Daryl Davis Breaksdown His Technique for Talking to Klan Members

Now Darryl, I want to talk to you about your personal experience on minds with this, with what you do, what you're known for. Have you had interactions with people on minds that have been favorable, that if you've kind of pushed people into a... I've had a few and I've had, you know, my share of detractors. Some people think, you know, what I'm doing is totally wrong and don't get me or whatever. But yeah, I've had interactions with some people. When you say, like people have said, it's totally wrong, like what kind of criticisms do they have for that? It depends on where they're coming from. Some people think, it's not my job to teach white people how to treat us. Us mean black people. Others think it's ridiculous to sit down with a white supremacist. Why would you waste your time? You know, those people can't change. But would you point to your success ratio? Because it's pretty amazing. Oh yeah, I point to that. You know, but a lot of people, you know, they don't see that. Because they would not tolerate the time to sit down and have somebody tell them some nonsense that Jews are the child of the devil or, you know, some crazy things like that. I will sit and listen to that and I will put up with it. Because in order for me to speak my mind, I have to listen to somebody else's. Yes. Right? So they're not willing to put in that time. I am. Yeah. And so when... how do you have the time to do this? This is what I do. You know, in between my music gigs. Yeah. But I mean, like, that's... what kind of commitment are you talking about? Like, how much time do you spend doing this? A lot. I mean, it's my life now. How many like email dialogues? Oh God, I get emails all the time. I get emails from people I don't even know. I even get emails from people who've seen me on podcasts or on TV shows. These are white supremacists, Klansmen, whatever. And say, you know, you made some sense in it. Would you like my robe? I've even gotten robes and goods in the mail from people I don't even know. Yes. Yeah. I think there's a lot of sad people that just need a group of people to belong to. And they'll decide that what these people are saying makes sense because at least they'll be a part of it. Let me explain something to you. One's perception... as you already know, one's perception is one's reality. Okay? You cannot change anybody's reality. If you try to change their reality, you're going to get pushback. Because they only know what they know. Whether it's real or not, it's their reality. So what you want to do is you want to offer them a better alternative perception. And if they resonate with your perception, then they will change their own reality. Because their perception becomes their reality. Just a quick example. Let's say you got a seven or eight year old brother, right? And he goes to a magic show with his buddies. And he comes back and tells you, Joe, you know, this magician, he asked for a female volunteer and 50 women raised their hand. He picked up this one, come up on stage. He told her to climb into this long box and stick her feet out that hole and put her head out this hole. Then he closed the lid, told her to wiggle her feet. And she kicked her legs and they took a chainsaw and cut that box in half. He cut that woman in half. And you're like, it didn't really happen like that. Yes, I did. I was there. You weren't even there. I saw it with my own eyes. You are challenging his reality. He knows what he saw. And that magician cut that woman in half. And then to make it even more obvious to you, he tells you that the magician, after you cut the box in half, took the half with the legs sticking out and moved it over here to stage right and the half with the head over here to stage left. And then he went over there and talked to the head of the woman and she talked back to him. And then he brought the two halves back together, opened the box and out popped the woman full form, no blood. He cut her in half and he put it back together. You're saying it was just an illusion. No, it wasn't. I saw my own eyes. I was there. You weren't even there. So you're again, you're attacking his reality. He's going to resist. He's going to fight you. All right. So what you do is you offer him a better perception. You say, hey, listen, I hear what you're saying. But could it be possible that just maybe out of those 50 women that raise their hands and he picked one, maybe she works for him. Maybe he planted her in the audience. She knows the tricks. She travels to every show around the country with them. And when she gets in the box, there's a pair of mannequin legs laying on the floor of the box that are wearing the same stockings and same shoes that she has on. She picks them up, she doesn't mark the hole. When he says move your feet, she shakes those things and then she brings her own legs up under her chest. So her whole body is on that half of the box. So the saw doesn't even touch her. And obviously when he separates the two halves, the feet are over there and now she can't move them. So he has to distract your attention by going over here. So you're not looking at those feet. And he's talking to the head