KKK members or white supremacists or whatever.
No.
I did not convert anybody.
I didn't even convert one.
I am the impetus for over 200 KKK and white supremacist people to leave that ideology.
Yes, I influenced that, but I prefer to say that they converted themselves.
I gave them food for thought.
And the more I would talk with these people and have return visits, people began changing.
And lo and behold, one of them quit.
And I got his Robin Hood.
And then it happened again and again because I never thought anybody was going to quit.
As children, we all have heard.
A tiger does not change his stripes.
A leopard does not change his spots.
So, why would I think that a Klansman or Klanswoman would change their robe and hood?
In other words, change their ideology?
You were just seeking understanding.
Not precisely, precisely, exactly.
And uh, and when it started happening, I realized I had stumbled onto something and I was employing some principles that I had learned.
I wasn't doing it consciously, but more subconsciously.
You know, in all my travels around the world, um, no matter how far I've gone from this country, whether it's right next door to Canada or Mexico or halfway around the globe, no matter how different people may appear to me, they don't look like me, don't speak my language.
Don't worship as I do, or whatever, I always conclude the same thing when I return home.
Everybody I met was a human being.
And as such, we all want the same basic five things in our lives.
We all want to be loved.
We all want to be respected.
We want to be heard.
We want to be treated fairly.
And we want the same thing for our family as anybody else wants for their family.
And if we employ those five core values in any society or any culture we may find ourselves in, in which we are unfamiliar.
I will guarantee you that your navigation will be much more positive and much more smooth.
And I, you know, I, and that's what, you know, I'm going to write that down.
Absolutely.
And that's what I've been doing my whole life.
And perhaps it came from being the child of diplomats, you know, we were American diplomats overseas, because, you know, my dad's job was to foster better relations between foreign countries and our country.
You know, that was his job in the, you know, with the State Department.
And so I just naturally came by it, honestly.
Can we talk about a couple of the specific instances?
Because they're really extraordinary.
This guy, at one time, he was the Grand Dragon from Maryland, and he went to prison for four years for conspiring to bomb a synagogue in Baltimore.
And then while in prison, he ran the Klan through his Grand Claelith, which means like Vice Dragon.
I wrote him while he was in prison, and when he got out, we got together.
He was vehemently violent, anti Semitic, and racist.
Everything, the whole problem with the whole world were the Blacks and the Jews.
You know, and I listened to this hour after hour after hour of interviewing him.
But anyway, like I said, when you're in the Klan, you don't make money from being in the Klan.
If you're a leader, you might get a small stipend out of some of the dues, but not enough to pay your mortgage or your rent.
This particular guy that I'm telling you about, his day job was Baltimore City police officer.
And he went on to become one of my best friends.
And today, yeah.
Today, I even invited him to my wedding and he came.
Stop it.
And today, I'm serious.
I had clan people at my wedding.
I did.
Were they dressed?
Did they wear their robes?
No, no, no.
That would have been a sight.
But I'll tell you what, though, you'll love this next story.
But check this out.
So today, I own his Robin Hood and his police uniform because he got out of that through my influence.
He and I became the best of friends.
But now, if you remember, Four years ago, in two months, August, four years ago, Charlottesville, what happened down there.
There was a scene there where this imperial wizard in the Klan pointed a gun at a Black person's head who was wielding an improvised flamethrower and spraying this flame towards these Klansmen who were coming down the steps of this Confederate statue park.
And he pointed the gun at the guy's head and yelled a racial epithet.
And then lowered the gun and fired it, and the bullet went down into the gravel just less than two feet from the guy's feet.
And, you know, he went on, you know, he turned and went on, walked right past the cops who watched the whole thing go down and did nothing.
Anyway, I called him up and I said, Listen, man, you and I need to talk.
Not Klansman to black man, but man to man, American to American.
So he said, Okay.
So we set a date.
I drove an hour and a half to his house, unarmed, just myself.
I sat in his living room, all kinds of KKK stuff all over the walls, Confederate flags.
In fact, his couch where I was sitting was covered with a Confederate flag blanket.
So I sat there.
Yeah, I'll send you pictures.
I sat there listening to him and his Klans lady fiance give me a two hour lecture on American history from a Confederate perspective, of course, right?
