If one more person tells me I need to try to understand Trump voters or

[rpannier]

120. This guy might disagree with you

The Audacity of Talking About Race With the Ku Klux Klan

When musician Daryl Davis first met a member of the Ku Klux Klan he was the only black man in a country band. They were playing a gig at an all-white venue in Frederick, Maryland. After their set, a member of the audience approached Davis to compliment his piano skills, saying he'd never heard a black pianist play like Jerry Lee Lewis. "Who do you think taught Jerry Lee Lewis to play that way?" Davis replied. They hit it off. The patron wanted to buy Davis a drink, and soon after he observed that he'd never in his life had a drink or conversed with a black man.

snip

As he sees it, conversations of a particular sort can be hugely useful in the fight against racism. Indeed, he has defended conversations that many people would condemn, starting with the time that he called up that member of the Ku Klux Klan, informed him of an upcoming gig at the Silver Dollar Lounge, and befriended him as he attended subsequent gigs, sometimes with other Klan members. His friends, black and white alike, thought that he was crazy. These people belonged to a despicable, stomach-churning, evil organization. They deserved contempt.

snip

For our purposes, it is enough to know that at the end of the interview, the two men shook hands and the Klan leader said, "Stay in touch," extending his business card. "I was thinking, what? I didn't come here to make friends with the Klan!" Davis said. "I came here to find out, how can you hate me when you don't know me?" Nevertheless, he started inviting the Klan leader to gigs and then
to his house.

link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/the-audacity-of-talking-about-race-with-the-klu-klux-klan/388733/

Meet the Black Blues Musician Who Befriended the KKK

For decades, blues musician Daryl Davis has been raising eyebrows with his unconventional hobby: befriending and converting bigoted members of the Ku Klux Klan, whose white hoods he symbolically collects along the way.

“I try to bring out the humanity in people,” he told The Daily Beast following the SXSW premiere of Accidental Courtesy, a documentary about Davis and his unorthodox methods that sparked provocative Q&As at the festival. Sitting down to chat in Austin, Texas, flanked by director Matthew Ornstein and ex-KKK member Scott Shepherd, Davis smiled warmly. “We all are human beings at the end of the day.”

The film chronicles D.C. fixture Davis’s remarkable knack for winning over racists with friendship, and includes several scenes in which the Chicago-born bluesman boldly initiates sit-down conversations about race with some of America’s preeminent racists

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/18/meet-the-black-blues-musician-who-befriended-the-kkk.html

Davis' Logic


The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself. So if you have an adversary with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform. Allow them to air that point of view, regardless of how extreme it may be. And believe me, I've heard things so extreme at these rallies they'll cut you to the bone.

Give them a platform.

You challenge them. But you don't challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently. And when you do things that way chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform. So he and I would sit down and listen to one another over a period of time. And the cement that held his ideas together began to get cracks in it. And then it began to crumble. And then it fell apart.

He has gotten members of the Klan to quit the group