and she's talking back. Of course, when he brings them back together, she pulls the dummy legs, leaves them on the floor of the box, she climbs out. And then your brother says, hmm, you know, I guess that would be the only way that would work. You've offered him a better perception. And that perception then becomes his reality. So don't attack somebody's reality, regardless of what it is. Even if you know it to be false, give them a better perception and allow them to resonate with it. Because it's always better when somebody comes to the conclusion, I've been wrong. Maybe this is something I need to think about. Yeah, this will work. It's a perfect example of not silencing people's ideas, but giving them better ideas. And this is what the answer to censorship has been. Exactly. And, you know, so Darryl always talks about how much he listens when he starts the dialogue and doesn't even try to push ideas at the people that he's engaging with, different extremists or whatnot. Would you agree with that statement? Absolutely. And let me just give you an example of that. OK, so I'm interviewing a Klan leader, white supremacist, right? And I ask, you know, how can you hate me? You don't even know me. You know, all you see is this. Come in my room five minutes ago and you've already determined, you know, whatever you determine. Well, Mr. Davis, you know, black people are prone to crime. And that is evidenced by the fact that there are more blacks in prison than white people. I'm just sitting here listening to this guy. He's calling me a criminal. And but he's right. He's 100 percent right. The data and the statistics show that there are more blacks in prison than white people. So that feeds what he already thinks he knows, the data, right? But he does not go to find out why does that data show that? He doesn't realize there may be an imbalance in our judicial system that send black people to prison for longer periods of time than white people who've committed the same crime. All right. So I listen to him, right? Because when he walks in that room and he sees me, I'm the enemy, his wall goes up. His ears are like this, you know, he's ready to defend whatever his stance is. So I'm just listening. And then he goes on to say, you know, black people are inherently lazy. They always have their hand out for a freebie. They're always trying to scam the government welfare programs and all that kind of stuff. So now he's called me a criminal. Now he's calling me lazy. And I'm just sitting here listening. I'm not pushing back. And then he says, and black people are born with smaller brains. And the larger the brain, the more capacity for intelligence. The smaller the brain, the lower the IQ. So now I'm being called stupid. Now it's what he says that this is evidenced by the fact that every year the data shows that black high school students consistently score lower on the SATs than on white kids do. Again, he's 100% correct. That does show that. But he doesn't realize why. All right. Where do most black kids in this country go to school? In the inner city. Where do most white kids go to school? In the suburbs. It is a fact. Suburban schools are better funded. They have better facilities, better teachers, etc. I will guarantee you, white kids who go to school in the inner city can score just as low as those black kids, if not some lower. Black kids who go to school in the suburbs can score just as high as the white kids, if not higher. It has absolutely nothing to do with the color of the student's skin or the size of the student's brain. But it has everything to do with the educational system in which that child is enrolled. But of course, he won't go to research that because the data already supports what he already believes that I'm inferior. So now he's called me all these things. I've already done my research on him. I know this guy sitting across from me just barely made it out of high school. I have a college degree. So do I throw that in his face? No. But because I sat there and listened to him, that wall is coming down. Because you cannot impart information to somebody when the wall is up. It's like hitting a brick wall. You want that wall to come down and then the ears open up. So now he's exhausted all his vitriol and now he's wondering like, how come this black person isn't pushing up against me like most of them do? He's curious as to what I think about what he just said. So now the wall is down and he feels compelled to reciprocate because I sat there and listened to him and saw me. So now it's my turn. I could go on the offense and say, no, you are the one who's a criminal. You're the one hanging black men from trees and dragging them behind pickup trucks and bombing their churches. And I would be 100% correct because the Klan has over 100 year history of doing that. But if I did that, that wall will go right back up. So I don't want that to happen. I want to keep the wall down and let him hear what I'm saying. So I said, so rather than go on the offense, I go on the defense and I say, listen, I hear what you're saying. However, I don't have a criminal record and I'm as black as anybody you've ever seen. So I don't have a criminal record. I've never been on