So I just sat there and listened.
Some things he got right, some things he got wrong, but I didn't cut him off.
I just sat back and listened because I know everybody likes to be heard, so I let him be heard.
And then when he finished, it was my turn.
First thing I did was I corrected him on the stuff that he got wrong, but I also commended him on the stuff that he got right.
And so I decided, you know, listen, before I go into my little speech, here's what I want to do.
I want to invite you and the Klanslady here to come down to my house.
We'll set a date.
I will get tickets to this newly opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, just opened downtown in D.C. back then.
So I said, let's explore it together.
He said, okay.
We toured the museum.
And, you know, he learned a lot.
But you can't take it all in in two or three hours.
But he learned a lot.
And now, this is about a year later when we toured the museum.
The incident happened in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017.
And we toured this museum in late June of 2018.
So now I've been working with this guy for a year, right?
Getting together, talking with him, getting to know him, letting him get to know me, et cetera.
So he's going to marry that trans lady in a few weeks after the museum tour.
So they invite me to the wedding.
All right.
Me at a Klan wedding, right?
So it goes deeper than that.
The girl is from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
And her father was too ill to come up this way to do the fatherly duty by walking his daughter down the aisle and giving her away.
Perception Shifts at the Museum 00:07:30
Rather than ask some of their trusted Klansmen in that group.
Don't tell me.
Yes, you got it.
You got it.
They asked me.
And I said, okay.
So I walked, I did it.
I did it.
I can show you footage of it.
Oh my God.
Did you wear a bulletproof vest?
I mean, wouldn't you be surrounded by clansmen?
You weren't worried for your safety?
I was not because he's the imperial wizard.
So they have to abide by whatever he says.
It takes knowing who you are.
You know, keep your emotions behind you.
You know who you are.
You're not going to let anybody else define who you are.
Yeah.
But how do you get their mind to change?
I mean, is it a matter of just exposing them to An actual black person, you know, so they can sort of deprogram themselves when it comes to their beliefs?
Or is it a matter of convincing them that the foundation for their beliefs is wrong?
You don't want to attack their reality.
Okay.
Here's a very important thing one's perception is one's reality.
Whatever somebody perceives becomes their reality, whether it's real or not, it's their reality.
And you cannot change anybody's reality.
The more you try to change it, the more they will defend it.
So, what you want to do is you want to offer them a better perspective or better perception.
If they resonate with the perception that you offered them, they will change their own reality.
I'll give you an example.
Let's say, Let's say you said you had two boys, right?
Two boys and a girl.
Okay, so let's say one of your boys, when he was seven or eight years old, he goes to a magic show with his school or buddies or whatever.
And he comes home and tells you that this magician on stage asked for a female volunteer, and 50 women raised their hands, and he pointed to one and asked her to come up on stage.
She got up there, and then he put her in this long box with her feet sticking out this end and her head sticking out that end.
And then he closed the lid and he took a chainsaw and he cut that box in half.
This man cut that woman in half.
To that seven or eight year old son of yours, he saw a man cut a woman in half.
You cannot tell that boy what he saw and didn't see.
He knows that is his reality.
He saw that man cut that woman in half and then put her back together.
And there's nothing you can do to change what he saw, what he knows he saw.
All right.
So what you do is rather than attack his reality, Give him a better perception.
So, what you might say is something like, well, could it be possibly that the woman that he chose out of all the women raising their hand, maybe she works for him?
Maybe he planted her in that seat and then he changes his own reality because you've given him a better perception rather than.
So, he comes to the conclusion that he needs to change something.
You don't want to force change on somebody, you want to give them enough information so that they arrive at it.
And that will hold a lot better.
I mean, it's clearly working.
Can you tell us?
You went on Geraldo Rivera's show and met a 12 year old named Erin, who was there with her sister, mom, and dad, all in the KKK.
Erin loved the KKK, planned to join when she was older.
And after the show, you reached out to her.
Something extraordinary happened.
Tell us what happened and how it landed.
Well, her father was the Imperial Wizard of that particular clan group.
Like I said, every clan group, another Imperial Wizard.
Yeah, yeah.
Every clan group, every faction has an Imperial Wizard.
