In 2017, Keith and I both wrote about a man named Daryl Davis, a Black man who is doing more than his share to help white supremacists stop being white supremacists, one at a time. If you’re interested, here are links to Keith’s post and mine. Last weekend, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nicholas Kristof’s column looked to Davis and his technique in hopes of taking a page from Davis’ playbook to find ways to deal with people on the other side of the many divisive issues we are confronted with today. I think it is well worth considering …
‘How Can You Hate Me When You Don’t Even Know Me?’
Opinion Columnist
One of the questions I’m asked most is: How do I talk to those on the other side of America’s political and cultural abyss? What can I say to my brother/aunt/friend who thinks Joe Biden is a socialist with dementia who stole the election?
I’ve wondered about persuasion strategies, too, because I have friends who have their pro-Trump or anti-vaccine biases validated every evening by Tucker Carlson. So I reached out to an expert at changing minds.
Daryl Davis, 63, is a Black musician with an unusual calling: He hangs out with Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis and chips away at their racism. He has evidence of great success: a collection of K.K.K. robes and hoods given him by people whom he persuaded to abandon the Klan.
His odyssey arose from curiosity about racism, including about an attack he suffered. When Davis was 10 years old, he says, a group of white people hurled bottles, soda cans and rocks at him.
“I was incredulous,” Davis recalled. “My 10-year-old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me, who had never spoken to me, who knew nothing about me, would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin.”
“How can you hate me,” he remembers wondering, “when you don’t even know me?”
Davis began to work on answers after he graduated from Howard University and joined a band that sometimes played in a Maryland bar that attracted white racists. Davis struck up a friendship with a K.K.K. member, each fascinated by the other, and the man eventually left the K.K.K., Davis said.
One of Davis’s methods — and there’s research from social psychology to confirm the effectiveness of this approach — is not to confront antagonists and denounce their bigotry but rather to start in listening mode. Once people feel they are being listened to, he says, it is easier to plant a seed of doubt.
In one case, Davis said, he listened as a K.K.K. district leader brought up crime by African Americans and told him that Black people are genetically wired to be violent. Davis responded by acknowledging that many crimes are committed by Black people but then noted that almost all well-known serial killers have been white and mused that white people must have a gene to be serial killers.
When the K.K.K. leader sputtered that this was ridiculous, Davis agreed: It’s silly to say that white people are predisposed to be serial killers, just as it’s ridiculous to say that Black people have crime genes.
The man went silent, Davis said, and about five months later quit the K.K.K.
Davis claims to have persuaded some 200 white supremacists to leave the Klan and other extremist groups. It’s impossible to confirm that number, but his work has been well documented for decades in articles, videos, books and a TED Talk. He also has a podcast called “Changing Minds With Daryl Davis.”
“Daryl saved my life,” said Scott Shepherd, a former grand dragon of the K.K.K. “Daryl extended his hand and actually just extended his heart, too, and we became brothers.” Shepherd ended up leaving the Klan and gave his robes to Davis.
Davis’s approach seems out of step with modern sensibilities. Today the more common impulse is to decry from a distance.
The preference for safe spaces over dialogue arises in part from a reasonable concern that engaging extremists legitimizes them. In any case, society can hardly ask Black people to reach out to racists, gay people to sit down with homophobes, immigrants to win over xenophobes, women to try to reform misogynists, and so on. Victims of discrimination have endured enough without being called upon to redeem their tormentors.
Yet I do think that we Americans don’t engage enough with people we fundamentally disagree with. There’s something to be said for the basic Davis inclination toward dialogue even with unreasonable antagonists. If we’re all stuck in the same boat, we should talk to each other.
“Daryl Davis demonstrates that talking face-to-face with your ideological opponents can motivate them to rethink their views,” said Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “He’s an extraordinary example of what psychologists have repeatedly shown with evidence: In over 500 studies, interacting face-to-face with an out-group reduced prejudice 94 percent of the time.
“You won’t get through to people until you’ve earned their trust,” Grant added. “You’re not likely to earn their trust until you’ve met them face-to-face and listened to their stories.”
There’s a reason we try to solve even intractable wars by getting the parties to sit in the same room: It beats war. If we believe in engagement with North Koreans and Iranians, then why not with fellow Americans?
At a time when America is so polarized and political space is so toxic, we, of course, have to stand up for what we think is right. But it may also help to sit down with those we believe are wrong.
“If I can sit down and talk to K.K.K. members and neo-Nazis and get them to give me their robes and hoods and swastika flags and all that kind of crazy stuff,” Davis said, “there’s no reason why somebody can’t sit down at a dinner table and talk to their family member.”
