The Gospel According to Daryl Davis
What can we learn about true progress in 2022 from the Black man who convinced KKK members to turn in their robes and hoods.
What would you do if you were a black musician waiting for his band to take the stage in a bar full of white folks, and you encounter an awkward white dude who says he’s never talked to a black man before and that he’s a grand dragon in the Ku Klux Klan?
I’m pretty a lot of people would say you’d be within your rights to tell him where to stick his hood and robe, and if this would incite a riot, so be it.
But this is not what Daryl Davis did many years ago. Taken aback as he was, he engaged the white man in conversation. What ensued is perhaps the most unlikely turn of events in the history of human relationships: they became friends. They obviously disagreed massively on core beliefs, but they were somehow able to discuss their life experiences and perceptions of reality that led each to stress diametrically opposed facts and opinions.
For a while, the white man did not denounce his beliefs, and there would be Daryl at Klan rallies, not buying what the KKK was selling while somehow showing everyone in attendance he was not afraid. More than that, he was willing to converse with anyone who wanted to talk.
Eventually the white man left the Klan and handed his hood and robe over to Daryl as a sign to the world that Daryl was a main reason he changed his ways. He learned, you see. He progressed in his thinking. The truth, you could say, set the white man free.
This strange story showed the world that in the face of hate aimed directly at people like you, it is you who has the power to stand strong, to not back down, but also to not give in to fear, to not let fear turn into hate, to not let hate turn into destruction, as Daryl would say. And you can hear Daryl say a lot, if you’re interested. He’s given many interviews and talks. You can find them easily on the internets. Long, strange story short, Daryl Davis wound up convincing about 200 KKK members to turn in their robes.
So, is Daryl Davis a saint? Maybe so. Is his model repeatable? He thinks so, and he asks people to consider it when he says, “I’m just a musician; if I can do this, so can you.”
Yet, my point here is not that we all need to become Daryl Davis clones. My point is not even that we engage KKK members in conversation, thinking it’s possible to cure all of these people of their despicable thoughts and actions. I am not quite that naïve. But what about engaging people who are not so extreme in their thinking? Maybe you think they are extreme, and so your first action is to categorize them into, say, a bucket of deplorableness or radical leftism. But what if such a first thought is a bit presumptuous or, say, based in fear and loathing when what is called for is a something else?
The first thing Daryl did is keep his mind closed to the obvious stupidity of white racial superiority while simultaneously keeping his heart open to that white dude’s humanity. Daryl was so strong in his beliefs and so confident in his balanced personality that he was able and willing to talk to someone who seemed to hate him based on the most flimsy of hurtful nonsense.
Daryl possessed the internal power to calmly listen to try to understand and a curiosity to find out how someone could hate him without ever having met him.
This kind of power earned Daryl respect. And the respect, in turn, earned Daryl time to show that he was simply a human being who was far from inferior to anyone. Without knowing it, really, Daryl’s approach sucked prejudice out of a KKK grand dragon like poison from a wounded branch on the tree of humanity. I don’t know this white man’s heart years later, but the man left the KKK and so did 200 others. So, to me, it seems Daryl did not waste his time.
What if we were strong in our ideals but open in our hearts in our interactions with ordinary people? What if we didn’t let media pundits and podcasters and think tank ideologues and government bureaucrats and writers at well-designed websites convince us that hate, vitriol, and mockery should be our first resorts, always?
Daryl Davis did not let himself get sucked into fear and hate even though he had every right to. Instead, Daryl gave himself up to a process he was not sure would work. That’s called faith, by the way. He chose human connection over the obvious differences set plainly before him. That’s called “possessing a pure, kindly, and radiant heart,” FYI.
I think we all know it’s much easier to preach to our choir of likeminded friends on vapid social media platforms than it is to have real life in-person conversations with people, in general but especially if you don’t see eye to eye on a few things.
It’s much easier to pinpoint a person’s belief or opinion as “wrong,” categorize that person as a monster or as a perpetrator of misinformation, and then discount that person or try to remove that person’s right to express themself. You might convince yourself this is justice and the route toward progress or a more perfect union. It is not. It stunts the true growth humanity desperately needs, a growth based on human interaction and true understanding.
The reason our current approach of hate-as-a-first-resort is a slippery slope should be obvious to any thoughtful person, but apparently it is not so obvious. So here’s the deal: who gets to decide what’s wrong and what’s right on every subject in the public sphere? The answer in the United States has always been: all of us.
We get to hash things out, say all kinds of things based on all kinds of thoughts, and then come to better understandings of many facets of society. We self-correct. We change our minds. We help others see things they never understood or experienced. We progress. We do this through self-expression and the free exchange of ideas.
But lately we seem less inclined to engage in this. We seem too keen on letting our sensitive hearts overtake our ability to be strong in the face of even the most tepid of opinions, let alone what Daryl Davis faced. And so we become less able to talk things through. We’re way more comfortable declaring someone wrong or offensive or worthy of scorn for all kinds of reasons mostly based in fear or some ridiculous sense of “my truth.”
There is no such thing as “my truth” or “your truth.” There is only one truth; everything else is our perception of reality, which is a very very very different animal.
Daryl aligned himself with The True Path Toward Unity, a path toward deeper understanding, justice and progress. I think his example would be a good thing for Americans to ponder right now. I have. But what do I know? I’ve only studied at the knee of the Son of God.
I wish you well, as always, Americans.
Mark, of Bethlehem