June 17, 2021 • 27 mins
At Pushkin, we think of Juneteenth as an opportunity to reflect on the past and think about the future: How do we build a more just and equitable society? We strive to make podcasts that help answer that question, and in honor of Juneteenth, we’re highlighting two of them. In this episode, you'll hear previews of our new shows Be Antiracist and A Slight Change of Plans. We hope these episodes inspire thinking and conversation around issues of race in your own lives.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin high listeners at Jacob Weisberg here, I'm the CEO
of Pushkin Industries. At Pushkin, we think of Juneteenth as
an opportunity to reflect on the past and think about
the future. How do we build a more just and
(00:36):
equitable society. We strive to make podcasts that help to
answer that question, and in honor of Juneteenth, we're highlighting
two of them. Be Anti Racist is hosted by doctor
Ibram X. Kendy, an author, professor, activist, and historian. His
book How to Be an Anti Racist has become a
(00:57):
guide for anyone interested in dismantling the structures that racism creates.
The podcast gives him a chance to dive deep into
issues like immigration, to sports, and voting rights with guests
like Julian Castro and Jamel Hill. Who're going to You're
An excerpt from a conversation doctor Kendy had recently with
(01:17):
author and political analyst Heather cmgee. They focus on the
economic costs of racism for everyone, not just those in
black or brown communities, and how diversity can lead to
economic prosperity for all. Then you'll hear a truly remarkable
story of bridging racial divides Darrell Davis is a black
jazz musician who has convinced hundreds of KKK members to
(01:40):
leave the clan. It all started with one conversation in
a jazz club because Darryll was interested in understanding people
with wildly different views. Darrell appeared on A Slight Change
of Plans, a podcast hosted by doctor Maya Shankar. Shankar
is a cognitive scientist who's fascinated by what happens when
we find ourselves at the brink of change, and she's
(02:03):
got a knack for getting people, including Hillary Clinton and
Tiffany Hattisch to open up to her years Doctor Kendy
on Be Anti Racist Welcome to Be Anti Racist in
Action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and
(02:25):
abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness of
racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy,
How to free humanity through the unity of anti racist
ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy.
On b Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
(02:47):
impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern
humans have never known, a just an equitable world. You ready,
Let's roll in the night thirties and forties, the United
(03:11):
States went on a nationwide building boom of public amenities
funded by tax dollars, which in Montgomery, Alabama, included the
Oak Park Pool, which was the grandest one for miles,
except the Oak Park Pool was for whites only. When
a federal court finally deemed this unconstitutional, the reaction of
(03:34):
the town council was swift. They decided they would drain
the public pool rather than let black families swim to
They never rebuilt the pool. Racism has a cost for everyone.
HEATHERN McGee is an expert in economic and social policy
(03:56):
and the author of the best selling book The Some
of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can
prosper Together. Heather explodes one of the greatest racial myths
that white people lose as people of color gain. She
shows that as racism wins, we all lose. Heather is
(04:19):
one of America's sharpest thinkers. The former president of the
inequality focused think Take Demos and its drafted legislation, testified
before Congress, and contributed regularly to new shows, including NBC's
Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of Color
of Change, the nation's largest online racial Justice Organization. I
(04:42):
sat down with Heather McGee recently to learn how by
investing in each other, we can all achieve better jobs,
better health, better democracy, better schools, better neighborhoods for our kids,
and so much more. Heather is always it's truly an
honor to speak with you. Your book, The Some of Us,
(05:07):
is the type of book that I learned from that
I think many Americans and many people around the world
can learn from. I wrote this book because I felt
like we were missing something in the great pursuit of
a society. It should be to have progress, to have
people have less want and more joy, people to have
(05:29):
more of the fruits of economic progress and technological progress,
and for our problems to be solved generation after generation, right,
And it felt like that progress slowing down, slash reversing.
When some Americans imagine the transformation of this country, they
(05:52):
imagine that they're going to lose if we actually create
inequitable and just anti racist America. And it seems, as
you've written, that that's based on a zero sum myth.
So I left a career in economic policy to go
out on the quixotic journey in some ways, to find
(06:13):
the answer to the question of why can't we seem
to have nice things? And what are the roots of
our dysfunction? And it's there that I came upon this
paradigm of the zero sum. It's a term that means
there's no such thing as mutual progress when you have
people who are in a competition with one another. If
(06:34):
team A scores one more point, team B scores one
less point, the points will always add up to zero,
positive on one side, negative on the other. Progress for
team A has to come at the expense of team B.
There's a limited or fixed pie. And that idea resonated
so deeply with me. It sort of gave a name
(06:56):
and a description to something I had sensed my whole life,
this fear that when white supremacy falls, that the world
will become one that white people should fear. Therefore, racism
is really great for white people, really terrible for people
(07:18):
of color, and so their self interest is in preserving
racism at all costs. And it's the at all costs
piece that really felt so important for me to lay out,
what are the costs of racism to our entire society,
What exactly is the price white people are willing to pay?
(07:38):
To keep the system as it has been. And once
I started looking, the list just kept growing, and that
made it clear to me that we have these self
interested elites packaging marketing, selling this zero sum lie to
most white Americans, and they're doing it for their own profit.