Today, there is the potential for a repeat performance, this time in the nation’s capital, only because the city of Charlottesville denied a permit to Jason Kessler, the organizer of last year’s horrible event, for a repeat performance. It was only three days ago that the National Park approved a permit for up to 400 white supremacists to gather at Lafayette Square, directly across from the White House. Perhaps Donald Trump will go out and mingle with them, even take them some refreshments.
I really wanted to make this post a “look-how-far-we’ve-come-since-then” sort of post, pointing to lessons we have learned and actions that have been taken to stop such performances, to take violence out of the streets. But as I reflect and ponder, I realize that not only have we not moved forward, but that we, as a nation, have actually regressed since that fateful day, 12 August 2017. More than at any time since the 1960s, overt racism is a daily occurrence. Police are called on African-Americans for such things as parking on their own street, swimming in their community pool, barbecuing in the public park, and just doing their jobs, such as driving a bus or selling real estate.
Well, guess what, folks? The primary event organizer, one Jason Kessler, wants to do it again this year – he wants to hold an “anniversary celebration”. Interestingly, other white supremacist groups are not on board with the idea. Last November, Kessler applied to the city of Charlottesville, but his request was denied, citing “danger to public safety”. Kessler, of course, wasn’t about to take that lying down, so in March he filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming it was denying his 1st Amendment rights. Legal experts say it will fall on the city to prove that police would be unable to adequately protect protesters and citizens.
How, I ask you, could anybody argue against any of those exceptions to freedom of speech? In a nutshell, the concept is that you have a right to your opinion, and you have a right to express your opinion, but you do not have a right to try to rile people to the point of violence and you do not have the right to cause people, with your speech, to feel intimidated or distressed. It’s just common sense! As a number of readers have expressed in the past, and as I have also said, “your rights end when they infringe upon anothers”. I feel similarly about religious freedom: you have the right to believe as you wish, to practice whatever religion you choose or none at all, but you do not have the right to attempt to force others to abide by your beliefs.
That last one stops my heart … “Pray for Islamic Holocaust” … this from people who are descended from people, some of whom were no doubt victims of Hitler’s Holocaust!!! Chants of “Pure Poland, white Poland!” and “Refugees get out!” could be heard throughout Warsaw. What a damn shame that human beings, that mankind, has learned not one thing from the history of only last century. Is this the direction Europe and the United States wish to go? Are we really so eager to see millions of people murdered simply because of the colour of their skin, their national origin or their religion???
In recent years, Poland’s politics have leaned more toward a right-wing, xenophobic ideology. Similar nationalist and racist ideologies are growing in influence in Greece, Austria, Switzerland, and numerous other democracies across the continent. And so I ask again … have we not learned one, single, damned thing from history?
I have noted many times before, I cannot understand how anybody with even half a brain can think that having pale skin makes a person superior to others. Obviously, however, some do think so and that number seems to be growing, the ideology spreading like a fast=growing cancer both in the U.S. and in Europe. The movement has its roots in the Arab Spring movements that began less than a decade ago and produced a mass exodus from Middle Eastern nations, people fleeing for their lives. As nations like Greece, Germany, the U.S. and many others accepted these refugees, groups like daesh, al qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah were doing their best to make fear of the unknown the order of the day. Add to this mix people like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Geert Wilders, Norbert Hofer, Marine LePen, and others — populist candidates whose platform is based on one of xenophobia and of halting immigration — and it is a recipe for disaster.
How do we stop the white nationalist movements that would exterminate, apparently, everyone who does not think, act and look exactly like them? I don’t have any answer to that question, but I would ask those who feel this way a question: say you got rid of all the Middle Easterners, the Latinos, those with African heritage … who’s next? People with red hair? People with disabilities? Women? It is a never-ending process, and it is evil.
Is there a middle ground, a compromise? Surely safety concerns and cost to taxpayers for the benefit of a very few are legitimate concerns? But let’s be honest … the reality is that most college administrations do not want Richard Spencer and his ilk anywhere near their campuses because of his message. It is the message that offends and insults. If the Pope wished to visit Ohio State University, the cost of security would be equally high, if not higher, yet the University would welcome Pope Francis with open arms.
But, given what happened in Florida last week, is it not reasonable to say that his message is incitement to violence? The Supreme Court has made it clear that speech that is directed to inciting or producing imminent, lawless action and is likely to result in violence, can be censored before the violence actually happens. But all of those conditions must be satisfied. It must be provable that his intent is for his followers to commit violence against others. Does he do this? I suspect he walks a fine line, but typically stays within the law.
At least one person was killed in this incident, and at least 19 injured. The driver of the car was 20-year-old James Fields from Ohio. I do not have many more details at this time, though I am certain more will be available in the coming days. I do know that Fields was arrested on charges of second-degree murder.
The reactions
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