And a grand dragon and all that.
So she was on.
You can join the clan when you're 15, and then you can become a full fledged member by joining the clan youth corps.
So she and her 14 year old sister were on Geraldo, along with her father, the Imperial Wizard, and her mother.
And they all were in the clan.
And they were vehemently racist.
They were saying all kinds of stuff.
And I could tell that these girls were programmed.
And so I felt so bad like, how can you destroy some kid's life before they've even had a chance to live?
And so I went to meet them.
And I met them.
They were not warm and friendly, but they were cordial.
And then a few months later, I got into a fight with the Imperial Wizard.
I mean, a physical confrontation.
And the sheriff's deputies had to break it up.
It happened in the courthouse.
I was trying to leave.
I was watching the trial of two Klansmen who were charged with assault with intent to murder.
Shortly thereafter, the Imperial Wizard went to prison for 10 years, not because of what happened with me, but some other stupid stuff he was doing in the Klan.
And about three years after he went to prison, Jenny Jones TV show called me up and wanted to know if I would come on there.
I thought, you know what?
I'm going to be nice.
I'm going to reach out to that Klansman's wife, the guy who I beat up, the Imperial Wizard, and see if she wants to come on the show and debate me.
And now her husband, the Imperial Wizard, the guy who was on Geraldo, he's in prison in Marion, Illinois, which is one of the toughest federal prisons we have in our country.
And he's there for 10 years.
Now, I knew she hadn't seen him in three years since he'd left.
I called her and I had to track down a number on her.
I called her, and when I told her who I was, She cussed me up one side and down the other.
I just told her to shut up and listen to me for a second.
I said, Listen, I'm going out to Chicago.
I said, If you want to come on the show and debate me, I'll be happy to rent a car and drive you out to Marion and you can see your husband.
I know you haven't seen him in three years.
And I rented a car and I drove them all the way out to Marion.
And I sat in the parking lot.
They went in to visit with their father and husband, the mother's husband.
And when they came out, you know, they were all excited, all glad.
We, you know, drove all the way back to Chicago.
And that night, the mother, Tina was her name, stayed inside the hotel room and babysat the little ones.
And Aaron and I, the 15 year old, we went out on the town of Chicago, which is where I'm from originally.
And we went to a couple blues clubs, went to House of Blues.
Willie Nelson was playing there.
And I had dinner and got some souvenirs.
And we came back.
The next day, or the next morning, I should say, on the Jenny Jones show, we're in the studio.
The Indiana Klan group had come, that Imperial Wizard was there.
And so he's trying to, you know, rip me a new one.
And Tina, the Klan's lady, she's defending me.
Aaron and Tina are defending me.
So I'm sitting in the middle, and these two Klan groups are one's defending me, the other one's attacking me.
It was the craziest thing you've ever seen.
And so, because nobody in the Klan had done for them what I did for them, it took them out to see their husband and father.
And so on the flight back from O'Hare Airport, back at BWI, Aaron and Tina quit the clan.
And when they got home and told the older daughter about it, she quit.
Two years later, while still in prison, the Imperial Wizard quit.
So now the whole family got out of the clan.
Wow.
And Aaron eventually got married to.
And she married a black guy.
She married a black guy.
Quitting the Clan Together 00:04:11
And she said, you know, the worst form of teaching racism to your children.
is the worst form of child abuse.
That's what she said.
Up next, we're going to get into BLM and what Daryl thinks of the pushback he's gotten.
And they show in the film about Daryl's life from some BLM activists that he's fighting the wrong fight.
So you'll see, you'll hear for yourself some of that pushback and we'll talk about it.
And we're going to get into the police.
What does he think about the police and what have his experiences been?
That's coming up in one second.
But first, we're going to bring you a feature we have on the MK's show called You Can't Say That.
or think that or do that.
Oh, wait, this is America.
Today we go way back to college and see what's happening with my bad hair when I was dying at my, no, it's not about that.
It's not about me, but it is happening about what's happening on college campuses.
When it comes to language policing, I'm going to say some words and you try to think about why they have been deemed very offensive.
Okay, you ready?
Freshmen, upperclassmen.
Yeah, you got it.
You ready for this?