(08:00):
But our side, when we only talk about racism as
something that's good for white people, are kind of like
helping out a little bit, right provocation. The agitation that
made me feel like, Okay, maybe I do have something
to add to this conversation was we haven't told the
full story of what it has caused this entire country.
You were specifically writing about white folks who think that
(08:24):
they're going to lose, but as a man of color
reading it, I also think men of color too have
bought into this myth of the zero sum, and I
think that as they've seen women of color organizing and
advocating in some cases rising, they too have felt threatened
(08:44):
as if they're losing. Yeah, but back to white folks,
this is what I've been sort of saying, and I
want to know whether I'm just wrong that white Americans
typically compare their lot two people of color, and so,
in other words, if their school has more resources in
(09:05):
a way, their child's school is almost like a first
class school. They're like, whoa, if we create equity, then
I'm gonna be back in coach. Yeah. I don't want that.
I'm gonna lose. My kid's gonna lose. But it seems
to me that white Americans should be assessing themselves from
other white people in the Western world. Yeah, and when
they make that comparison, that's when they can see actually
(09:30):
what they don't have, how they're in coach. That's right,
And in fact, maybe in other societies in the Western world,
everybody's just in first class. There's no little curtain that
the flight attendant moves over right, and everyone gets food right,
everyone has a leg room, you know, everybody gets to
bring a bag. You know. This really comes from and
(09:51):
is a feature of how brutally hierarchical our society is.
In the first chapter of the Some of Us, I
go back in our history. I am I I'm like
somebody else here on this conversation. I'm not in the story,
and but I felt like I had to go to
the beginning to find out where this zero s worldview
and this lie came from, whose interest it served, and
(10:13):
why it sort of reanimated generation after generation, and as
it turns out, it was created as a way to
sort of discipline white Europeans in the colonial era to
be satisfied with their lot in a society where wealth
(10:33):
was still quite concentrated, and where because of chattel slavery
in the plantation economy, there actually wasn't a lot of
room a white person who was not a plantation owner.
Their labor wasn't needed in the southern economy, right, Like,
what do we need you for? Right? This myth of
white supremacy was sold to white masses so that they
(10:56):
could have, of course, as W B. Depoys said, the
psychological wages of whiteness rather than material wages, and those
psychological wayses were knowing always that in a deeply unequal
economy they could nonetheless count on being more than and
better than Black people. Now, hang on for the amazing
(11:22):
story of Darryll Davis from a slight change of plans. So,
I was riding in my car. I'm driving, and this
clansman was sitting in my passenger seat, and we got
on the topic of a crime, and he made the
mention that black people are born with a gene that
(11:45):
makes them violent. And I said, look, I'm as black
as anybody you've ever seen. I have never done a
drive by or a car jacking. How do you explain
that this man did not hesitate one second? He answered
me instantly, He said, your gene is latent. It hasn't
come out yet. That's Darryll Davis, a blues musician. And yeah,
(12:09):
you heard him right. He's driving in his car with
a member of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, I
was speechless. I was dumbfounded. And he's sitting next to
me with all smug and secure. Huh. You see, you
know you have nothing to say. And I thought about
it for a moment. Rather than attack him, you say
it's not true. It's not true. I said to him,
(12:30):
I said, you know, white people have a gene within
them that make them serial killers. And he said, why
would you say that? I said, well, Jason, name me
three black serial killers. He thought about it. You couldn't
name anybody. You couldn't do it, I rattled off. Charles Manson,
(12:51):
Jeffrey Dalmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy,
David Berkowitz, son of Sam Albert de Salvo the Boston Strangler,
and I said, son, you are a serial killer. And
he said, Darrell, I've never killed anybody. I said, You're
genus legent hasn't come out yet. He said, well, that's stupid,
(13:11):
and I said, well, duh, it is stupid. And he
got very, very quiet, and I could tell that the
gears in his head were spinning super fast, probably burning
a hole in there. And then he a moment later
he changed the subject. But within five months this guy
quit the Ku Klux Klan. Since that car ride thirty
(13:35):
years ago, Darryl Davis has gone on to convince dozens
of people to leave the Ku Klux Klan. Convincing someone
else to change their mind their view of reality is
one of the most elusive, coveted types of change, which
is why Darryl's story feels so improbable. So how does
he do it? I'm Maya Shunker. As a cognitive scientist,
(13:57):
I've always been fascinated by how we change our minds
and why we change our minds. On this show, I'll
have intimate conversations with people who've navigated extraordinary change, and
hopefully their stories will at us to think differently about
change In our own lives. This is a slight change
of plans, our construution, our construu. Daryl didn't set out
(14:37):
to change anyone's mind. He was mostly just focused on
his music. But one night his life took an unexpected
turn when he was playing a show at a bar
called the Silver Dollar Lounge. The Silver Dollar Lounge at
the time was an all white lounge. And I say
that not meaning that black people could not go in,
(14:59):
but meaning that they did not go in by their
own choice because they were not welcome there. And when
you go somewhere where you're not welcome and alcohol all
is being served, sometimes it is not made for a
good combination, especially when you're outnumbered. So we took a
break after the first set, and I was walking across
the dance floor to go sit you with the bandmates
(15:20):
when somebody approached me from behind and put their arm
around my shoulder. No, I don't know anybody in this place,
so I'm turning around to see who's touching me, and
was this gentleman maybe fifteen eighteen years older than me.
