"Proclaim Peace" Season 2, Episode 7 // Embracing Diversity and Building Peace: Lessons From the Tower of Babel, With Daryl Davis
- 2 days ago
- 39 min read
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Jen and Patrick are joined by Daryl Davis to explore the profound lessons of peace, unity, and diversity through the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. They engage in a compelling dialogue about how understanding, communication, and exposure can transform hatred into harmony. This episode reminds us that peace begins with understanding and that even in the most difficult conversations, empathy and exposure can open pathways toward reconciliation. Bridging divides is about listening, storytelling, and the courage to challenge our perceptions.
Chapters
(00:00) Introduction and overview of the episode's themes
(02:00) The biblical story of Babel and its lessons for human diversity
(09:00) How communication bridges divides, and the Holy Spirit's role in understanding
(13:00) Daryl Davis’s work with white supremacists and his approach of dialogue and curiosity
(22:00) Stories of personal encounters with racism and the transformative power of relationship
(30:00) The chain of ignorance leading to fear, hate, and destruction
(36:00) The importance of perception, education, and exposure in overcoming bias
(45:00) Emotional strategies in conflict resolution and peacebuilding
(53:00) Finding peace within oneself to promote peace externally
Transcript
Patrick Mason (00:00)
Hi everyone and welcome back to the "Proclaim Peace" podcast, where we pull principles and practices of peace building out of the scriptures. I'm your co-host Patrick Mason. I'm here as always with Jen Thomas. Hey Jen, how you doing?
Jennifer Thomas (00:11)
Hello, Patrick, I'm doing OK.
Patrick Mason (00:13)
All right, well, in this episode as we continue, so we're diving into the Old Testament this season, obviously. And in this episode, we're gonna talk about, think, one of the more memorable stories of the Old Testament. It's yet another strange story out of the Old Testament. But it's the story of the Tower of Babel. And of course, I think everybody's heard this story that people are building this tower, you know, it's gonna reach up into the heavens.
And this is a time when everybody spoke the same language and then God divides them. this, at least as the story goes, this is the beginning of all of the different languages of humanity. And in a lot of ways, you know, there's a lot of things that you could do with this story, a lot of different directions that you could go. But I think it's interesting to think along with this story in terms of simply the question and the fact of human diversity. What do we do with the fact?
that human beings, all part of the same species, are actually all very different with different languages, different ethnicities, different nationalities, all this kind of difference. What do we do with it in the world after Babel?
Jennifer Thomas (01:09)
Yeah.
Well, and what strikes me is that there's this narrative that people can collaborate. They can cooperate when there's the sameness. When they're all similar, when they have a unified language, they're able to be unified in purpose. And one of the ways that I think of interpreting this story is that God is also telling us that that is also not how he wants us to work together. That he wants us to work together across differences. That that is the challenge of being human is not
just saying, I can only work with people who are like me or think like me and act like me. That doesn't make me divine. What helps me be more divine is to figure out how to recognize the richness that comes from this multiplicity of possibility amongst human beings. I think that one of the reasons that we
the guests that's joining us today that we wanted to bring on and share with you is because once that breaks down, once you've got people from different perspectives, having different viewpoints, different approaches to the world, the only way that you can effectively bridge that, those divides is through communication.
Patrick Mason (02:15)
Exactly. At that point, the diversity of human language and human ⁓ perspective isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature of the system. It is actually the way that God designed it so that we could learn from one another. And I think in the New Testament, there's in some ways a reversal of Babel at the day of Pentecost when because of the Holy Spirit they can all understand each other. But what's really interesting is that God doesn’t erase their differences, he doesn't erase the fact that they all speak different languages, he just makes them intelligible to one another and I think that's the work of healing, that's the work of the Holy Spirit. How do we learn to understand one another across differences rather than trying to eliminate all difference altogether?
Jennifer Thomas (03:14)
Exactly, and the guest that we are bringing to you today is one who is bridging some of the most difficult differences imaginable and trying to do that through compassion, curiosity, and dialogue. Daryl Davis has spent his career as a professional musician. That's his first and primary occupation, including decades playing alongside rock and roll legends like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis.
But he is also known for his efforts to fight racism by engaging directly and personally with members of the KKK, many with whom he developed relationships of trust and even friendships. He's taken white supremacy head on and done it as a person who was bearing the brunt of white supremacy. Daryl now estimates that he's been instrumental in persuading over 200 white supremacists to leave their hate groups and he's gonna share with us a little bit more today about his lived experience and how he's done that.
Jennifer Thomas (04:08)
Daryl, welcome. We are so grateful to have you as a guest here on Proclaim Peace.
Daryl Davis (04:12)
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Glad to be here with you.
Jennifer Thomas (04:15)
Well, we're excited to jump in and hear your perspectives. But before we get into sort of the details and the weeds of things, we'd love to start with the question that we start, that we offer to all of our guests, which is how do you define peace?
Daryl Davis (04:28)
Well, I have several definitions to define peace. I think the absence of conflict, the state of tranquility, the presence of civil disagreement. But also I think one of my fellow musicians probably said it best, the late great Jimi Hendrix. He said, when the power of love overcomes the love of power, there will be peace.
Patrick Mason (04:49)
That is fantastic. I've never heard that definition, but I love that. And I love it. Was that an song lyric or just something he said? Something he said, okay. Well, there are a million things we could ask you. I would love to spend an hour just talking to you about your musical career and everything you've done.
Daryl Davis (04:53)
Well, we can always do a part two, you know?
Jennifer Thomas (05:07)
Yeah.
