Daryl Davis: Ending Racism Begins with Education

When they track racism over the last 100 years, it's at a decline. It's at a measurable decline, but not enough. What could be done to accelerate that decline? What do you think can be done to sort of start teaching civics, spike up the civics in elementary school, not the, don't wait to high school. By civics, what do you mean exactly? You know, our country is so diverse now. We need to learn about the history of everybody in our country and everybody's contributions to making this a great country. White, black, Hispanic, women, whatever. Our country is truly a melting pot and we need to treat it as such and give everybody credibility. So you know, this person, you know, looks different than me, but he contributed something that I need. I look different than him, but I contribute something that he needs. You know, that kind of thing. So we have more mutual respect for one another. You know, the older generations are going to die out, but we have to stop them from proliferating their BS to these younger generations, you know? And we do this in schools. Right. You know, look, when I was in junior high school, which they don't have anymore, right? They have middle school now. This education was being introduced. Parents were freaking out. Oh my God, I don't want my kid learning that. Well guess what? They didn't want their kids going to school and learning about sex, but yet these parents were not teaching their kid about sex at home either. They don't want their kid learning it. How are you going to stop a kid from learning about sex? If you don't let your teachers in school educate them properly and you're not willing to do it at home, your kid's still going to learn it. And where is he or she going to learn it? Out in the street. And then what are you going to do when your kid comes home pregnant? You're going to be all freaked out. So if you wanted to take sex ed when I was in junior high school, you had to bring a note from your parents saying it was okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then you had like a little small class of five or six people taking sex ed. Today is part of the regular curriculum. And as a result, kids today are better informed about venereal disease, STDs, family planning, contraception, and all these kinds of things because they're no longer ignorant. They have more information. All right. The same thing has the taboo on sex education has been lifted. Okay. We need to lift the taboo on racism in schools and talk about it at an early age. How much time are they allocating towards teaching people how to accept diverse groups and how to fight against racism? Is that something that's taught? It seems like that should be a core curriculum. In private schools, where I see it is mostly in private schools. I don't see it in public schools, which is very unfortunate. Parents seem to seem there to run the schools. If your kid, for example, you send your kid to school and you find out your kid is not learning what you think he or she should learn, what do you do? You take them out of that school and put them in another school. If they don't learn it there, you put them in a private school. If they don't learn it there, you take them home and you homeschool them. And so a lot of schools are very loathe to step on eggshells with parents. They don't want to upset the parents, whatever, but they need to. The parents are not the teachers. The teachers are the teachers. It seems that if you could explain to kids how people get radicalized, if you could explain to kids what happens online, how they draw you in, what's the appeal of being a part of a tribe, which is a big part of it, right? A big part of it is being like a gang. Same thing that attracts kids to gangs. Like everybody's in it, we're all together, it's like it's in a tight group. Yeah, I mean that gets people in. And when they draw you in, like if the kids said, oh, this is that shit they talked about in seventh grade, I know what they're doing. I mean, just that alone. And they're better prepared. Yes. That information. Exactly. Yes. And so schools are one thing, academic at an early age. The next thing I've thought are churches. Well, when I say churches, I mean religious institutions, which would include synagogues, et cetera. And I hate to get down on the clergy, but I'm telling you. They have accountability that they're not accepting. And don't get me wrong, I'm a Christian, all that kind of stuff. And I was a beacon in my church at one time. But here's the thing. Whether you're Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, whatever, you have some form of Sunday school. And so you go down in the basement in your facility, in your church or temple or whatever. And your Sunday school lesson, when you're four or five years old, they teach you that we're all God's children. God made a rainbow, right? And we accept that at four or five years old. And then as we grow older, we reach puberty, adolescence, whatever, we move upstairs to the big congregation. Now we're sitting up there with the adults. The clergy, the rabbi, the priest, the minister, the pastor, the reverend, whatever, no longer teaches that Sunday school lesson. They stop saying upstairs, we're all God's children. What do you think would happen if the reverend or the priest were sitting at the congregation one Sunday morning, hey, folks, guess what? It's okay for blacks and whites to marry. It's okay for Jews to marry Catholics. Half the congregation would get up and leave. And they wouldn't be putting their money in the collection plate because they're not hearing what they want to hear, right? And because it has not been continued. That Sunday school lesson needs to be continued upstairs so adults feel, hey, you know, we're all a rainbow. We're all God's children. But the priest does not say that or the reverend does not say that anymore because he's afraid of walking on eggshells and stopping the flow of money coming into tithes and offerings in that collection plate. People would be changing churches or firing him, right? And then your kid is, let's say, let's say, let's say I'm Catholic and now I'm in 12th grade and I'm going to the senior prom. So my mom says, so, so, who are you taking to the senior prom? I say, I'm going to take Susan Goldberg. Yeah, you know, Susan's a nice girl, but don't you think you should take a nice Catholic girl? Well, yeah, mom, but I mean, but you know, I thought we're all God's children. Yeah, we are. But, exactly. But is not a God word. But is a man word. God was perfect. If we are to believe in the concept of God, then we are to believe that God did not make any exceptions in butts and mistakes, et cetera, little loopholes. He was perfect from the word to go. God is a man word. It's an exception. God was perfection. Man is exception. All right? So that's what happened, you know? So that's why the clergy does not continue that Sunday school lesson. They're afraid of losing money. In other words, they put money above morality and they should be held accountable. Well, it seems like there's a lot of problems. It's not one thing. It's not just the clergy and it's not just the schools. It's certainly the parents and it's certainly what the parents were taught. So it's the parents' parents. It's the continuing of the ignorance. Right. But the biggest... They inherited. One of the most influential, unless you're atheist, of course, the most influential authority in your life is your church. Everybody, you know, it's a church. It's a kid, unless you're atheist or whatever. So that weighs very heavily. Well, how do you reach the atheists then? How do you reach the atheists then? Or the agnostics? A lot of atheists and agnostics have excellent morals. A lot of them do. They have churches called ethical societies. And I've spoken to many of them before. You know, they don't believe in God. It was just not something that I advocate. But I'm saying that they know right from wrong. And you find less controversy and racism and more acceptance in these places because it's about ethics and morality more so than division. Why do you have a white Baptist church and a black Baptist church? What's that all about? A Baptist should be a Baptist. It's the same King James Bible, you know? And why aren't they preaching the same lesson in Sunday school? Did they preach upstairs? They're not concerned about telling little four and five-year-olds they were all God's children. God made a rainbow. You know why? Because little four and five-year-olds don't have any money. So they're not getting any money in the collection plate there. It doesn't matter. It matters where the money is. You say what you got to say to get the amount of money that you need. That's— You know, I don't go to church. So that's an alien concept to me. But that's sad if that's the lesson, if that's the way they're structuring their lessons in a church or a synagogue or a temple, that that's how they're doing it. They're structuring their lessons to achieve more donations. Look at these mega churches. Yeah. Well, look at them. Look at them. And how many times do some of these priests and preachers get in trouble? Those mega churches always seem to me to be run by cult leaders that are keeping it together. They're just keeping it together, staying within the structure of traditional Christianity. Because people want to believe in something. Yes. So why not believe in the Klan? Why not believe in, you know, whatever? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's tribal. We have this intense desire to stay tribal, but we've got to consider ourselves a tribe of the human race. Exactly. The human race. That can be taught to people. It can. Yeah. I think what you're proving and what you're doing by your amazing accomplishments is showing that that even in the most radicalized of people, the KKK and the National Socialist Movement, you're converting people.