And he's all excited. He says, man, I sure like
your piano playing. This is the first time I ever
heard of black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,
(15:41):
and I told him. I said, well, Gerry Lee got
it from the same place I did, from black blues
and boogie woogie piano players. Oh no, no, no no, no,
I never heard no black name play like that except
for you. Jerry Lee invented that style. I said, look,
I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a good friend of mine.
He's told me himself where he learned how to play.
The guy didn't buy that either, but he was so
fascinated with me that he wanted me to come back
(16:04):
to his table. He's going to buy me a drink,
so I don't drink, but I agreed to have a
cranberry juice. He bought it, paid the waitress, and then
he took his glass and he clinked my glass and
cheered me, and then he announces, you know, this is
the first time IRA sat down with a black man
and had a drink. So innocently. I asked him why,
and he didn't answer me at first. I asked him again,
(16:26):
and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and
said tell him, tell him, And the guy looked at
me and said I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Well I burst out laughing at him because now I
do not believe him. I thought he was putting the
joke on me. I'm laughing. He goes inside his pocket,
pulls out his wallet, flips through it, and hands me
(16:47):
his clan membership card. I recognized the clan insignia, which
is a red circle with a white cross and a
red blood drop in the center of the cross, and
I'm thinking myself, oh my goodness, you know this is
for real. So I stopped laughing. But he was, you know,
very friendly and very appreciative of my music and all excited.
(17:08):
He gave me his phone number to, you know, to
call him whenever I was to return to this bar
with this band, and so I'd call him every six
weeks and say, hey, man, you know I'm down there
at the Silver Dollar this weekend, come on out. You say,
it's so nonchalantly like so I called the guy. It
is remarkable that you called this person. And you know,
I don't think I'm alone in struggling to understand, you know,
(17:31):
what was going through through your mind at this moment.
If someone told me that they were in the freaking clan.
I would certainly not call them back. In fact, I'd
probably just flee the scene. And I think this is
for pretty good reasons. Well, you know, I was questioning
myself for a second, like what the heck am I
doing sitting here with a klansman. But the guy was friendly.
(17:54):
He disputed the things that I had in mind of
the image over typical klansmen, and he wanted to share
my music with some of his fellow clansmen and clanswomen.
And they would, you know, get on the dancelore and
dancelore I'm music. You know they didn't come in robes hoods, right,
you know, they came in regular street clothes. This goes
on for a year, an entire year. Darrell would play
(18:17):
a gig at this bar, and he would invite clan
members to watch him play. This is one of those
things that makes Darrell so unusual. I mean, for me,
a huge part of what makes someone who they are
is their belief system. And so if we share the
same taste in music, that's fine, that's great. But if
I then find out they're a flagrant racist, that's going
(18:39):
to fully eclipse everything else about them. So how does
Darrell look past that, he says, It's not like that.
He wasn't looking past it. He wanted to learn from it. See,
Darrell had spent his early childhood overseas in a school
he describes as a United Nations for little kids. Race
was always in the background, But when he moved back
(19:01):
to the States when he was ten, he couldn't escape racism,
and ever since then he's been interested in why people hate.
I had had an experience at the age of ten
where some racist people throw rocks and bottles at me
during a parade in which I was the only black participant,
and never having had this happened to me before, I
(19:22):
was perplexed as to why people were doing this, And
when later my parents explained that it was racism, my
ten year old brain could not process the idea that
someone who had never seen me before, who had never
spoken with me, and knew nothing about me, would want
to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than
the color of my skin. You know, that just did
not compete with me. Well later, when I realized this
(19:45):
was true, there are people like that, I formed a
question in my mind, which was, how can you hate
me when you don't even know me, and some people
would just say, well, Darrel, you know that's just the
way it is. Well, no, it's not just the way
it is. There has to be a reason behind it.
Well it's always been that way. That was not good
enough for me. I wanted to get to the nucleus
of it. So Darrell dedicates himself to answering this question.
(20:09):
He devours books about race and racism. He reads nearly
every book that exists on the clan, but he's still unsatisfied,
so he decides he wants to write his own book
about the clan. All the books written on the clan
except for mine, have been written by white authors. You know,
white authors obviously have an easier time getting in contact
(20:31):
with the clan and sitting down and not fearing any
ramifications or whatever, or they might even join the clan undercover.
A klansman would have a different perspective sitting there talking
to a black person than he would a white person.
And how do you feel that perspective would have been
different because he's sitting there telling the person that he
hates why he hates them, So now he's having to
(20:53):
face me and face those same questions. You know that
somebody would ask or even different questions that a white
interviewer journalist would not ask, because they don't think of him,
because they don't feel the things, the same things that
I feel. As Darrell starts searching for his book, it
suddenly dawns on him he already knows someone in the clan,
(21:14):
that guy from the Silver Dollar Lounge. So he goes
on a mission to track him down. It takes a while,
but eventually he finds the guy's address and I knocked
on the door, you know, unannounced, and he opens the
door and sees He goes, Daryl, you know, what are
you doing here? And look, he looked up and down
the hallway to see if I brought anybody with me.