Patrick Mason (05:08)
We'll see if you're sick of us after part one. But we want to talk about how we can pull out principles of peacemaking from the Old Testament, from the Hebrew Bible, and we're going to zero in on the Tower of Babel story and then just kind of see where it goes from there. But people have read this story lots of different ways, this story of people who were united at once and then who were divided in different ways.
When you read that story, how does it speak to you at all? What do you feel like that story has to teach us about unity, about division, whatever direction it takes you?
Daryl Davis (05:45)
I think, well first of all, I don't believe the Tower of Babel actually existed in real life. I believe it's a metaphor or a story. But I think what it teaches us is that people will use things and turn them around to edify.
Patrick Mason (05:54)
Hmm.
Daryl Davis (06:04)
if you will, themselves, like building a tower to reach God or to reach the heavens or whatever. Because you always think of somebody who's almighty as being high on almighty, so you go up, that kind of thing. But, you know, I deal with a lot of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and KKK members and things like that. And, of course, they've taken the story and they've turned it around, you know, to say, well, you know, God scattered everybody because that's the way he wants
him to be. He does not want them to be together. So you know that's their definition. But I you know and I counter that with God gave everybody something. And the beauty of it is when we share with each other and bring it all together. It's like making a jigsaw puzzle. Every piece is different. Every piece may have a certain color or different colors to whatever. But the puzzle becomes beautiful when those pieces link together. And that to me is you know if if I had to to say what the Tower of Babel means to me is God giving us that challenge to learn how to get along with one another because we all have something to contribute to the world that He created.
Jennifer Thomas (07:10)
So I love this and I think you've actually highlighted, perhaps intentionally, one of the really important reasons that Patrick and I are doing this podcast is because scripture is something that we have to interpret, right? Like these are meant to be stories and narratives that we take broad lessons from and you've just highlighted really beautifully the way that one story could be used in diametrically opposed ways, right? And I think that
One of the things that we're so interested in helping people understand is that's a choice. And scripture at its best is used to bring us closer to one another, to help elevate the value of each of God's children. And I love the way that you have interpreted this story to be inclusive and to invite a wide variety of voices to participate and to demonstrate that in fact that that's what God intends, right? Like God does not want us divided.
Daryl Davis (08:06)
Well, doesn't God's choir have tenors, altos, bass, baritones, contraltos, first sopranos, etc. And each one of those voices plays a part that makes those harmonies, you what are beautiful.
Patrick Mason (08:19)
It makes me, the way that you framed it makes me think of Jesus' teaching when he said, you know, that you'll always have the poor with you. That doesn't mean that poverty is a good thing. That doesn't mean that, you know, that we want to reify that. But it means that in this condition we're in, there are just certain aspects of what it means to be mortal and what it means to live a human existence. Poverty is one of those things that difference and division.
For me, Jesus is, when he says the poor are always with you, this is always an invitation and a challenge, not an excuse. so the same thing, it seems to me with the Tower of Babel, this idea that there is division, that there is difference, that there is diversity among us, that is, an invitation. It's an opportunity for us, not an excuse to lean into that that some of your white supremacist friends maybe do.
Jennifer Thomas (09:11)
And so one of the things that strikes me about your work is that you are using communication. You're using outreach to other people to build bridges with those who are themselves using communication, words, actions to kind of create and foment hate. So you're trying to take this same tool and repurpose it towards something good.
And I'm wondering if you could share with our listeners what this has taught you about the power and role of language in terms of both promoting peace and how we can learn to be more cautious and wise in how we use it.
Daryl Davis (09:45)
Sure. Well, you I feel that the greatest weapon known to man to dismantle conflict, you know, it's not the bullet or the bomb or the tank or things like that, but yet it is the most underused tool and the least expensive. It's free. It's called conversation.
You know, when two enemies or two adversaries however you want to frame it, enemies, whatever, when two enemies are talking, they're not fighting, they're talking. Perhaps they're disagreeing, maybe even getting a little loud, but at least they're talking. It's when the conversation ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. So we want to keep the conversation going. Now, know, action speaks louder than words.
you know, what's the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. But the words have to be credible and they have to match the action. So, you know, I've been to 65 countries on six continents. I've been to all 50 states. And I can tell you something that no matter how far I go from our own country, whether it's right next door to Canada, right next door to Mexico, or across the Atlantic or Pacific, halfway around the globe, no matter who I meet, perhaps they don't, you know, look like me, or speak my language, or worship as I do, maybe don't even worship at all. I've always concluded that every single person I've encountered anywhere on this planet is a human being. And as such,
Every human being wants these five core values in their lives. Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be respected. We all want to be heard. We want to be treated fairly and truthfully. And we want the same things for our family as anyone else would want for their family. And if we can learn to apply those five core values or any of those five values when we find ourselves in a contentious or adversarial situation,
or in a society or culture in which we're unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I'll guarantee you that your navigation of that situation, that culture, that society will be much more positive, much more smooth, and much more productive. And language is the communicatory tool that we use.
Jennifer Thomas (12:03)
It strikes me that four of those, those first four really are linked to communication, right? They're about having people feel heard, having be respected, that we can, just like you said, in really inexpensive and thoughtful ways, accomplish four of those five desires just by being willing to engage with people.
Daryl Davis (12:23)
And respect does not necessarily mean that you respect what the person is saying. Because, I don't respect what the white supremacists tell me about myself, but I respect their right to air their view. And in exchange, they reciprocate and listen to me. And that's how bridges are built and how bridges are crossed.
