19 ms·

I wanted to understand why racists hated me, so I befriended Klansmen

370 points by evo_9 9y ago

belorn 9y ago
Through this story, I get reminded how many times I see discussion being shut down by the phrase "As part of group X, you are not allowed to have an opinion about Y". Talking relieve tensions between groups. It builds understanding. It one of the things in this world that can change how a individual think. Its nice to read such success story.
jfaucett 9y ago
I know this post will probably get flagged because it is so political. Still, I think this article is something everyone needs to read, especially in the current political climate where identity politics and group think have pitted groups of people against one another and spurred them to violence all over the western world. This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress.
- lukeqsee 9y ago
  I disagree with it being strictly political anymore than any human story is political. Having grown up in the south, it is indeed a powerful and necessary story.
- goodcanadian 9y ago
  I didn't find it the least bit political, but it was indeed flagged and dead when I came to it. I vouched for it.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  > This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress. Values which are disappearing on the "left". I recently lost a friend (extreme lefty) for saying that Trump was elected because of the socio-economic situation of poor white voters in the US. He just railed on about how I was racist for daring to say that the Trump phenomenon is anything more than Americans being a bunch of Klansmen... Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. Edit - deleted the first edit.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    > Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. THIS. Grew up in the midwest, could've told the coastal liberals that their nonstop (and unnecessary) attacks on everything even slightly valued by the flyover states was going to cost them someday. They didn't want to hear it.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Well you sure showed us, with this brilliant act of communal decapitation. Never mind that the people who feel hurt the most are hurting themselves the most, you're making a point or something... Seriously, if your narrative for political change is little more than hurt feelings, maybe the "other" isn't the problem. This article should have at least showed you that putting aside the petty can have real impacts on both parties.
      - FussyZeus 9y ago
        Firstly I'm not a supporter of this Nationalist America First agenda, though the fact that simply because I'm willing to non-judgmentally listen to their side and hear their complaints and say yeah, those things are a problem causes you to react with hostility kind of shows my point well, so thanks. Secondly, this is not "hurt feelings," not that something -just- being emotionally abusive and nothing else should be an excuse for pretending it isn't a problem, but we'll go with that anyways. No, this is the fact that the middle state's economies have been struggling for years, and that was before the 2008 housing crash, which the cities and coasts have recovered fairly well from, but has left everyone else largely in the cold. Now, it's true that a lot of those issues can be fairly directly traced to the local governments and their bad decisions; some cities, for example Chattanooga, have done extremely well at modernizing. But to pretend that the constant drumbeat of the culture that being in the flyover states (itself a term of derision) is terrible, that everything they believe is dumb, that they're uneducated prudes and all the rest of it has caused an incredible cultural scar between the rural and urban portions of the nation. And successes like Chattanooga are in spite of, not because of, that divide.
te_chris 9y ago
It's definitely good to talk to people like this, but it needs to be carrot and stick: their organisations need to be ostracised and labelled as the hateful, racist hellholes that they are, while people of any background still treat each other with respect in their communities. The biggest risk with bringing the members of these organisations in out of the cold is that this might normalise the organisations and ideologies without actually destroying anything. E.g. like having a POTUS who equivocates over their behaviour.
- implabknowho 9y ago
  you are absolutely correct. if we don’t constantly publicly shame these people from all channels at all times, how else will they know they’re so wrong that signaling their wrongness is the most important function society serves?
- gallerdude 9y ago
  I disagree. We get nowhere by making fun of other people or taking the moral high-ground. Progress comes by having real conversations with others, no matter how much we disagree with what they have to say. It's easy and fun to call someone racist and walk away, but the right thing to do is having them explain how they feel and just talking to them about it. I also don't understand how normalization is an issue? We get nowhere by censoring the our least favorite ideas in society. We get somewhere by bringing them out, and talking about why we disagree with the points made, in a respectful manner. Relevant article from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/article/former-conservative-recalls-belittling-tirade-coll-56825 http://www.theonion.com/article/former-conservative-recalls-...
  - justin66 9y ago
    > We get somewhere by bringing them out, and talking about why we disagree with the points made, in a respectful manner. It's not as if Neo-Nazis are "making points."
  - HillaryBriss 9y ago
