Daryl Davis is an incredible person. He has done so much to promote empathy, understanding, compassion, and dialogue on some of the most controversial subjects while simultaneously showing the dangers of fear, assumptions, ignorance, hatred, and rigid ideologies. In the process, he has done what many consider to be impossible: persuade others to change views which have been cemented in their minds for most of their lives.
Davis was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1953. A decade later, he moved with his family to Belmont, Massachusetts. According to one of his amazing TED Talks, this is where he had a brush with racism that made him desperate for answers. When he couldn’t find them through relentless research, he started talking to members of the KKK. Davis avoided insulting them or engaging them in violence. Instead, he slowly gained their respect and their trust by treating them as his equals and having open conversations with them. This caused many of them to rethink and even renounce their racist views as they got to know him as a person and became his close friends. As they left the KKK, some of them gave him their robes and hoods, which Davis keeps as reminders that people can, and do, change their ways.
To this day, in addition to being a professional musician, Davis continues to encourage open communication between people who consider themselves to be enemies. He is fond of closing his speeches with the following quote: “When two enemies are talking, they’re not fighting. They’re talking. It’s when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence, so keep the conversation going.” Accordingly, he hopes that everyone will spend more time talking with each other and less time talking about, at, or past each other. Respectfully listening to one another is the way to go. Even if you disagree, at least hear them out. That’s the way to get to the root of the problem, which, according to Davis, is fear that arises from ignorance: “If you don’t keep that fear in check, that fear will breed hatred. If you don’t keep hatred in check, it will breed destruction.” Once you know how a problem originated, you can then figure out a solution to eliminate it as well as all the harm it causes.
Daryl Davis is a wonderful role model and one of the best communicators I’ve ever seen. His approach of humanizing those who hate him and gradually guiding them away from their views through interacting with them has been extremely effective and, I hope, will become commonplace. Other approaches that involve yelling, insulting them, using violence against them, and trying to pound a certain point of view into their heads have consistently failed to change anyone’s mind. The harder someone is pushed, the more they dig in their heels and push back. Davis’s approach, which works due to psychological principles described in this video, is so much more effective and has caused people to not only change their behavior but also to change their minds. He has done what many consider to be impossible and he is an excellent example of leadership that anyone who hopes to make a positive difference in the world can and should look up to. I hope he continues inspiring people and changing hearts and minds with his work. We’re all in desperate need of it.