At Penn State University, the State Schools Senate Committee has approved the implementation of the quote, preferred name and gender identity policy, end quote.
Gone are the terms that can seem male centric and male specific.
Freshman, fresh man.
You see how evil it is?
We've been saying it all these years without realizing what sexist pigs we were.
It has to go.
Instead, Penn State will be calling incoming students.
Stale, gender neutral people.
No.
It will now be just first year.
First year.
That's it.
Don't say freshman.
Upperclassmen.
I mean, that one is riddled in problems.
It also has man in there.
That's just one of the problems.
One of the many, because of course, you've got upper.
Upper class.
That's not okay.
It can be interpreted, quote, as both sexist and classist.
And upperclassmen will now be upper division.
He's an upper divisioner, upper division nest.
But it's not just terms that have man in them, because the committee also was not happy with junior and senior.
Oh my God, you can find anything offensive.
I mean, there's just no limit to how they will find ways to offend themselves now on these campuses.
Why, you may ask?
Because, quote, terms such as junior and senior are parallel to Western male father-son naming conventions.
Junior and senior.
I see.
Okay.
Like, you know, John Jr.
This is what they wrote.
Now it's just third year and fourth year.
Okay.
So we've got first year.
What are we doing for second year?
Or do they have a problem with sophomore?
Because that's insulting too, right?
Like you're a moron.
Do we know, Steve?
What is it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're just going to call it second year.
Second year also.
So sophomore does not get to live on.
It's just first year, second year, third year, fourth year.
And instead of upperclassmen, upper division.
Oh my God.
When are they going to have time to study?
When are they going to have time to figure out bio?
Okay, and by the way, obviously he knew this one.
The terms such as he, him, his, and she, her, hers will now be replaced with they, them, theirs, or non gendered terms for all students, faculty, and other staff in course descriptions and program descriptions.
So you can't even say their favorite pronouns.
Now you can't even say them.
Everyone's got to be a they.
Right?
This language policing may feel new, but it's really not.
This actually happened at my own alma mater, Syracuse.
And way back in 2004, they used to call our school mascot the Orange Men and Syracuse Orange Women for the girls' teams.
Well, that had to go.
In 2004, the offensiveness of gendered orange people, long before Trump was running for office, was eliminated in favor of non-gendered athletic teams.
And from that moment forward, the sports teams were known as the Syracuse Orange.
Just orange, which I objected to because how is this scary?
Aren't you trying to be like the Warriors?
against the orange.
Removing Gendered Mascots 00:15:16
Who does that intimidate?
That's not scary.
You need to have some level of threat in your school mascot.
No, because whether it's gendered fruit or calling first year students freshmen, you can't say that.
Now back to our guest right after this.
Our listeners are going to be cheering this in the same way I am, but I thought it was a really interesting part of your movie.
You know, you're the star of Accidental Courtesy.
when they included pushback you got on doing this from some BLM activists.
And I'm going to play the clip, but I think, you know, just to summarize, they think you're putting your effort into the wrong community and in the wrong place.
I'm going to play a clip.
This is you go into sort of a bar, you meet with two BLM activists, Kwame Rose and Tariq Ture.
And then another man comes in after them who's a BLM.
He seems to be more of a BLM organizer.
But we have a clip of what happens between you and these two guys.
First, let's play it.
How many robes have you collected?
Roughly, I'd say maybe 25, 26.
How long have you been doing it for?
Since about 1990.
And you only got 26 robes?
You didn't say clan memorabilia.
I got tons of stuff.
So since 1990, which is longer than I've been alive, you've been trying to infiltrate the clan.
But what does that do for people?
Well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what it does, okay?
The state of Maryland had a large Klan organization.
When the imperial wizard, which means the national leader, turned in his rope to me, the Maryland Ku Klux Klan fell apart.
Today, there is no more Ku Klux Klan.
I beg to differ.
Let me finish.
Today, well, you can't because I got the facts.
Okay?
Today, there is no more Ku Klux Klan in the state of Maryland.
Infiltrating the Klan ain't freeing your people.
I disagree with you.
I don't see how.
What about Timothy McVeigh?
He's in jail.
Oh, he is?
Oh, he wasn't killed.
Something like that.
So what?