So it was more of him that who was intimidated
(21:35):
than me. And when he stepped out of his apartment,
I stepped in. So he turns around, comes back in.
So now we're standing inside his apartment and he says,
you know what's going on? Are you still playing? What's
going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still playing.
But listen, I need to talk to you about the clan.
He says, the clan. I said, yeah. He goes, well,
I quit yeah, I quit a while back. I said, well,
(21:58):
you know, where's all your clan stuff. He says, well,
they came and got it. And I said, what do
you mean they came and got your robe and hood?
You know, don't you own it? And he explained to me,
when you joined the clan, if you have the money
to pay for it, you can purchase your robin hood
and it's yours to keep forever. If you cannot afford
it at the time, you can still take it home
with you, but you put a little extra money in
(22:20):
every time you pay your dues until you pay it off,
sort like layaway kind of thing. A bizarre financial lead
system within the clan. Love it, yes, exactly, equal opportunity
for everyone who's racist, that's right, okay, absolutely so. Anyway,
he said that they came and got it, but when
they came to get it, he could not find the mask,
(22:41):
and he has since found it and he needed to
return it. I said, what can I see it? So
he goes down the hallway, comes back and hands me
the mask. And I said to him, I said, do
you know Roger Kelly. He goes, yeah, Roger was my
grand dragon. I know him. And I said well, listen,
I need you to hook me up with mister Kelly.
I want you to interview him. I'm going to write
(23:01):
a book on the clan. Now, let me explain how
the hierarchy of the clan works. You understand these terms.
We would call a state leader of governor. They call
that the Grand Dragon a mayor. That person is known
as the exalted Cyclops. Anybody on the great level is
yet very self importance. That yeah, but see, that's also
(23:23):
what attracts people, because you know, they get titles, they
feel important. Yes, it's a sense of self importance, you know,
because they're not getting that from the society in which
they live. So you know, this brotherhood, this gang, if
you will, gives him those things. So at the time,
Roger Kelly was the Grand Dragon state leader from Maryland.
So I said, I'll tell you what you need to
return this mask, right, He said, yeah. I said, give
(23:46):
me Roger Kelly's phone number and his address and I'll
go and return it for you. And he snatched that
thing right out of my hand and said, in no way.
And so I begged and pleaded with him. Well, he
finally gave it to me on the condition that I
not revealed him, mister Kelly where I got it, and
he warned me. He said, Darrel, do not go to
Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you. And I said, well,
(24:09):
that's that's the whole reason why I need to talk
to mister Kelly. I know, why would he kill me?
What is going on in his mind when he sees me.
I have to understand this. You did realize that you
might not get the answer to the question if in
fact the dangerous part happened first? Right, true, this is true,
But but I was thinking, you know that I would
(24:32):
I would prevail. I'm the eternal optimist if you will, Well,
I am not the eternal optimist. And Darrell's decision feels
incredibly risky. But anyway, he has a secretary, Mary, call
and schedule the interview, and he gives her one important instruction,
do not tell him that I'm black, and see if
(24:53):
you would consent to sitting down and giving her boss
an interview. I figured, you know, he might pick up
in my voice that I'm black, and I didn't want
him to hang up the phone say am I talking
to you? And my whole project would have ended before
they would get started. Roger Kelly agrees to meet for
an interview one evening at a nearby motel. Darrel gets
(25:13):
to the motel early with Mary. He's not sure if
Roger will even agree to step foot in the room,
but if he does, Daryl wants to be hospitable. He
asked Mary to fill up the ice bucket and buy
some sodas and then they start arranging the room. There's
not much to arrange. There's the ice bucket, a table,
two chairs, and Darrell's canvas bag which has his tape
(25:34):
recorder and a Bible. The clan claims to be a
Christian organization, and they claim that the Bible preaches are
racial separation. Now, in my reading of the Bible, I
have never seen anything like that in there. So I
want to be able to pull up my Bible and
hand it to him and say, here, MITCHA. Kelly, please
show me chapter and verse where it says blacksom whites
(25:56):
must be separate. So I'm all prepared, right right on time,
right to the minute. Five fifteen knock, knock, knock on
the door. In Walts what is known as the Grand Nighthawk.
Nighthawk means bodyguard, security he's dressed in military camouflage and
he has that clan patch on his chest on one side,
on the other side of his chest or the initials
(26:18):
KKK and embroidered on his cap and said Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan, and on his hip. He had
a semi automatic handgun in a holster. He comes in,
mister Kelly is walking directly behind him, carrying a briefcase
in a dark blue suit and tie. And the nighthawk
turned the corner and saw me and just froze in
(26:41):
his trap. So mister Kelly slammed into his back and
knocked this guy forward. And now that they both are
stumbling around trying to regain their balance, and they're like
looking all around the room like somebody's not right here.