Patrick Mason (12:43)
I wonder, could you talk a little bit more about that, Daryl? normally we think about conversation, at least when I think about it, I think about my ability to speak, right? But real conversation, there's always two sides. There's the speaking and then the listening. It seems that for a lot of people, myself included, the listening might be the harder part of those two sides of the coin. So can you talk a little bit about listening, especially...
Listening maybe from your own work listening to things that are hard that you don't believe in Some people might say I don't want to be in spaces where I hear things that I know are untrue right the you know racist ideas sexist ideas and so forth like that in some ways I I give space to where I even validate Those those views if I stop and listen to them. So How do you think about that in terms of? ⁓ listening as that other side of conversation.
Daryl Davis (13:35)
Well, especially, you know, when I'm dealing with people of those ideologies, you know, even black supremacists or something like that, I realize that they have not seen nor experienced the things that I have in my life. I'm not saying I know everything and I've experienced it all. No, by no means. But what, let me give you my favorite quote of all time.
It's by Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, and he had a lot of quotes. But one of my favorite ones is called the travel quote by him. And Mark Twain said, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness. And many of our people need it sorely 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. And that is so true.
Take that and when, you know, our US Census Bureau, according to them, less than 40 % of Americans even own a passport. They say that we don't travel. European people travel all the time. They're always going somewhere, you know, and
All the travel that I've done does not make me a better human being than someone with less travel. But what it does is it gives me a broader and better perspective on humanity than someone who has not had that exposure and that education. And that's what I bring to the table to share with those who may not travel. And because, you know, they only see what they're seeing. Like, for example,
I may give anywhere between 60 and 80 lectures a year, especially during non-COVID years. High schools, elementary schools, corporations, colleges, synagogues, churches, police departments, civic organizations, et cetera, et cetera. I can tell you this, two to three out of every 10 lectures I give,
mostly on college campuses. It does happen elsewhere, but mostly on college campuses this will happen. I'll give the lecture, I'll bring some robes and hoods and swastika flags or whatever I've received from people who've now renounced that ideology.
And I'll show them, I'll do a Q &A at the end of the lecture, but then when it's over, there'll still be some students who want to ask one last question, and they'll approach the podium, or they want to touch one of the robes, what have you. Two to three out of ten times, there's going to be some student hanging in the back of the auditorium, and I've come to learn what's up. He or she is waiting for the crowd to go away from me, from the podium.
And once the crowd dissipates and I'm packing up my stuff, he or she comes down and they look around, make sure nobody's with an ear shot. hi, Mr. Davis. You know, I really enjoyed your lecture. We shake hands. They look around again and then they whisper, you know, I was raised like that. My mother is in the Klan or my dad is a neo-Nazi skinhead or, whatever. That's how I was raised. I'm from wherever and now I'm here at University of fill in the blank and my my girlfriend is black or my boyfriend is Jewish or my best friend is gay you know whatever the case may be and that's how I was raised and and
I can't go home and bring my friend home. My parents will kill me. My parents will disown me. And I don't want to tell my friend because they'll drop me. So they got this secret that's burning on their chest causing an ulcer and they need to talk to somebody. I'm that somebody. Because I totally get it. They come from some perhaps rural area or some homogenous area where everyone goes to the same high school. They all vote for the same political camp.
They all cheer the same sports team, swim at the same neighborhood swimming pool, etc. So, but now they've come, they've left the neighborhood in high school, and now they're on this college campus. The neighborhood and high school don't come to the college campus, but on that college campus, there may be neighborhoods and high schools from all over the country and all over the world. And so they're seeing things that they did not see back home. And they're learning that Jewish people don't have horns and black people don't have tails.
and whatever else other myths that they were raised to believe. So once the bell has been rung, you can't unring it. So how do you go home and tell your high school buddies and your parents that they were wrong?
⁓ you know your parents wanted you to go get an education but not that education so you know these kinds of things i see it it happens all the time you know and and people will gravitate towards me and want to talk and figure out how how do i handle this how do i you know make ends meet with this
So, you know, conversation is very powerful and so is exposure. We spend way too much time in our country talking about the other person, talking at the other person, and talking past the other person. Why don't we spend a little bit of time talking with the other person?
Jennifer Thomas (18:23)
So Darryl, I love that you've talked about travel, you've talked about exposure and how both of those were really important to you, but I'm wondering if you would share with us, how did you get into work and how did you kind of start this process of engagement with people who could be easily perceived as your deepest enemies, right? Who don't even acknowledge that you are human or have the right to exist. So.
Daryl Davis (18:43)
Sure. Right.
Jennifer Thomas (18:48)
I just think it would be really important for our listeners to understand how you got to a place that you were willing and open to have these kinds of really powerful conversations with people who denigrate you.
Daryl Davis (19:00)
Absolutely, and I think everything we do in life, from the day we step out of the womb to the day we take our first step forward, you know, is a stepping stone towards
what we're going to do in our future life. It prepares us, all right? So in order to understand how and why I do the work that I do outside of my chosen career, which is music. Music is my profession, but trying to improve race relations is my obsession.
And my parents were U.S. Foreign Service. So I grew up as a State Department, you know, American Embassy kid. And I began traveling around the world at the age of three. So how it works, in 1961, I was born in 58, how it works is you get assigned to an American Embassy in a foreign country for two years. And at the end of the assignment, you return home and you're here in the States for a few months, maybe a year if you request a year. And then you're back overseas.
again for two years. Back and forth, back and forth were the formative years of my life. I did kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, all in different schools in different countries. And I did the in-between things back here.