Obviously, you're very uneducated about it.
And you're uneducated about the reality of most of the people that look like you.
Every day on the hour, young black men and women are being smashed and kidnapped off the streets.
They're ruining people's lives, right?
Not rehabilitating them and sending them right back in the same neighborhoods that are already screwed up anyway.
So when you say, oh, well, we need to be worried about somebody blowing something up.
No, somebody's getting locked up right now that's 16 years old, that never may see the light of day again just because they look like my skin or Kwame skin or your skin for that matter.
So I'm talking about the energy that you're putting into all them years.
That's a whole lot of years to be doing that, to be studying.
It's not like a fetish.
Be friending a white person who doesn't have to go through the same struggles as you, me, the son in the barbershop, or that father, that's not an accomplishment.
That's a new friend.
You ain't doing nothing but collecting something that's going to build your own credibility.
You're nothing but a pimp in a pulpit.
And you're nothing but ignorant.
Very powerful.
Very, very good choice, I have to say, by the producers, the director, and yourself to leave that in, to do it in the first place, and to leave it in.
Because it's important to hear, like, how you were.
Right, actively involved in today's struggle, would view this.
And I will say to me as a viewer, it was the one part of the movie where you looked sad.
To me, you looked a little regretful.
You know, I just, it didn't seem like in the moment you guys were able to connect.
And these guys who are out there on the street doing the marching and so on seemed to be saying, you're wasting your time, you're out of it, and deprogramming or whatever, changing the thinking of KKK members.
Means nothing.
You're in the wrong fight.
What were you feeling and what was your reaction?
Okay, so that scene that you saw, you saw about eight, almost nine minutes in the movie.
And yes, I want to leave that in because I want to show nobody has a monopoly on racism or ignorance.
It has to be addressed 360 degrees all the way around with everybody.
So that's why we left it in.
And believe it or not, that came out in 2016.
And so, of course, it made the film festival circuit.
And there was one film festival that refused to show it because of that scene.
They thought it was staged.
It was not staged.
That scene, that eight or nine minute scene that you saw in the movie, it went on for about an hour and it almost culminated in physical violence.
That's how passionate some people were about it.
Well, yeah, because the next guy came in, he refused to shake your hand.
He went off.
He was like, You could have been doing work in the Black community all this time.
Where were you when we marched with the Klan?
Who gives a shit?
You hate yourself?
It got very feisty after that.
Well, now here's the thing about a year later, They reached out to me and they had been seeing me in interviews, this, that, the other, and they understood a little bit more about what I was doing and they wanted to get together and have dinner.
So we got together.
Kwame is one who actually reached out to me.
Why does this not surprise me, Daryl?
This does not surprise me.
But what about the point that they were trying to raise?
I mean, how do you why does it matter?
Why does it matter?
It's a moot point, okay?
Because listen, racism is a multifaceted issue.
Problem and it has to be addressed on every front.
What they are doing is they are fighting the systemic end of it, which is fine.
You know, that needs to be done.
All right.
I am dealing more with individuals.
I believe individuals are behind the system because the system does not run by itself.
It's put together by individuals who program the system and make it systemic.
So, when you put somebody, if you have a racist boss, then everything that trickles down is going to reflect that.
So, when you get somebody else in the top position, you vote him in or elect him in or whatever, then that changes what happens down below.
So, I work with the individuals, they work with the systemic.
But the important thing is that.
We need to work together.
What about somebody who says what you're doing is teaspoons in the ocean, you know, taking out one person at a time?
Well, yeah, you know, anytime you change one person, it changes a generation.
You know, if you could change one police officer, that would help because he might help change the culture of another one.
You know, so you're not going to change the whole department.
You know, what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd reflected on the whole department.
Okay.
But had somebody tried to address Derek Chauvin, who already had 18 complaints against him, maybe if one of those complaints had been addressed instead of ignored, George Floyd might still be alive.
So, you know, one person can make a difference.
Suppose Dylan Roof was one of the people that I sat down and talked with before the Charleston, South Carolina incident.
Who knows, right?
So, every little dent helps.
So, there are those who appreciate what I do, and then there are those who want to rip me a new one.