And I'm just sitting at the table looking at their faces,
and I could read their faces like a billboard. Their
faces were saying to me, did the desk k give
(27:03):
us the wrong room number? Do you do? Do we
misunderstand something? Or is this an ambush? So you know,
I saw the apprehension, and so I stood up and
I displayed both of my palms to show I had
nothing in my hands, and I walked forward. I extended
my right hand and I said, Hi, mister Kelly, I'm
Darrell Davis. I hope both of these conversations inspired thinking
(27:35):
and conversation around issues of race. You can find more
episodes of b Anti Racist and A Slight Change of
Plans wherever you get your podcasts
Pushkin high listeners at Jacob Weisberg here, I'm the CEO
of Pushkin Industries. At Pushkin, we think of Juneteenth as
an opportunity to reflect on the past and think about
the future. How do we build a more just and
(00:36):
equitable society. We strive to make podcasts that help to
answer that question, and in honor of Juneteenth, we're highlighting
two of them. Be Anti Racist is hosted by doctor
Ibram X. Kendy, an author, professor, activist, and historian. His
book How to Be an Anti Racist has become a
(00:57):
guide for anyone interested in dismantling the structures that racism creates.
The podcast gives him a chance to dive deep into
issues like immigration, to sports, and voting rights with guests
like Julian Castro and Jamel Hill. Who're going to You're
An excerpt from a conversation doctor Kendy had recently with
(01:17):
author and political analyst Heather cmgee. They focus on the
economic costs of racism for everyone, not just those in
black or brown communities, and how diversity can lead to
economic prosperity for all. Then you'll hear a truly remarkable
story of bridging racial divides Darrell Davis is a black
jazz musician who has convinced hundreds of KKK members to
(01:40):
leave the clan. It all started with one conversation in
a jazz club because Darryll was interested in understanding people
with wildly different views. Darrell appeared on A Slight Change
of Plans, a podcast hosted by doctor Maya Shankar. Shankar
is a cognitive scientist who's fascinated by what happens when
we find ourselves at the brink of change, and she's
(02:03):
got a knack for getting people, including Hillary Clinton and
Tiffany Hattisch to open up to her years Doctor Kendy
on Be Anti Racist Welcome to Be Anti Racist in
Action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and
(02:25):
abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness of
racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy,
How to free humanity through the unity of anti racist
ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy.
On b Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
(02:47):
impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern
humans have never known, a just an equitable world. You ready,
Let's roll in the night thirties and forties, the United
(03:11):
States went on a nationwide building boom of public amenities
funded by tax dollars, which in Montgomery, Alabama, included the
Oak Park Pool, which was the grandest one for miles,
except the Oak Park Pool was for whites only. When
a federal court finally deemed this unconstitutional, the reaction of
(03:34):
the town council was swift. They decided they would drain
the public pool rather than let black families swim to
They never rebuilt the pool. Racism has a cost for everyone.
HEATHERN McGee is an expert in economic and social policy
(03:56):
and the author of the best selling book The Some
of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can
prosper Together. Heather explodes one of the greatest racial myths
that white people lose as people of color gain. She
shows that as racism wins, we all lose. Heather is
(04:19):
one of America's sharpest thinkers. The former president of the
inequality focused think Take Demos and its drafted legislation, testified
before Congress, and contributed regularly to new shows, including NBC's
Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of Color
of Change, the nation's largest online racial Justice Organization. I
(04:42):
sat down with Heather McGee recently to learn how by
investing in each other, we can all achieve better jobs,
better health, better democracy, better schools, better neighborhoods for our kids,
and so much more. Heather is always it's truly an
honor to speak with you. Your book, The Some of Us,
(05:07):
is the type of book that I learned from that
I think many Americans and many people around the world
can learn from. I wrote this book because I felt
like we were missing something in the great pursuit of
a society. It should be to have progress, to have
people have less want and more joy, people to have
(05:29):
more of the fruits of economic progress and technological progress,
and for our problems to be solved generation after generation, right,
And it felt like that progress slowing down, slash reversing.
When some Americans imagine the transformation of this country, they
(05:52):
imagine that they're going to lose if we actually create
inequitable and just anti racist America. And it seems, as
you've written, that that's based on a zero sum myth.
So I left a career in economic policy to go
out on the quixotic journey in some ways, to find
(06:13):
the answer to the question of why can't we seem
to have nice things? And what are the roots of
our dysfunction? And it's there that I came upon this
paradigm of the zero sum. It's a term that means
there's no such thing as mutual progress when you have
people who are in a competition with one another. If
(06:34):
team A scores one more point, team B scores one
less point, the points will always add up to zero,
positive on one side, negative on the other. Progress for
team A has to come at the expense of team B.
There's a limited or fixed pie. And that idea resonated
so deeply with me. It sort of gave a name
(06:56):
and a description to something I had sensed my whole life,
this fear that when white supremacy falls, that the world
will become one that white people should fear. Therefore, racism
is really great for white people, really terrible for people
(07:18):
of color, and so their self interest is in preserving
racism at all costs. And it's the at all costs
piece that really felt so important for me to lay out,
what are the costs of racism to our entire society,
What exactly is the price white people are willing to pay?
(07:38):
To keep the system as it has been. And once
I started looking, the list just kept growing, and that
made it clear to me that we have these self
interested elites packaging marketing, selling this zero sum lie to
most white Americans, and they're doing it for their own profit.
(08:00):
But our side, when we only talk about racism as
something that's good for white people, are kind of like
helping out a little bit, right provocation. The agitation that
made me feel like, Okay, maybe I do have something
to add to this conversation was we haven't told the
full story of what it has caused this entire country.