welfare. As far as my brain size goes, I've never measured the size of my brain, but I'm sure it's the same size as anybody else's. And as far as my SAT scores go, they got me into college. Now I already know that he doesn't have a college degree. I do. Does it make me a better person than him? No, but it gives me a better experience. So I let him know this. He goes home and he thinks just like we all do at the end of the day, we reflect on what we did during the day. He thinks, man, I just had a three hour conversation with a black guy. We didn't come to blows. And what that Darrell guy said, it makes sense. Oh, but he's black. But what he said was true, but he's black. So they're having a cognitive dissonance. They struggle with that for a while. And then they have that dilemma. I got to make up my mind. What am I going to do? So the dilemma is, do I disregard whatever color he is and believe the truth because I know it to be true and change my ideological direction? Or do I consider the color of his skin and continue living a lie? In most cases, people will follow the truth. But then there will be those who don't want to give it the power or the notoriety or whatever, and they will follow the lie. Well, the way you're doing it is brilliant because you're doing it so patiently and contrary to the way most people handle arguments. Most people handle arguments by trying to shut down the other person's argument and shit all over them instead of trying to what you're saying, offer an alternative perspective, which is really probably the only way to get people to think about things in a different life. And, Joe, that comes from the fact that I've done a lot of travel. OK, I've been exposed to people from all over the world. And we all got along. We all got along. We told a story on the podcast the first time you hear about not even understanding racism until you were a child because you grew up overseas. Right, exactly. And we got so I saw that. So I saw something that they have not seen. And that's why I want to share that with them vicariously, to let them know. No, it's, you know, the whole every white person in the world is not like every white person in this country. Every black person in the world is not like every black person in this country. You know, there are white people over in France, like in the 1940s and 50s, a lot of black Americans moved to France to live. Some even gave up their U.S. citizenship because the French people were treating them as equals. They didn't see color, you know. And those French people were a lot more white than the white people here in this country who might be missed something else. So you know, people need to see. In fact, my favorite quote of all time is by Mark Twain, or otherwise known as Samuel Clemens. It's called the travel quote. And Mark Twain said, quote, unquote, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness. How many of our people need it solely on these accounts? Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. That guy was so good. Wasn't he? He had so many great quotes. Exactly. Isolation. And so Sam Harris actually did a study that we talk about in the paper about, he did a neuroimaging study of people being exposed to political beliefs different from their own and actually looked at people's brains when they were going through this experience. And they actually talked about this thing called the backfire effect, which is sort of what you're talking about when the walls up. And so they sort of detected that, interestingly. And I forget the exact name of the study, but it's in the footnotes. So I think the patience is it, that it's long term. They're not changing someone's mind in five minutes of chattering in comment sections or yelling at someone at the dinner table that you barely know. Daryl knows how to create long term relationships and not be thirsty for them to change their mind. It's just by, look, we're here, we're hanging out, whether it's a network or offline or online network, doesn't really matter. And so I think the backfire effect that Sam found and that we're sort of talking about with walls going up is very real. And that's why it has to be long term. You know, Daryl, I'm just thinking while I'm listening here, like these conversations that you've had with these white supremacists and neo-Nazis, how amazing would it be if that was a podcast? It is. No, but I'm saying if you sat down with those people from the beginning, from first meeting them and see that conversation play out, that would be very relatable. I've got some of that. Do you? Where I've sat down with some of these people while they were still in and now I'm sitting down with them now that they're out. Some of them even come on my lecture tours with me and stand on stage with me and speak out against their former... Do you have videos of these conversations? Yeah, some of them, yeah. God, are they online? Some of them I think are, but if not, I can send you some. I think those videos would be a great tool for someone that's maybe trapped, but at least partially open minded where they have this view of things like maybe I'm incorrect about this, maybe I need to reevaluate. But as a podcast, that would be brilliant.