Can I just round back and say, I see the news media taking a tape and putting it on loop and leading people to believe, like that one guy said to you in that clip, every minute black men are being killed by police in this country.
It isn't true.
And I know that you're an honest broker on this because I saw you've interviewed cops trying to get to the bottom of what the problem actually looks like.
And I respect what you've been doing.
But I think we have to be honest about what the problem really is.
And the problem is.
Is not that black men are getting killed every minute.
And certainly not even when it comes to unarmed shootings of police by black men.
In 2019, it was 13.
In 2020, it was 18.
Out of 10 million arrests, 300 million contacts between police and people out there.
So it's, you know, your chances of being killed by a police officer as an unarmed black man are infinitesimal if you sort of look at, you know, the number of contacts that police have with individuals out there.
No, I hear exactly what you're saying.
Now, there is a lot of racism on many police forces, even right here in affluent Montgomery County, where I live, Montgomery County, Maryland.
We see incidents of it.
I've been a victim of it before.
And I'm not a criminal.
I'm not out there dealing drugs or shooting people or committing whatever transgressions against the law.
But I've been victimized by racist comps.
And I have filed 11.
Complaints with internal affairs against the police, and only one of them was sustained.
Like, what kind of things have happened to you?
I've been pulled out of my vehicle, had my vehicle searched for no reason because I had dark windows on my van.
I'm a band, and all my band guys are in the band.
You know, they're in the van, and they make us wait while they call the canine unit, and we all have to get out and let the dog run through the van, sniff up and down the seats, and sniff through our amplifiers and drum kit.
And my keyboard looking for, and then they don't find any.
And then they say, oh, you know, we're just conducting a training for the dog.
No, you don't conduct training for the dog on civilians on the highway.
You know, things like that.
Meanwhile, if they only knew, all you do is cranberry juice.
They're looking at the wrong tree.
My wife is white.
And one time we're going to the movies, just a few blocks from the house.
We were out and get pulled over because she's in the car.
She's in the car.
That's it.
And so, you know, asked for my license registration, so on and so on.
And the guy tried to tell me that I crossed the line, the double yellow line.
And he just wanted to make sure I wasn't drunk because he didn't find anything on my license.
You know, when he went back to his car and got on his computer.
So now he has to make up an excuse.
And I said, No, I didn't cross the line.
He goes, Yeah, yeah, you did.
I'm just checking you.
And then he leans down, looks across me over at her and says, Ma'am, are you OK?
What's that about?
You know, so before she could answer, I turned back to him and said, Yes, my wife's fine.
How's your wife this evening?
Oh, gosh.
See, this is now like you're getting to it, right?
Because I know.
I know just from speaking in particular to black male friends that they do get pulled over.
Their experience of being pulled over, of being harassed, of being mistreated by police, you can't compare it to what somebody like me experienced.
I have an experience.
I've had a couple of experiences with cops, some of which have been very negative, right?
But also some very positive.
But it just doesn't compare to the average story of a black man in America.
And I recognize that.
I think where we diverge, you know, I and Black Lives Matter and the facts and Black Lives Matter messaging is on shootings, on killings.
Which has become the narrative.
They overstate their case to their detriment because the numbers are what the numbers are.
It's fit.
You can, you can know it.
Now, I'm not saying the numbers are perfect.
We can do better in terms of our national database and reporting all this stuff, but there's not some epidemic.
It's not happening every minute.
And whites are getting killed too, at in bigger numbers.
And, you know, for every George Floyd, there's a Tony Timpo where the same thing happened.
It doesn't get the media coverage.
And so the narrative gets corrupted when I think we should be talking about what about the things that happened prior to the shootings, right?
Like, what about.
I don't know how to describe it, lower end harassment, less than death harassment or prejudice or encounters between blacks and cops.
And let's be open about the crime rate.
And how do we get that down so that interactions are less and so that profiling happens less so that when a police officer sees a black man in the city, he doesn't have an instant reaction of that's the group that commits crime.
Yeah, but it's also, you know, Dylan Ruth got to go to Burger King.
Yes.
But they said they were trying to calm him down.
I mean, this is a massive break.
I'm just saying, this is what they said.
I'm not going to defend Dylan Roof, but this is a.