You were specifically writing about white folks who think that
(08:24):
they're going to lose, but as a man of color
reading it, I also think men of color too have
bought into this myth of the zero sum, and I
think that as they've seen women of color organizing and
advocating in some cases rising, they too have felt threatened
(08:44):
as if they're losing. Yeah, but back to white folks,
this is what I've been sort of saying, and I
want to know whether I'm just wrong that white Americans
typically compare their lot two people of color, and so,
in other words, if their school has more resources in
(09:05):
a way, their child's school is almost like a first
class school. They're like, whoa, if we create equity, then
I'm gonna be back in coach. Yeah. I don't want that.
I'm gonna lose. My kid's gonna lose. But it seems
to me that white Americans should be assessing themselves from
other white people in the Western world. Yeah, and when
they make that comparison, that's when they can see actually
(09:30):
what they don't have, how they're in coach. That's right,
And in fact, maybe in other societies in the Western world,
everybody's just in first class. There's no little curtain that
the flight attendant moves over right, and everyone gets food right,
everyone has a leg room, you know, everybody gets to
bring a bag. You know. This really comes from and
(09:51):
is a feature of how brutally hierarchical our society is.
In the first chapter of the Some of Us, I
go back in our history. I am I I'm like
somebody else here on this conversation. I'm not in the story,
and but I felt like I had to go to
the beginning to find out where this zero s worldview
and this lie came from, whose interest it served, and
(10:13):
why it sort of reanimated generation after generation, and as
it turns out, it was created as a way to
sort of discipline white Europeans in the colonial era to
be satisfied with their lot in a society where wealth
(10:33):
was still quite concentrated, and where because of chattel slavery
in the plantation economy, there actually wasn't a lot of
room a white person who was not a plantation owner.
Their labor wasn't needed in the southern economy, right, Like,
what do we need you for? Right? This myth of
white supremacy was sold to white masses so that they
(10:56):
could have, of course, as W B. Depoys said, the
psychological wages of whiteness rather than material wages, and those
psychological wayses were knowing always that in a deeply unequal
economy they could nonetheless count on being more than and
better than Black people. Now, hang on for the amazing
(11:22):
story of Darryll Davis from a slight change of plans. So,
I was riding in my car. I'm driving, and this
clansman was sitting in my passenger seat, and we got
on the topic of a crime, and he made the
mention that black people are born with a gene that
(11:45):
makes them violent. And I said, look, I'm as black
as anybody you've ever seen. I have never done a
drive by or a car jacking. How do you explain
that this man did not hesitate one second? He answered
me instantly, He said, your gene is latent. It hasn't
come out yet. That's Darryll Davis, a blues musician. And yeah,
(12:09):
you heard him right. He's driving in his car with
a member of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, I
was speechless. I was dumbfounded. And he's sitting next to
me with all smug and secure. Huh. You see, you
know you have nothing to say. And I thought about
it for a moment. Rather than attack him, you say
it's not true. It's not true. I said to him,
(12:30):
I said, you know, white people have a gene within
them that make them serial killers. And he said, why
would you say that? I said, well, Jason, name me
three black serial killers. He thought about it. You couldn't
name anybody. You couldn't do it, I rattled off. Charles Manson,
(12:51):
Jeffrey Dalmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy,
David Berkowitz, son of Sam Albert de Salvo the Boston Strangler,
and I said, son, you are a serial killer. And
he said, Darrell, I've never killed anybody. I said, You're
genus legent hasn't come out yet. He said, well, that's stupid,
(13:11):
and I said, well, duh, it is stupid. And he
got very, very quiet, and I could tell that the
gears in his head were spinning super fast, probably burning
a hole in there. And then he a moment later
he changed the subject. But within five months this guy
quit the Ku Klux Klan. Since that car ride thirty
(13:35):
years ago, Darryl Davis has gone on to convince dozens
of people to leave the Ku Klux Klan. Convincing someone
else to change their mind their view of reality is
one of the most elusive, coveted types of change, which
is why Darryl's story feels so improbable. So how does
he do it? I'm Maya Shunker. As a cognitive scientist,
(13:57):
I've always been fascinated by how we change our minds
and why we change our minds. On this show, I'll
have intimate conversations with people who've navigated extraordinary change, and
hopefully their stories will at us to think differently about
change In our own lives. This is a slight change
of plans, our construution, our construu. Daryl didn't set out
(14:37):
to change anyone's mind. He was mostly just focused on
his music. But one night his life took an unexpected
turn when he was playing a show at a bar
called the Silver Dollar Lounge. The Silver Dollar Lounge at
the time was an all white lounge. And I say
that not meaning that black people could not go in,
(14:59):
but meaning that they did not go in by their
own choice because they were not welcome there. And when
you go somewhere where you're not welcome and alcohol all
is being served, sometimes it is not made for a
good combination, especially when you're outnumbered. So we took a
break after the first set, and I was walking across
the dance floor to go sit you with the bandmates
(15:20):
when somebody approached me from behind and put their arm
around my shoulder. No, I don't know anybody in this place,
so I'm turning around to see who's touching me, and
was this gentleman maybe fifteen eighteen years older than me.
