![]() If we do not address the fear of whatever it is we are ignorant of, it will escalate and then it turns into hatred. “We fear things that we don’t understand of which we are ignorant. Ignorance breeds fear, fear breeds hatred, hatred breeds destruction,” he explains. ![]() “We are going about addressing racism the wrong way. Then they think about it and they come up with their own conclusion and then they convert themselves.”ĭavis has recently joined forces with and hopes to be able to help individuals approach opposing perspectives with civil conversation. I nourish that seed and give them food for thought. “I am simply the impetus for those people leaving their ideology. While many have praised Davis for converting these men, he was keen to tell me that he didn’t convert them directly. And now they have to question their own thinking.” I plant a seed They go home and realise they’ve just had a conversation with a black man – someone they hate. “Well, I’m sitting there and I’m listening to this, and that’s throwing them off their game because they would expect me to fight – but I’m saying tell me more, I’m interested in this. Most people who I have sat down and talked with have told me openly that black people are inferior because we are prone to crime,” he adds. “These people are so used to being combative, especially with someone they oppose like me. You’re not born like that, it is learned from someone else – if something is learned, it can be unlearned.” Not everybody, but plenty of these people are good people – they just have a twisted sense of superiority and that it is a learned behaviour. “It also enabled me to see the humanity in them. And it has worked – my conversations with them enabled them to see the humanity in me. And this has become my mission – to convince people that to sit down and talk will prove that what they believe is not the way it is. “You don’t make fun of or ignore those that have a mental deficiency. Because if they did, half of America would be institutionalised,” he jokes. ![]() “I’m not a psychologist, but I believe there are a lot of flaws in what constitutes a mental illness – has racism been defined as a mental illness? No. “I consider racism to be somewhat of a mental illness,” he adds. It’s impossible to try to explain something to somebody when they haven’t experienced it. “I knew they had not seen the things I had seen. “Because I knew they were wrong,” he continues. In-fact, Kelly became so close to Davis, that he would be asked to become his daughter’s godfather.īut why was Davis so willing to befriend a group he knew would hate him at first? Kelly, who would go on to become Imperial Wizard, was just one of many who quit the Klan, and as a token, gave his robe to Davis in a gesture of friendship. One such member was Roger Kelly, the Grand Dragon of the Klan in Maryland. They would listen to his performances and speak with his regularly until eventually, after more than 30 years, more than 200 had disavowed their allegiances. This revelation was an important moment – for it would come to mark the start of Davis’s quest to locate the source of racial hatred.Īs the years passed, Davis encountered more and more Klan members. What began as a conversation soon developed into a bombshell moment: unbeknown to Davis, the man who had just complimented him admitted to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. After having finished playing a set in an all-white country band, he was met by an individual who praised him on his performance. So I figured: who better to ask than somebody who would go so far as to join an organisation whose whole premise is practicing hating people who don’t look like them.” Ku Klux Klanĭavis’s first encounter would be one that changed his entire outlook. “For the last 52 years I’ve been searching for the answer. “I formed the question in my mind at 10: how can you hate me if you do not know me?” But despite reading a range of books on racism, Davis could not find the answers he had been yearning for. Especially as I already had experience with people of white skin colour who had treated me very well. ![]() “When my parents told me it had to do with the colour of my skin, I was unable to process what my parents were telling me. The people on the sidewalk who were throwing rocks at me did not look any different to my white friends,” he says. “I could not get my head around the idea that somebody who did not know me, who had never spoken to me, would want to hurt me for no other reason than the colour of my skin. When his parents sat him down and told them that his experience was because of the colour of his skin, Davis was “baffled.” Baffled As he marched proudly gripping the American standard, a group of white Americans began to throw rocks and bottles at him, inflicting injury after injury. During a cub scout parade, he experienced what he would come to remember as his first bitter dose of racial hatred. ![]()
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