The thing that I experienced that most American kids, black or white, did not experience back during that time, and many of them still have not experienced that, is that my first introduction to school was abroad, kindergarten, right? Every one of my schools and classes that I had overseas,
had kids from all over the world. How is this? Because every country that had an embassy where our U.S. embassy was stationed, all of their kids went to the same school. So this little girl right here at this little desk next to me might have been from Czechoslovakia, this kid here from Nigeria, that kid from Japan, the kid in front of me from Russia. If you were to open the door to my classroom and stick your head in and look, you would say, my goodness, you know, this looks like a United Nations of little children, because that's exactly what it was.
So that being my first introduction to school, that became the baseline for what I thought school was supposed to be. However, every time I'd come back home,
You know, after my dad's assignment, I would either be an all-black or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. And despite the fact that desegregation was passed by our U.S. Supreme Court four years before I was even born, I was born in 58 and it was passed in 1954, schools did not integrate overnight. It took years and years. And even today, in 2026, in some parts of our country, they're still struggling with integration.
So one of those times I came back, was age 10, 1968. I was in the fourth grade and we landed in Belmont, Massachusetts, about eight miles outside of Boston.
And so this was a newly integrated school. I use that word newly loosely because it's 1968, but it was passed in 1954. They just started integrating, right? So I'm in fourth grade, just two of us, me in fourth grade, and there was a little black girl in second grade. So consequently, all of my friends were fourth and fifth graders. So they all were white. Several of my male friends were members of the Cub Scouts, and they invited me to join. I joined the Cub Scouts in 1968. And I was the only black scout anywhere in the area. So we had a parade along with the Girl Scouts, Brownies, Boy Scouts, 4-H Club, different organizations.
and streets are blocked off, sidewalks are lined with nothing but white people. I'm the only one, only black person in this parade that I could see. People are waving and cheering. We were marching from Lexington, Massachusetts to Concord to commemorate the ride of Paul Revere. I think they called it Patriot Day back then. anyway, okay, so we're marching and people are waving and cheering and yelling the British are coming and smiling. Good time, right? Until we got to a certain point
Jennifer Thomas (22:41)
Still do.
Daryl Davis (22:52)
this parade route when suddenly POW! I'm getting hit with soda pop bottles and soda pop cans and just debris from the street by just a small group of spectators off to my right on the sidewalk. And I turned to see what was happening because I kept getting hit and I saw a group of maybe four five people mixed in with the larger crowd. And it was a couple of kids perhaps a year or two older than me. I did not know them. And some adults, couple adults who I assume were their parents. Who are yelling and throwing things. I couldn't understand what they were saying because there's a marching band playing and all that kind of thing. And so my first thought was when this happened was, these people over here, they don't like the scouts. That's how naive I was because I had no precedent for this behavior, right? It wasn't until my den mother, my cub master, my troop leader all came running. These are white people, right? And they covered me with their bodies and quickly escorted me out of this danger.
And I kept trying to ask, what did I do? I didn't do anything. What did I do? You know, because I saw that none of my other fellow scouts would get into special protection, just me. So I'm assuming that I had done something to incur their wrath or something. And all my leaders would do is kind of shush me and rush me along, tell me to keep moving, keep moving. Everything will be okay, just keep moving. I kept moving. They never answered my question.
And by the end of the, of course the people didn't follow us fortunately, but at the end of parade I went home and my mother and father were, they were not at the parade, but I don't know where they were, I forgot now, but they were home when I got there. And they were cleaning me up and putting band-aids on me and asking me, how did you fall down and get all scraped up? I told them I didn't fall down. I told them what had happened. And for the first time in my life, my mom and dad, sat me down and explained to me what racism was. Now, very important, believe it or not, at the age of 10, I had never heard the word racism. I had no clue what they were talking about because that word and that behavior did not exist in my sphere. I was around people from all over the world, right? We all got along. Even if we didn't look alike or speak the same language, we had slumber parties together, went to school together, played together, et cetera.
So what are you all talking about? Race? What is that? You know, my ten-year-old brain could not process the idea that my parents were telling me that I was getting injured because of the color of my skin. It made no sense. I told them they were wrong. They assured me that they were right. To prove to them that they were wrong and I was right, I pointed out the fact that my fellow Scouts
looked just like the people on the sidewalk. My friends at school looked like the people on the sidewalk. My friends overseas, whether they're my little Danish or Swedish or French or German friends, looked just like the people on the sidewalk. Color had nothing to do with this. My parents said, yes, they did. So anyway, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4th. And I remember that very well.
every major city in this country, nearby Boston, where I am right now, Washington DC, my hometown Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, all burned to the ground with violence and destruction, all in the name of this new word I had learned called racism. So now I realize, and my parents had told me the truth, that this phenomenon does exist, and I accepted that. But what I did not understand and did not know was why. Why does racism exist? So at that age, I formed a question in my own mind, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And for the next 57, almost 58 years now, because I'll be 68 in a couple months, when I was 10 back then, I've been looking for the answer to that question. So who better to ask that question of than someone who would go so far as to join an organization that has over a hundred year history of practicing hating people who don't look like them or who don't believe as they believe. Whoever heard of such an organization that practices hate? know, just try to fathom that, just boggles the mind. But anyway,
So I began seeking out these kinds of people to find out how many you hate me. We don't even know me. All you see is this. And you've made an assessment about me that may or may not be true. Right. Now I will say this to answer your question. That's that was my experience and that's what prodded me to follow this. I'm somebody who rather than get furious I got curious. But let me say this though.
If I had not had all that travel and had all that exposure to different people and my first encounter, let's say with white people, know, for my first time, you know, being around white people at an integrated school and so forth, my first ⁓ experience was having rocks and bottles thrown at me. Would I be doing this work today? Maybe not.