And he's all excited. He says, man, I sure like
your piano playing. This is the first time I ever
heard of black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,
(15:41):
and I told him. I said, well, Gerry Lee got
it from the same place I did, from black blues
and boogie woogie piano players. Oh no, no, no no, no,
I never heard no black name play like that except
for you. Jerry Lee invented that style. I said, look,
I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a good friend of mine.
He's told me himself where he learned how to play.
The guy didn't buy that either, but he was so
fascinated with me that he wanted me to come back
(16:04):
to his table. He's going to buy me a drink,
so I don't drink, but I agreed to have a
cranberry juice. He bought it, paid the waitress, and then
he took his glass and he clinked my glass and
cheered me, and then he announces, you know, this is
the first time IRA sat down with a black man
and had a drink. So innocently. I asked him why,
and he didn't answer me at first. I asked him again,
(16:26):
and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and
said tell him, tell him, And the guy looked at
me and said I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Well I burst out laughing at him because now I
do not believe him. I thought he was putting the
joke on me. I'm laughing. He goes inside his pocket,
pulls out his wallet, flips through it, and hands me
(16:47):
his clan membership card. I recognized the clan insignia, which
is a red circle with a white cross and a
red blood drop in the center of the cross, and
I'm thinking myself, oh my goodness, you know this is
for real. So I stopped laughing. But he was, you know,
very friendly and very appreciative of my music and all excited.
(17:08):
He gave me his phone number to, you know, to
call him whenever I was to return to this bar
with this band, and so I'd call him every six
weeks and say, hey, man, you know I'm down there
at the Silver Dollar this weekend, come on out. You say,
it's so nonchalantly like so I called the guy. It
is remarkable that you called this person. And you know,
I don't think I'm alone in struggling to understand, you know,
(17:31):
what was going through through your mind at this moment.
If someone told me that they were in the freaking clan.
I would certainly not call them back. In fact, I'd
probably just flee the scene. And I think this is
for pretty good reasons. Well, you know, I was questioning
myself for a second, like what the heck am I
doing sitting here with a klansman. But the guy was friendly.
(17:54):
He disputed the things that I had in mind of
the image over typical klansmen, and he wanted to share
my music with some of his fellow clansmen and clanswomen.
And they would, you know, get on the dancelore and
dancelore I'm music. You know they didn't come in robes hoods, right,
you know, they came in regular street clothes. This goes
on for a year, an entire year. Darrell would play
(18:17):
a gig at this bar, and he would invite clan
members to watch him play. This is one of those
things that makes Darrell so unusual. I mean, for me,
a huge part of what makes someone who they are
is their belief system. And so if we share the
same taste in music, that's fine, that's great. But if
I then find out they're a flagrant racist, that's going
(18:39):
to fully eclipse everything else about them. So how does
Darrell look past that, he says, It's not like that.
He wasn't looking past it. He wanted to learn from it. See,
Darrell had spent his early childhood overseas in a school
he describes as a United Nations for little kids. Race
was always in the background, But when he moved back
(19:01):
to the States when he was ten, he couldn't escape racism,
and ever since then he's been interested in why people hate.
I had had an experience at the age of ten
where some racist people throw rocks and bottles at me
during a parade in which I was the only black participant,
and never having had this happened to me before, I
(19:22):
was perplexed as to why people were doing this, And
when later my parents explained that it was racism, my
ten year old brain could not process the idea that
someone who had never seen me before, who had never
spoken with me, and knew nothing about me, would want
to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than
the color of my skin. You know, that just did
not compete with me. Well later, when I realized this
(19:45):
was true, there are people like that, I formed a
question in my mind, which was, how can you hate
me when you don't even know me, and some people
would just say, well, Darrel, you know that's just the
way it is. Well, no, it's not just the way
it is. There has to be a reason behind it.
Well it's always been that way. That was not good
enough for me. I wanted to get to the nucleus
of it. So Darrell dedicates himself to answering this question.
(20:09):
He devours books about race and racism. He reads nearly
every book that exists on the clan, but he's still unsatisfied,
so he decides he wants to write his own book
about the clan. All the books written on the clan
except for mine, have been written by white authors. You know,
white authors obviously have an easier time getting in contact
(20:31):
with the clan and sitting down and not fearing any
ramifications or whatever, or they might even join the clan undercover.
A klansman would have a different perspective sitting there talking
to a black person than he would a white person.
And how do you feel that perspective would have been
different because he's sitting there telling the person that he
hates why he hates them, So now he's having to
(20:53):
face me and face those same questions. You know that
somebody would ask or even different questions that a white
interviewer journalist would not ask, because they don't think of him,
because they don't feel the things, the same things that
I feel. As Darrell starts searching for his book, it
suddenly dawns on him he already knows someone in the clan,
(21:14):
that guy from the Silver Dollar Lounge. So he goes
on a mission to track him down. It takes a while,
but eventually he finds the guy's address and I knocked
on the door, you know, unannounced, and he opens the
door and sees He goes, Daryl, you know, what are
you doing here? And look, he looked up and down
the hallway to see if I brought anybody with me.
So it was more of him that who was intimidated
(21:35):
than me. And when he stepped out of his apartment,
I stepped in. So he turns around, comes back in.
