Daryl Davis is a race relations expert and author of Klan-Destine Relationships, a non-fiction book which chronicles his outreach efforts to Ku Klux Klan members.
Harvard Political Review: You have a pretty phenomenal story. What motivated you to reach out to the Ku Klux Klan?
Daryl Davis: It was a combination of things. As a child, I experienced racism and was very surprised by it because I had friends of all kinds of races and colors. My parents were in the U.S. Foreign Service, so I grew up as an American embassy brat and travelled a lot overseas in the 1960s. When I would go to school overseas, my classes were filled with Italians, Nigerians, French, Japanese, Russians.
That was my experience overseas, but whenever I would return to my own country, the United States, the classrooms were either all black or all white or black and white, depending on if you went to the segregated schools or the newly integrated schools. One of the times we can home, I was in the fourth grade—1968 we’re talking—and we had moved to Belmont, Mass. I was one of two black kids in the entire school, so consequently all of my friends were white. My guy friends were members of the Cub Scouts, and they invited me to join.
On a Scout Day Parade, I was accosted by soda pop cans, pebbles, and street debris from a group of white spectators. I was the only black kid on the march, which was from Lexington to Concord. Being naïve and not seeing anything like this before, my first thought was, “Those people over there don’t like the scouts.” I truly did not realize that I was the only scout being hit until my scout leaders came back and huddled over me and escorted me out of the danger.
When I got home, I explained to my parents what had happened, and they sat me down and explained racism to me. I had never heard the word before. In fact, I did not believe them. It made no sense to me because I knew plenty of white people who did not treat me like that. I refused to believe them.
A few months later, Martin Luther King was assassinated, and everything went into flames. While I did not understand racism, I realized my parents had not lied to me. At a young age, age 10, I formed this question in my mind, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” That would always stay with me.
Throughout my life, I had these various racial incidents. Moving ahead, I decided to write a book and figured who better to reach out to then somebody who would join an organization whose sole premise is hating those people who do not look like them. I sought out members of the Ku Klux Klan because I had read just about every book written on the Klan and had never found my answer, so I figured why not confront the source.
HPR: What breeds the hatred of minorities that is so rampant among the individuals who join these groups?
DD: Klansmen or Klanswomen are not standard or cookie-cutter. They come from all walks of life, all educational backgrounds, and they have various reasons. Sometimes it’s a family tradition. Other times, it’s a socioeconomic reason. For example, you find a depressed town where a lot of white people have been laid off and the Klan will come in and point out that Hispanic people or black people will work for less money.
The Klan will say, “The blacks have the NAACP and the Jews have the Anti-Defamation League, but nobody stands up for the white man but us. Come join the Klan and we’ll get your job back. We’ll put food on your table, clothes on your children’s back.”
Then these people who previously never had a racist bone in their body begin thinking, “You know what, you do have a point there. Let me sign up and see what it is all about.” Then, you have people who had some negative incident with a black person and they cannot separate that individual incident from the entire black population.
HPR: Regarding the more educated individuals you interviewed, what tactics did they use to justify their explicitly racist behavior or their association with a group that was so racist?
DD: Some of them truly believed that darker skin people have smaller brains, and therefore are inferior to whiter skinned people; “People who come from Africa have not developed. People from Europe become thinkers and discoverers.” It’s the master race, Neo-Nazi ideology. Highly educated people absolutely believe that.
Then you have some highly educated people who head up these groups, not just Klans, because they know that it is a large population that they can prey upon to make a living, and they start these organizations and recruit uneducated members to pay dues. Then the intelligent person is becoming rich and exploiting their own. Money is a great motivator.
HPR: What did you see as some of the biggest misconceptions of you by Klansmen and vice-versa?
DD: One of my misperceptions was that I didn’t know they could change. I never sought to convert anybody. I didn’t think they were going to change because you grow up hearing these clichés—a tiger never loses its stripes, you are what you are—so I had no idea that they were going to change or that I would become friends with any of them.
But over time, even when you sit with the worst of your enemies, you can find something in common somewhere. As those things in common build, the things that differ matter less and less. You begin to put a human face together despite whatever you may disagree about. Over time, these people began shedding their racist ideology as they began to know me. That was not expected by me. I was surprised when some of them began quitting and I realized “Oh my God, I’m on to something here.” So I began collecting their robes and hoods, and I have a vast collection of that kind of stuff. Of course, there will be those with whom I’m in contact who are still in the Klan. There will be those who never change, who’ll go to their graves with hatred.
HPR: Your experience suggests that a personal interaction is necessary to overcome racial differences. Do you believe that there is a particular way the United States can improve interactions among races today?
DD: Absolutely. One of the best ways that we can do that, and we fail to do that, is that we need to keep the lines of communication open. We need to invite our adversaries to the table and talk. When two enemies are talking, they are not fighting. They may be pounding their fists on the table and screaming, but they are not fighting.
It’s when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. We often do not seek out people who oppose us and invite them to sit down with us to lunch and talk. That’s what I did and I got wonderful results from it.
Right now, the police and the black community are at odds. The police and the black community have been at odds since the formation of the police department. When the police department in this country was originally formed, it wasn’t for criminals, it was to enforce slavery. Slaves would try to run off the plantation and escape, so there needed to be a body of law enforcement to capture them and keep them in line.
Now, let’s go to New York today. If you want to protest, go to de Blasio’s house, hold a sign, do what you want, but don’t do it at a funeral. I hold the officers that did not turn their backs complicit because they did not correct the actions of their brethren who did turn their backs. I believe that “he who walks in silence hangs the innocent and let’s the guilty go free.”
We all know that the police have a culture of the blue wall of silence where they don’t go against each other or tell on each other. They all kind of stick together. Well, we need to get rid of that culture. We need to trust the police. We need the police. But when you see people like that who show that kind of disrespect, those are the same officers who would disrespect the fact that the New York Police Department banned the use of chokeholds, [the maneuver which resulted] in the death of Eric Garner. Those are the same police who would beat up Rodney King. Those are the same police who would pull me over doing DWB – driving while black. We need to get rid of those. We need to work hand in hand with the police, not against them, but it’s hard to do when they blatantly show that they don’t even respect each other or their chief.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Image credit: Office of Daryl Davis