Maybe I'd be trying to stay as far away from those people as I could, you know? But perhaps because I was exposed to people who looked like those people but did not behave that way, it made it hard for me to paint everybody with a broad brush.
Jennifer Thomas (27:56)
Everybody yeah and allowed you to maintain some curiosity
Daryl Davis (28:00)
Exactly. Why do they behave this way and they don't behave this way, but yet they look the same? Or they share all this in common?
Patrick Mason (28:09)
Such an amazing story. It's so inspiring. What would you say, you know, there's this moment where you encountered difference. Well, from the very beginning you encountered difference and it wasn't a problem, right? All these other friends at school and so forth. And then you encountered hostility and...
For most, especially in the 21st century, most people are gonna encounter some kind of serious diversity at some point. Now you've been studying and thinking about this for nearly six decades, what is the fork in the road? Why do some people lean into curiosity and that turns into some form of embrace of diversity? Whereas other people go into suspicion and...eventually hatred if it goes off. What is that for? Maybe there's multiple forks in the roads, but what are the factors that you've seen that differentiate?
Daryl Davis (29:03)
Sure, I can share that with you, absolutely. But right before that, so after the assassination of Dr. King, some of my friends, some of my close friends that I played with every day after school or whatever, were no longer allowed to play with me by their parents, not by my parents. And I remember this, we lived in a duplex.
and they're a two-part house downstairs and upstairs. We lived upstairs. There's two front doors. The landlord lady lived downstairs. now, in my mind at the time, keep in mind, I'm 10 years old. To me, she was an old white lady. Now, she may have been 30 years old, but because she was like my parents' age.
So, to me that was old. She was the nicest person in the world. She rented us her upstairs and whenever she baked cookies she always brought some over for us and all that kind of thing, right? Well, right after King was assassinated, when my friends would come over, if my mom was making me lunch or whatever, feeding me lunch, she would invite them in and make them lunch as well. Same thing if I went to their house and they were having lunch, their mom would invite me in and I have lunch over there.
All of that stopped. Not my parents, some of their parents. I'd go to someone's house, know, little Johnny can't come out today, or he's having lunch. But I wasn't invited in, or he's not coming out today. And then I'd go down to the park to meet up with some other friends, and about half an hour later, here comes little Johnny. I thought, ⁓ you couldn't come out today. My mom doesn't want me playing with you anymore. What? Why? I don't know. And seriously, he didn't know. They just stopped that.
What it is to answer your question, Patrick, was fear. Ignorance is the root cause. Ignorance breeds fear. are fearful. People are fearful of those things they don't understand.
And the lady, the nice white old lady, she became in my mind at that time a mean old lady. Now in retrospect, I understand why she did what she did, but let me, I'm getting ahead here. So sometimes, you know, when my friends would come over, we'd play on the porch, was like a big porch and wide open porch. Well, she never bothered us, you know, she even brought cookies out for all of us.
So after the assassination, I remember we were playing on the porch one day and she came out and she said, Darryl, I want you and your friends to play on your side of the porch. My side of the porch? I didn't know there was a side. I there was no line going down it, you know, my side of the porch. And then she said, better yet, I don't want you playing on the porch at all. You all need to play inside the house.
Why is this lady being so mean? I didn't understand it. In retrospect, I totally understand it. She was fearful.
that some people, because you know, people were rioting in the streets all the time, right, during this time. She was fearful that some white people, you know, who may not like the idea so much that this white woman is renting half her house to a black family would see me playing on the porch and then, you know, burn a cross in the yard or do something to harm her or harm her property or whatever. So she was doing it for, you know, preservation of her property and perhaps preservation of me, you know. That's how serious this thing was.
and people didn't understand what was going on. You that was probably the biggest riot of the 20th century next to George Floyd or something. So anyway, that ignorance, you know, breeds fear. You fear of what's going to happen to your property, what could happen to you. If you don't keep that fear in check, that fear in turn will escalate to hatred because we hate the things that frighten us.
If you don't keep the hatred in check, the hatred in turn will escalate into destruction. People want to destroy the things they hate. Why? Because those things frighten them. But guess what? At the end of the day, those things may have been harmless and we were simply ignorant.
But that's how the chain unravels. Ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds hatred, hatred breeds destruction. And that's not just with adults like our landlady or whoever, right? It's also prominent with children because I give lectures at elementary schools, middle schools also, right? And sometimes I might be, of course I tone it down a lot, but let's say I'm standing in the front of the class, right, of this little elementary school and all these little desks and little kids sitting there from your seven rows back and I'm at the front of the class and I'm just talking casually like I am now and then all of a sudden out of the blue I say hey hey there's a snake under your chair and I pointed somebody in the front row
The person in the front row throws their legs up in the air, throws their hands up in the air and starts screaming. And then everybody in the class seven rows back throw their legs up in the air and start screaming. I'm pointing at the front chair, but people in the back row are throwing their legs up, right? And they start screaming and hollering. And then they realize, okay, you know, there's no snake here. You know, I don't know what's wrong with this guy. He must be joking or something. And they all start laughing. And so I asked myself, you know, why are you all throwing your legs up in the air and screaming and stuff? And then it comes out. They all said, I'm afraid of snakes.
Daryl Davis (33:53)
I hate snakes. There's your fear. There's your hatred. Right? They're afraid of snakes. They hate snakes. So, so then...
Jennifer Thomas (33:58)
Sometimes they might not even hate snakes but the person next to them screamed right? There's it's also sometimes we're just human beings and I think that is true often in race relations right? Like I don't have any reason to be afraid but someone who I trust is screaming so maybe there's something to be afraid of right?