So now we're standing inside his apartment and he says,
you know what's going on? Are you still playing? What's
going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still playing.
But listen, I need to talk to you about the clan.
He says, the clan. I said, yeah. He goes, well,
I quit yeah, I quit a while back. I said, well,
(21:58):
you know, where's all your clan stuff. He says, well,
they came and got it. And I said, what do
you mean they came and got your robe and hood?
You know, don't you own it? And he explained to me,
when you joined the clan, if you have the money
to pay for it, you can purchase your robin hood
and it's yours to keep forever. If you cannot afford
it at the time, you can still take it home
with you, but you put a little extra money in
(22:20):
every time you pay your dues until you pay it off,
sort like layaway kind of thing. A bizarre financial lead
system within the clan. Love it, yes, exactly, equal opportunity
for everyone who's racist, that's right, okay, absolutely so. Anyway,
he said that they came and got it, but when
they came to get it, he could not find the mask,
(22:41):
and he has since found it and he needed to
return it. I said, what can I see it? So
he goes down the hallway, comes back and hands me
the mask. And I said to him, I said, do
you know Roger Kelly. He goes, yeah, Roger was my
grand dragon. I know him. And I said well, listen,
I need you to hook me up with mister Kelly.
I want you to interview him. I'm going to write
(23:01):
a book on the clan. Now, let me explain how
the hierarchy of the clan works. You understand these terms.
We would call a state leader of governor. They call
that the Grand Dragon a mayor. That person is known
as the exalted Cyclops. Anybody on the great level is
yet very self importance. That yeah, but see, that's also
(23:23):
what attracts people, because you know, they get titles, they
feel important. Yes, it's a sense of self importance, you know,
because they're not getting that from the society in which
they live. So you know, this brotherhood, this gang, if
you will, gives him those things. So at the time,
Roger Kelly was the Grand Dragon state leader from Maryland.
So I said, I'll tell you what you need to
return this mask, right, He said, yeah. I said, give
(23:46):
me Roger Kelly's phone number and his address and I'll
go and return it for you. And he snatched that
thing right out of my hand and said, in no way.
And so I begged and pleaded with him. Well, he
finally gave it to me on the condition that I
not revealed him, mister Kelly where I got it, and
he warned me. He said, Darrel, do not go to
Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you. And I said, well,
(24:09):
that's that's the whole reason why I need to talk
to mister Kelly. I know, why would he kill me?
What is going on in his mind when he sees me.
I have to understand this. You did realize that you
might not get the answer to the question if in
fact the dangerous part happened first? Right, true, this is true,
But but I was thinking, you know that I would
(24:32):
I would prevail. I'm the eternal optimist if you will, Well,
I am not the eternal optimist. And Darrell's decision feels
incredibly risky. But anyway, he has a secretary, Mary, call
and schedule the interview, and he gives her one important instruction,
do not tell him that I'm black, and see if
(24:53):
you would consent to sitting down and giving her boss
an interview. I figured, you know, he might pick up
in my voice that I'm black, and I didn't want
him to hang up the phone say am I talking
to you? And my whole project would have ended before
they would get started. Roger Kelly agrees to meet for
an interview one evening at a nearby motel. Darrel gets
(25:13):
to the motel early with Mary. He's not sure if
Roger will even agree to step foot in the room,
but if he does, Daryl wants to be hospitable. He
asked Mary to fill up the ice bucket and buy
some sodas and then they start arranging the room. There's
not much to arrange. There's the ice bucket, a table,
two chairs, and Darrell's canvas bag which has his tape
(25:34):
recorder and a Bible. The clan claims to be a
Christian organization, and they claim that the Bible preaches are
racial separation. Now, in my reading of the Bible, I
have never seen anything like that in there. So I
want to be able to pull up my Bible and
hand it to him and say, here, MITCHA. Kelly, please
show me chapter and verse where it says blacksom whites
(25:56):
must be separate. So I'm all prepared, right right on time,
right to the minute. Five fifteen knock, knock, knock on
the door. In Walts what is known as the Grand Nighthawk.
Nighthawk means bodyguard, security he's dressed in military camouflage and
he has that clan patch on his chest on one side,
on the other side of his chest or the initials
(26:18):
KKK and embroidered on his cap and said Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan, and on his hip. He had
a semi automatic handgun in a holster. He comes in,
mister Kelly is walking directly behind him, carrying a briefcase
in a dark blue suit and tie. And the nighthawk
turned the corner and saw me and just froze in
(26:41):
his trap. So mister Kelly slammed into his back and
knocked this guy forward. And now that they both are
stumbling around trying to regain their balance, and they're like
looking all around the room like somebody's not right here.
And I'm just sitting at the table looking at their faces,
and I could read their faces like a billboard. Their
faces were saying to me, did the desk k give
(27:03):
us the wrong room number? Do you do? Do we
misunderstand something? Or is this an ambush? So you know,
I saw the apprehension, and so I stood up and
I displayed both of my palms to show I had
nothing in my hands, and I walked forward. I extended
my right hand and I said, Hi, mister Kelly, I'm
Darrell Davis. I hope both of these conversations inspired thinking
(27:35):
and conversation around issues of race. You can find more
episodes of b Anti Racist and A Slight Change of
Plans wherever you get your podcasts
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