“We hate someone because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.” – Charles Caleb Colton
Years ago, I watched a film about a man by the name of Daryl Davis. Davis was a Black jazz musician. One night he was playing at a bar in Maryland. A White man put his arm around his shoulder and told Davis that he was the first man he had ever heard play just like Jerry Lee Lewis. Davis’s response to this man was, “Where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play? He learned from Black blues.” One of the White man’s friends started yelling for him to tell Davis who he was and the man pulled out a Klan membership card.
Even though the man hated Black people, he was still interested in Davis and the way he played that evening. He gave Davis his phone number so that he could tell him when he would be in town playing again. Every time Davis would play, the man would bring more of his friends to come and watch. One day Davis decided to show up at the man’s apartment and asked for the phone number of the Grand Dragon, Roger Kelly. The man gave Davis the number and told him not to say where he got the number from. He also warned him the Kelly would kill him.
Davis met the Grand Dragon at a hotel room, and when they first met, Davis extended his hand out to shake Kelly’s hand and surprisingly, Kelly shook it. Davis went on to interview Kelly, the interview ended after an hour, and Kelly’s walls started to come down.
Davis would fly around the country to meet with other Klansmen to get answers to one question, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” Over the next 30 years, 200 Klansmen gave up their robes. Davis has kept the Klansmen’s robes to remind him of how he made a small dent in racism. To me, Davis is a hero.
So much of this story can be applied today. Davis tells us that, “It doesn’t have to be about race, it could be about anything… you will find that you both have something in common. As you build upon those commonalities, you’re forming a friendship. That is what would happen. I didn’t convert anybody. They saw the light and converted themselves.”
How can we shine light on our thinking? I am asking this of myself, also. Thoughts that have been in the dark because they have been too ugly to be seen. Why do we dislike people that are so different from ourselves? Davis had the right to hate these Klansmen. These men had killed so many innocent and wonderful people. We show hatefulness just because someone thinks differently than we do. Believes differently than we do. Votes differently than we do. Looks differently than we do. Why?
We have it within ourselves, just like Davis, to shine light on our own prejudices and to be converted in the way that we have been thinking. I will close out this blog with a quote by Martin Luther King, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.”
This is so good. When the kids are beginning school, they don’t look at color they look at kids. Somehow we tend to lose that mentality as we grow. It’s so sad to see that we can’t see like a five year old!!!
That is true! Miss seeing ya girl!