Daryl Davis (34:02)
Exactly. Exactly. Mob mentality. Exactly. Mob mentality. And that's the definition of mass hysteria. So then I said, well, why do you hate snakes? Why are you afraid of them? Well, they're slimy. They're poisonous. Well, there's your ignorance. Not all snakes are poisonous. And if you've ever felt a snake, it's not slimy. It's dry. So ignorance breeds the fear. Fear breeds the hatred. So then I say to them, OK, well, obviously there's no snake under anybody's chair. I was just joking. But.
Let's just say there really was a snake under your chair that I pointed out. What would you all want me to do with it? You know what they say? Kill it. There's your destruction right there. And these are little children. You know, so what we need to do is we, you know, we, it's kind of, I guess, counterintuitive, but we spend a lot of time in our country addressing the destruction.
I say forget about the destruction. What's been destroyed is not coming back. That's why it's destroyed. It's gone away. You can't bring it back. Forget about the destruction. The destruction is nothing more than a byproduct, a symptom of the nucleus of the root cause. Forget about the hatred. That also is a byproduct. Forget about the fear, another symptom of the root cause. The root cause is ignorance. And if you can cure the ignorance,
then there'll be nothing to fear. Because we only fear that of which we're ignorant, right? So if we can cure the ignorance, there's nothing to fear. With nothing to fear, there's nothing to hate. With nothing to hate, there's nothing to get mad about and destroy. The good thing is this, there is a cure for ignorance. That cure is called education and exposure. And that goes back to the Tower of Babel, right?
So that's why it's so important to get to know your neighbor. Invite your neighbor, treat your neighbor as you would treat your family. Love thy neighbor. Isn't that also in the Bible? So anybody who's outside the tower is your neighbor, you know?
and talks about the different languages. They were scattered all over the planet and had different languages. That's probably where the word babble comes from. I don't know what he's babbling about. When somebody babbles, you don't know what they're saying. You're saying something. It's like a foreign language.
Jennifer Thomas (36:21)
obviously this education information is linked to being willing to converse with one another, right? Like I can't learn about you if I'm not willing to listen to you or talk to you. I can't really understand your perspective unless I'm willing to do that work. Have you seen, I mean, do you have some experiences in your work, particularly with white supremacists, where you have seen a pattern of what kind of language?
How can we learn to talk to other people to show curiosity and maybe change the trajectory of conversations that are otherwise really combative and aren't leading to a good place? What are the patterns that our listeners can use to have more productive and educative conversations?
Daryl Davis (37:04)
Okay, a few things. One, are you familiar with the term, one's perception is one's reality?
Okay, whatever somebody perceives becomes their reality. Even if it's not real, it's still their reality. You, you, me, none of us can change somebody's reality. And, you know, if we try, we're going to get pushback. We're going to get resistance because they think it's real. All right? Where we come from, two plus two is four. Two plus two may be five where they think it comes from. All right? And if you try to attack that, you're going to get resistance.
continue the attack, it's going to escalate. It's going to get loud and then suddenly, boom, you you're going to be rolling on the floor hitting each other. know, no fight starts without yelling and screaming first, generally. So, we don't, the first thing people want to do is when somebody is wrong, they want to accuse them being wrong and point out they're wrong and tell them that they're wrong and they need to change this behavior or this belief or whatever it is, right?
We should try to get away from that. Don't try to change somebody's reality. Even if you know 100 % that what they're thinking is wrong, they believe it's right. That's their perception that created their reality. What you want to do is this.
rather than attack their reality and risk contention and possibly a physical confrontation or loss of friendship or something, you wanna offer them a better perception or perceptions, plural, because if they resonate with one of your perceptions, then they will change their own reality because one's perception becomes one's reality. So let me give you an example. I'll give you two examples, one hypothetical and the other one
for real, hypothetical. Let's say you have a young brother, maybe he's seven, eight years old. He goes to the magic show with his buddies and he comes home and tells you, Jennifer, you're not going to believe this. You know, this magician on stage, he asked for a female volunteer and 50 women raised their hand. He looked around. He picked one out of the audience, brought her up on stage.
shoved the microphone in her face, you know, where are you from, you know, what's your name, and then he had her climb into this long box and put her feet out the hole at this one end and put her head out the hole at the other end. And then he closed the box and he took a chainsaw and he went right through the middle of the box and the chainsaw came out the bottom of the box.
Jennifer, cut this woman in half. And then he told her to wiggle her feet. And she wiggled her feet out that hole.
Jennifer Thomas (39:27)
I saw it.
Daryl Davis (39:33)
And you say, listen, it didn't happen like that. Yes, it did. I saw it. was there. You weren't there. I saw it with my own eyes. You weren't even there. He's 100 % correct. You were not there. Therefore, you could not have seen it. So how dare you tell me what I saw when you weren't even there, right? You've attacked his reality and he's giving you pushback, right? And to prove to you that he is right and you were wrong, he carries on. Well, after this guy cut this woman in half, she wiggled her feet, he took that the half of the box with the feet and moved it over here to stage right and the half with the head and moved it over there to stage left. And then he walked over there and talked to the lady's head and the lady's head talked back to him. And then he brought the two halves back together. He did some abracadabra incantation over the box and then he opened the lid and she climbed out. He cut her in half. He separated her. He put her back together and no blood, Jennifer. And you say, listen,
It's an illusion. No, it's not. He's going to go off on you again. And you have destroyed, you're destroying a relationship between you and your brother. All right. So rather than, than go down that road, you know what he's describing cannot happen, but he believes it happened. That's what magic's all about. Deception, right? So rather than attack his reality, you say to him, listen,
I hear what you're saying, I understand what you're saying. That's pretty cool. But let me ask you a question. Do you think that just maybe, perhaps?