They said he was, he surrendered calmly and they were basically trying to keep him calm and get him, you know, I mean, Dylan Roof wasn't going to be facing a good future.
Everybody knew that.
But you have to admit that nine times out of 10, where the serious problems happen, where the shootings or the killings happen, it's where a defendant of whatever color is resisting arrest, which, I mean, I will say.
I disagree with that.
I disagree with that.
Yeah.
Because I've experienced it.
I've been there.
No, I'm talking about killings.
I'm talking about killings.
Not harassment.
I can tell you a situation that I pulled up on one time where a cop had a gun pointed at someone.
And had I not been there while with this lady looking at him, that guy would have been shot and killed in the middle of the night on my way home from a gig.
The fact that I was there and I was witnessing.
Was what caused that cop to put that gun down?
I mean, I don't doubt that.
And I don't doubt that there are bad cops.
And I hate having to be in the position of defending police officers because they really can get drunk on their own power and be absolute pricks.
I mean, I think most Americans have experienced that, but especially Black America.
I am a supporter of law enforcement.
My father was one of the first black Secret Service agents in this country.
My dad wanted to be an FBI agent.
And J. Edgar Hoover was a racist, among other things, and a male chauvinist, among other things.
And he was not hiring any blacks or any women.
So my dad went to the Secret Service, which was run at the time by a fellow named Harry Anslinger.
And Harry Anslinger hired five blacks for the first time, all at the same time, five black men.
And my dad was one of those five black men.
And he worked his way up, became as high as they would let a black person go.
I have a lot of respect for law enforcement, but I also listen, the problem, you know, part of the problem is this there are more bad apples in the police department than there are good apples.
And let me explain this to you.
We all know what a bad cop will do.
A good cop will not do those things, but the good cop will turn a blind eye and not snitch on the bad cop.
The good cop will not participate in bribes or brutality or whatever, but he will not tell on what he witnessed.
That's called the blue coat of silence or the thin blue wall.
Exactly.
Okay.
Now, the third category is the minority category.
And I don't mean minority in terms of skin color, I'm talking about in terms of numbers.
That is the honest cop.
An honest cop will not participate in those things, but the honest cop will tell.
Honest Cops vs Bullies 00:05:42
And as a result of the honest cop whistleblowing or whatever, He or she endangers their own personal safety from their fellow officers.
Because what happens is nobody likes to snitch.
If you're in the mafia and you snitch, you know what happens, right?
Same thing with the cops.
If you snitch on your fellow officers, it will leak down to you.
And what happens is let's say you're an honest cop and now you got a call, you had to go investigate something, and you get there and people are shooting at you, you get on your radio for backup.
Well, of course, your name goes across the air or your number or whatever.
And the other police officers in the area, they know you're a snitch and they hear your name coming, they're not going to come back you up.
Or if they come, they're going to come very slowly.
In other words, they're going to endanger your life.
You remember Frank Serpico?
I understand.
Yeah, I know.
But I understand there are risks to turning against your own, quote, gang, police officer or otherwise.
But I would say, and even though a lot of them can be like bouncers, you know, on a power trip and out to sort of exercise it.
And they're dangerous.
But I have to say a word in their defense because my brother is a police officer.
He was a lieutenant in Albany, New York.
And I got to know plenty of police officers through his experience, and I know him.
And this is an honorable group.
He is honorable and spent his life helping people in the inner city in Albany in really, really dangerous situations, never hurt anybody.
In fact, he was hurt many times and never became.
Sullen, racist, bitter, just kept getting back out there and doing it and trying to improve the community.
And I hate when they get demonized writ large because I think of Paul and I think about his colleagues and I think of how the risks they take every day and how dangerous policing is.
And I just, I think it's really unfair the narrative that goes around about them.
I don't believe that there are more bad cops than good cops.
I think it's exactly the opposite.
I don't know if I'd use the phrase bad apples, but I think we're, We're being really tough on these guys who do a really dangerous job and at great risk to themselves, keep many black people, black women, black children safe in cities where black men drive up the crime rate and nobody else will protect them.
Okay, so let me say this.
I still say there are more bad cops than good cops, but.
I'm not doubting you about your brother.
Your brother is one of the honest cops.
He's an honest cop.
And there are honest cops out there.
