Accidentally On Purpose Ld Davis

[Nella Mcnairy]

DarylDavis (@realdaryldavis) is a musician, author, lecturer, host of the Changing Minds podcast, and anti-racism activist featured in the documentary Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America. [This is part one of a two-part episode. Make sure to catch part two here!]

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[00:00:08] Daryl Davis: If you find yourself in a culture or society with which you're unfamiliar and you apply those five values to those people, I can guarantee you the navigation will be much more smooth and much more positive. So essentially, I just viewed white supremacists as another culture, and I applied those values and that's what allowed me entrance into that world.

[00:00:37] Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We've got in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game, astronauts and entrepreneurs, even the occasional mafia enforcer, neuroscientist, or undercover agent. And each episode turns our guests' wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker.

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[00:03:35] Daryl Davis: Well, you know, I'm the impetus. I give them different ideas that they can work out themselves. I don't want to tell anybody, "Hey, you know, you need to get out of this. This is wrong, blah, blah, blah. Give me your robe." Oftentimes in the media, they'll say, "A black musician converts X number of KKK or white supremacists." No, I didn't convert anybody. I am impetus for over 200 to make up their own minds, to convert themselves because I've given them reason to think about other things that make more sense than what they're currently doing.

[00:04:05] Jordan Harbinger: So over 200 have renounced their membership in part because of you. So does that count the chapters of the KKK that have sort of fallen apart and disintegrated because you've befriended their leadership?

[00:04:44] Daryl Davis: But also, I mean, some of the leaders when they leave, they dissolve the group. Others, they leave and the second in command takes over or whatever. They may retain some of the membership, but I do believe in one at a time. Because even with one at a time, this guy joined because his buddy joined, his buddy talked him into it and now his buddy's left so I might as well leave. That happens also. It becomes like a snowball effect. While there've been quite a number of them as individuals, there's also been that attrition, you know, a mass or more than one because the leader left or some friend left and then, you know, dad gets out, then his kids get out.

[00:05:26] Jordan Harbinger: Right. There's been a couple of interesting stories there that I've researched and we'll get to those in a second. We should probably back up a little bit because the movie, the documentary, Accidental Courtesy, and we'll link to that in the show notes. It's a great watch. It starts off with a story of you lending a guy your bus so that him and his friends can drive down to a Klan rally. So like just to paint the picture for everyone, you, an African-American man, lent your bus to a group of KKK members, so they could get to a Klan rally. And just maybe explain your thought process here.

[00:06:03] Daryl Davis: Listen, I don't support the KKK at all. I don't support that ideology, but I support people having the right to believe as they want to believe, as long as they don't cross the line and hurt people. And to show, to prove that I will stick up for somebody else's rights, has also led to people just like that, sticking up for mine. So to give you a little backward, that Klan group was based in a city called Frederick, Maryland, and which is about an hour and 20 minutes outside of Washington, DC. So they would usually go to some bus rental company up there and rent a bus to go out of town. So that way they all could ride together for one of their out of town rallies or something in some other city.

[00:06:47] What had happened was the leader called me and he said, "Hey, do you know of any bus companies down your way in your county that rent buses?" I said, "No, I have my own bus. What's going on?" because I have a bus for me, for my band. He explained that the company that he would normally rent from refused to rent from him now, because every time they got the bus back, there were dents in it from people throwing rocks and breaking the glasses because everybody knew there was the Klan in that bus. So for insurance purposes, they didn't want to rent it anymore to him. And so he's going to try to go to another county where maybe his name might be a little lesser known or something, so he's asking me.

[00:07:28] I said, "Well, where's your rally?" And he told me, and then I said, "What day?" He told me, I looked at my calendar and I wasn't doing anything that day and I figured, okay, well, I'll go watch the rally. I said, "Listen, why don't you just take my bus?" And he started laughing because he thought I was joking with him. And I said, "No, I'm serious." He goes, "You're going to lend me your bus to take my Klan to a rally." I said, "Yeah, because I never heard of such." I said, "I'm not joking." He said, "Well, what do I owe you? I'll rent it from you." I said, "No, you don't owe me anything. Just, you know, bring it back with the gas. That's all." He said, "Okay." So then, he and one of his guys came down and got the bus.

[00:08:12] There were a lot of funny things surrounding that, because this was an unpublicized rally. They would just want to show up and walk down a main street in their robes and hoods, and so forth. So nobody knew they were coming except the police, because you have to have a permit to do any kind of like little parade thing.

[00:09:14] Daryl Davis: Exactly. Exactly. And here I am just standing there, light's changing, I'm still standing there, so one of them walks over to me and says, "How you doing, sir?" And I said, "I'm doing fine. How are you?" And he says, "Are you waiting across the street?" I said, "No." And he says, "What are you waiting for?" I said, "The same thing you are."

[00:09:52] Daryl Davis: So he wasn't getting anything from me. And I said, "I'm waiting for the Klan." And he looked at me like I was crazy. "How does this guy know?" So then he walked over to my girlfriend and my secretary and he says, "Ladies, how are you, all? What are you waiting for?" And they said, "The Klan." And he said to them, "How did you find out about that?" and they pointed it at me. He didn't know what to do. He just walked on back to his partner because he wasn't getting anything out of me. And then this lady, she was a sergeant at the time. She knew who I was. She shows up and they all, you know, "Hey, Sgt., blah, blah, blah."

[00:10:33] Daryl Davis: Yeah. She's checking all the points to make sure everybody's in place. And then cars are going by, vans were going by. They're like looking to see if it's the Klan. I knew it wasn't. I know what my bus looks like, right? So here comes my bus and they're all these guys in it, and the guy who I lended to, the leader, he's driving. I waved. He toots his horn and waves back and goes by. I said, "That's the Klan," to the cops. And then they looked at me, "Why are they blowing the horn and waving at you?" And then they look at her, you know, their sergeant. And she says, "If he says, that's the Klan, that's the Klan." And they all get on the radio and they radio each other. "Okay. They're here, blah, blah, blah." And what they did was they went down to the end of the parade route, looked around, and came back up. They're just checking out the route first, before they get out and marching. So they come back to the parking lot, right across where we're standing, because that's the beginning of the route. And then they all get out of the bus or they all put on their stuff and then get out of the bus and they proceed to do the march. You know, it was pretty, pretty interesting thing.

[00:11:38] But after the rally was over, about 15 of them, they brought the bus back and they came with the car and they came to my house. I invited them back to my house. So they're all sitting back here in my living room. I bought beer for them. I knew what they liked. I bought all this beer. I don't drink but I bought them beer. All, but two of them, would drink and talk. These two were like, very quiet. They were like this, you know, you could tell, they were like out of their place.

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