that it's possible that when the magician asks for a female volunteer and all these women raise their hand and he picked one out of the audience, do you think that just maybe she might work for him? She knows the trick and she travels to every city all over the country with him and she always sits in that same theater seat. So every time he asks for a volunteer, he looks around the audience and always zeroes in on her and brings her up on stage. And then when she climbs into this box, there is a pair of mannequins dummy legs laying on the floor of the box that are wearing the exact same stockings and stiletto heels that she has on. So she just reaches over and shoves the poles of these legs out the hole. So only the ankles and the shoes are exposed. She takes her own knees and brings them up under her own chest. So her whole body is on that half of the box. So when the saw goes through, it never even touches her.
He says, no, now wiggle your feet, she reaches over, grabs the end of those mannequin legs and shakes them and the feet wiggle outside the hole. So now when he separates the two halves, she no longer has control over those feet. So he doesn't want you watching or looking at those feet because they can't move anymore. So he walks over to this side of the stage because you're going to follow him with your eyes and he talks to the head. Of course her head's going to talk back because her whole body is over there. So now he brings the two halves back together.
and he does all his abracadabra and she reaches over pulls those legs back into the box leaves them laying on the floor and she climbs out and your brother says hmm you know that might be the only way that could work you've offered him a better perception and he has come to the conclusion he his perception became your perception became his reality all right that's how you do things and that's how I I converse with these people by offering perceptions.
Patrick Mason (42:52)
I think that is a fantastic lesson and I love the visual too because I'm going to remember that. I assume people are going to remember that, right?
Daryl Davis (42:52)
But now I will tell you something, I will tell you something though. I went and saw David Copperfield and I saw him make an elephant disappear off that stage for real, man. I know it happened. None of y'all can convince me.
Jennifer Thomas (43:08)
You know it's happened. No, can convince you. Yeah. Nobody's going to convince you otherwise. I'm not going to try.
Patrick Mason (43:17)
No illusion there, yeah.
Jennifer Thomas (43:18)
I also wouldn't be able to explain it to you. So I have no alternative reality to offer.
Daryl Davis (43:23)
⁓ so that was hypothetical. So I'll tell you for real. So this clan leader in Missouri, he had the largest clan group in the country at the time. And he and I were becoming close. He was beginning to think about some of the things I was sharing with him. And I could see him moving in a better direction, right?
If he had lived for another year, he would have been out of the Klan. But unfortunately, he was murdered. And I knew the murderer very well. I knew him very well. I knew his whole family. Very, very sad situation. So I went to his funeral. And I participated in his funeral out in Missouri. I played hymns on the church piano, you know, for the service.
And now he had three sisters and his mom and dad were there. Now his family, his mother and father and his sisters had nothing to do with the Ku Klux Klan. You know, they abhorred it and they didn't understand how their son or their brother had gotten involved. He apparently had gone down the wrong hole or something, the wrong rabbit hole, and because he was not raised that way.
So they did not understand that. But they'd heard about him making friends with me. And they were happy to meet me and thank me for taking the time to talk to him and all this kind of thing. And they could see him slowly changing. So.
They kept in contact with me and the father, he was the only son. One boy and three girls. These are all adult children, They're in their 40s and 50s and stuff. Anyway, the father would call me once, twice a week. He didn't want talk to anybody in the clan. He wanted to talk to somebody who was real, who knew his son. So he'd call me. I spent as much time with him as I could. One day he called.
sitting right here in my living room and it was the father and he was crying. He tells me he has a gun in his hand and he's going to kill the person who murdered his son. It's like whoa you know I really you know this is a crisis. Something's got to be done here. Now I knew that if I tried to give him a ⁓ rational, logical argument, you know, and tell him, you know, about reality.
It's not going to work. If I said to him, look man, if you go and do that, you're going to get locked up. You're going to be put, you you're already an old man. You're going be put in jail for 40 plus years. You're going to die in prison. He would have said, I don't care. You know, this person killed my son. This person does not deserve to live. I get it. I understand that. All right. So no amount of rationale, you know, or attacking his reality of, you know, you're going to live out the rest of your life in prison is going to, is going to
Daryl Davis (46:02)
dissuade him from doing what he felt he had to do to avenge his son's death. So I had to use, because he's coming from an emotional decision as opposed to a logical one, so I had to meet him where he was. If he was dealing logically, then I would give him a logical argument. But if he's dealing with emotion, I have to be emotional with him. So I said, You've already lost Frank. Frank was the son. I said, Frank's not coming back. I said, you got three beautiful daughters.
Yes, if you go out and kill this person, you know what's going to happen? You're going to lose all three daughters because they're not going to put you in prison in Missouri. They're going to put you in New York, maybe Rikers Island or San Quentin out in California. They're going make it difficult for your family to come visit you. And you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison. You're not going to see your daughters. You're not going be there to see your grandkids, so forth and so on. You're going lose your whole family. Why do you want to throw away three beautiful daughters? Because you've lost Frank. That's what stopped him from doing it. I had to appeal to him emotionally. So, you know, one's perception is very important. His reality was this person, you know, does not deserve to walk the face of this earth any longer. I had to give him a better perception about, hey, you you lost one. Why do you want to lose all four?
Patrick Mason (47:00)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's so powerful. Glad you were the one on the other side of that line, that phone line that you'd created the relationship to be able to do that.