I'm not painting a broad brush across the department.
But here's the problem.
So, a good cop who turns a blind eye trying to uphold the blue wall, turns a blind eye on one of his colleagues who's beating the crap out of somebody or shooting somebody or planting a gun beside somebody and then shooting him say, the guy pulled a gun on me or whatever, or stealing drugs or stealing money or whatever he does.
When that good cop turns that blind eye, that makes him complicit.
Here is the solution a couple things.
One, we need some kind of mechanism where good cops, because most people don't go join the police in order to go out and do bad things.
They want to help the society.
Yes, there are those who are bullies with badges.
I went to school with people who've become cops.
If they were goody two shoes in school, they're great cops out here on the street.
If they were bullies at my school, they're bullies with badges now.
The majority of people join the force because they want to do right.
They want to solve crime.
They want to protect the puppet, et cetera.
I got that.
But when they get caught up in, you know, they have to turn a blind eye if their partner does something stupid, they need a mechanism by which they can report it anonymously, sort of like we can report tips, you know, so that way they don't have any ramifications.
Because when you go directly to the brass, the brass is what they call the higher ups, right?
And you report on Officer so and so down on the street.
Believe it or not, the brass is going to leak that.
And word will come out that you told.
And the reason the brass does that is because back when they were on patrol, they were doing the same crap.
And it doesn't reflect well on them to have a department of bullies.
Exactly.
So these good cops need a mechanism in which they are protected from their own.
And the other thing that they need is they need a national registry.
For bad cops, for cops who've been convicted or terminated for whatever.
You can't pass the trash.
You can't pass the trash because just like these bad priests, they get moved from parish to parish.
It's the same thing with cops.
There is no national registry.
You have a national registry for child abusers.
You abuse some kid in New York, you can't go get a gig out in California at some daycare center because your name is on that national registry.
So we need the same kind of thing for cops because they continue that behavior.
If they've already been convicted, that's all they know.
I like both of those.
I like anonymous.
I mean, I've been saying in the schools right now, the parents who object to these insane teachings, some of which I mentioned earlier, they need to be given an anonymous way of reporting it too.
Because when it comes to saying, I don't want that, people are so paranoid in this environment to speak out against something that they are labeling anti racism that they keep silent at their children's peril.
And not everybody's like a loudmouth.
Building a Fair Foundation 00:03:02
Like some one half of this conversation.
And they don't want to do it.
So, all right, let me switch gears and just end it with this because I have to ask you about FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.
You are on the advisory board.
I, too, am there with some great, great people people I love and admire and respect.
John McWhorter was just on the show, Glenn Lowry, I could go on.
So, why did you agree to do that?
And what do you think?
Why do you think this is a good organization that people should?
What do you like about their mission?
Well, FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, I think is an excellent organization because, I mean, they're trying to promote equality and fairness that treats people as individuals rather than just some token of a racial group or something.
And I'm all about fairness.
I'm all about treating people equally.
And there needs to be more groups like this or patterned after this to do that.
And when Brian Bartening contacted me about it, and I had a long conversation with him on the phone as to what his mission was, what he hoped to do, it all lined up with what I'm trying to do out here.
And so I said, hey, let's do this together.
Daryl Davis, what a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
I really, really appreciate it.
Hope we can call this part one and do part two some other time.
Yes, you're on.
It's a done deal.
All right.
And call me for those guitar lessons.
Yeah, I will.
Don't say if you don't mean it.
Okay.
Don't miss the show on Wednesday because we are going to tackle the latest in all the COVID nonsense and the interminable masks despite being vaccinated, despite the Risk of catching it being exposed is very, very low in schools.
What's happening with our children who were hanging out to dry?
They have to be a mask forever.
Basically, every child under the age of 12 is going to have to be in a mask forever if we let these lunatics get their way and don't start pushing back.
And you will too, by the way.
Your vaccine passport is coming.
Already the EU is saying, yeah, come on, come on over.
Just as long as you can prove you've been vaccinated.
It's the camel's nose and the camel's coming under the tent and we got to talk about it.
So we will.
That's on Wednesday.
Don't miss that show.
In the meantime see you then.
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
The Megyn Kelly Show is a devil-may-care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.
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