Daryl Davis (47:24)
Now you know what was crazy? I was over at a friend of mine's house. He was doing some video editing for me, because I don't know how to do that stuff, but he was doing it for me. And my phone rang about 10, 15 minutes after midnight. And it was this other Klansman. And he asked me,
If I'd seen Frank if I talked to Frank because Frank would call me every so often and I said no I haven't talked to him in a few days I guess this guy talked to him every day or something and I said he goes there I think I think something something's wrong. I said, what do you mean? and he says well, I talked to to to his wife and something sounded kind of funny and
I said, well, you know, he and his wife were having issues. She was strung out on drugs. And he was trying to get her help into a rehab, and she was not going forward. And she was taking Klan money and buying drugs and pawning things out of the house. She was an addict. And pawning things out of the house to support her drug habit. And so Frank had told her, you know, that he was considering divorcing her. And anyway,
Long story short, she killed him. She murdered him. And so, anyway, the guy who called me said, you know, when you talk to her looking for her husband, she sounded kind of funny. He goes, I'm not sure, you know, I think something's happened to Frank. And I said, you know, they're having their little tiff, you he'll probably come home tomorrow. You'll hear from him tomorrow or whatever.
And he goes, I don't know, I'm going to call her back. So he called her back. And then he calls me at four o'clock in the morning and tells me that that Frank was dead, that this woman had had murdered him. And I said, did you call the police? It was no. Why are you calling me? You know, but this this is the level of trust that that that had developed.
He's gonna tell me who is the enemy, which is why he joined the Klan. He didn't like black people, right? He's gonna confide something in me. He broke his Klan oath, by the way, because when you join the Klan, you take an oath. One of the things is you never reveal Klan business to an alien. An alien is their term for a non-member. So now he's revealing Klan business to me. And I said, you know.
I don't need to hear anymore about this, but he told me the whole story and sure enough, long story short, she was arrested and she sits in prison now for the rest of her life.
Patrick Mason (49:36)
All of this to me is just a really good lesson that doing the work of peace means doing hard things and being in hard places and having the willingness to have hard conversations.
Daryl Davis (49:46)
Yes. And sometimes, you know, we need to you know, experience things that we've never experienced, whether they're good or bad, so that we know the difference.
Patrick Mason (49:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my last question for you, I mean, it's just so much more than we could talk about, but just for the sake of time, my last question for you is in the midst of all of this, in the midst of all these conversations, the difficult things, these relationships that you've formed, how and where do you find peace in a world of conflict?
Daryl Davis (50:17)
Okay, good question. I think first of all, you must find peace within yourself. Exclude all the external things. You know, are you happy with what you're doing? Are you working to make your life better? Alright? Find peace within yourself. Work hard at that. Alright? Because, and once you find peace within yourself,
And then you share that with other people so that they too can find peace. Okay? And when that is done, you have made peace with God.
That's my feeling. God gave us a life in which he's given us free reign of whatever we want to do. We want to do evil, we want to do good, we want to do whatever. Of course, I think he prefers that we do good and that we are peaceful kind of people. But you can't do that if you're focusing on trying to...bring peace out there in the world and you're not peaceful yourself. It's like, know, whenever you fly on an airplane, the first thing these flight attendants tell you, you know, in the event of an emergency, you know, the thing is going to drop down from above you, the oxygen mask, right? And they always tell you, put yours on first before assisting others. Because if you can't breathe, how are you going to help somebody else? Right?
So find peace within yourself. You know, be satisfied that you are doing your work to please God and please yourself and then share that peace with others, your neighbors, your friends, total strangers. All right? That is God's work. That's what Jesus did. You know, he mingled with the lepers, the prostitutes, the thieves, the whatever.
Patrick Mason (51:57)
Amen. Well, thank you, Daryl Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for your life of work, of bridging differences and repairing the many breaches in humanity. It's really inspiring and we're honored to have had you on Proclaim Peace.
Jennifer Thomas (51:58)
Amen.
Daryl Davis (51:59)
Thank you.
Jennifer Thomas (52:03)
Yeah.
Daryl Davis (52:10)
Thank you. It's my pleasure. And have a new book. It's called The Klan Whisperer. And it has a lot more stories in there.
Jennifer Thomas (52:12)
Well, I'm hopeful that none of our listeners will be able to say, well, I can't possibly listen to my mother-in-law or to my next door neighbor or the person next to me in the pews when you've set such a beautiful example for us of being able and willing to listen to people who really deeply disagree with us.
Patrick Mason (52:19)
All right. Exactly.
Daryl Davis (52:31)
Well, you know, you know, Jennifer, every Thanksgiving, I hear the same thing. I can't go have Thanksgiving dinner with my family because my sister voted for so-and-so and I voted for this one. You know, we just can't talk. Listen, look at me. You see this? If I can go to a Klan rally, you all can sit down with your family at Thanksgiving dinner.
Jennifer Thomas (52:51)
We can sit down with grandpa. Yeah.
Patrick Mason (52:53)
That's a good note to end on. So, Daryl, Daryl, thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
Jennifer Thomas (52:53)
Yes, it's perfect. Thanks for joining us.
Daryl Davis (52:54)
Thank you all very much.
Jennifer Thomas (52:58)
Thanks for listening to this episode of "Proclaim Peace." To hear more, you can subscribe on a podcast app of your choice or on YouTube. You can always find full show notes or transcriptions at proclaimpeace.org.
Patrick Mason (53:11)
"Proclaim Peace" is a partnership between MWEG and Waymakers. You can learn more about Waymakers at waymakers.us. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time.