    an additional argument for protecting free speech for extremist ideas: the rest of society has a better sense of who these people are, what they're doing, what they're thinking, where they're going. the rest of society has more information about the extremists than it would if they were always suppressed.
adora 9y ago
The story of Derek Black is also interesting. A former white nationalist (godfather was David Duke) who would later denounce his racist views after befriending an Orthodox Jew. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left-white-nationalism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transcript-derek-black.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transc...
- 3131s 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Phelps-Roper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Phelps-Roper The same was true for Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. She explained in a TED talk that ultimately after being treated with respect by the people she hated, she could not reconcile her hatred of them with those experiences. "Sometimes the conversation even bled into real life. People I'd sparred with on Twitter would come out to the picket line to see me when I protested in their city. A man named David was one such person. He ran a blog called "Jewlicious," and after several months of heated but friendly arguments online, he came out to see me at a picket in New Orleans. He brought me a Middle Eastern dessert from Jerusalem, where he lives, and I brought him kosher chocolate and held a "God hates Jews" sign." "It took time, but eventually these conversations planted seeds of doubt in me. My friends on Twitter took the time to understand Westboro's doctrines, and in doing so, they were able to find inconsistencies I'd missed my entire life. Why did we advocate the death penalty for gays when Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" How could we claim to love our neighbor while at the same time praying for God to destroy them? The truth is that the care shown to me by these strangers on the internet was itself a contradiction. It was growing evidence that people on the other side were not the demons I'd been led to believe." https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_phelps_roper_i_grew_up_in_the_westboro_baptist_church_here_s_why_i_left/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_phelps_roper_i_grew_up_in_th... I don't normally like TED talks but hers was pretty interesting.
  - 9y ago
kevmo 9y ago
I grew up in the Deep South, and you can really change the way people feel by being unflinchingly friendly. People who hold controversial opinions generally know that they do (if they aren't crazy) and expect people to recoil at first contact. When you don't recoil, it throws them and makes them think. At that point, you are entering mind-changing territory. Then you start asking them questions that allows them to do 80% of the talking. They will usually stumble on their own logical fallacies at that point, and you have thus led the horse to water, which is about all you can do. Not very many people are very good at this. Which is unfortunate. TL;DR When you get all worked up over the way people are talking, you have allowed them to seize control of the debate and have generally lost the opportunity to change that particular mind.
- userbinator 9y ago
  you can really change the way people feel by being unflinchingly friendly See also: Troll hugging http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging.html http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging....
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    Also being heavily advocated by Zoffix right now who is a prominent member of the Perl6 project (trying to get it renamed to Rakudo to distance it from Perl5, which makes some sense).
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Also grew up in the deep south, and my mom would always call this "killing them with kindness"
    - kevmo 9y ago
      That's what my momma said, too.
    - aeountdh34th 9y ago
      As a northerner who lived in the South I can unequivocally tell you this doesn't work. Southerners who do this come off as saccharine and insincere. It's incredibly transparent and irritating (which I always felt was the point) to people who don't agree with you. You aren't fooling anyone.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
I grew up in the south and I think people are genuinely polite to each other. African Americans, redneck racists, everyone is polite in public, but the bad stuff comes out in private, in groups and friendships. That's where the hate festers.
userbinator 9y ago
Oddly enough, the pictures of Daryl in the article seem to show he has a lighter skin colour than the other pictures of him you can find elsewhere... in case anyone else is wondering whether that may have been a factor in his successful relations.
pgodzin 9y ago
Daryl Davis had a really interesting AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis_a_black_musician_here_to_discuss/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis...
- mlinksva 9y ago
  I've seen stories about Davis in the past but never read closely, though I've idly wondered how much danger he has been in. A couple questions ask about this and it seems he has been attacked a few times. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis_a_black_musician_here_to_discuss/dn64fba/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis... https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis_a_black_musician_here_to_discuss/dn6485e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis... I'm not sure where the quote comes from, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis says: > However, not all Klan members were receptive to Davis's advances. Some reacted with anger or even violence. Davis stated, "I was not seriously injured. I've faced knives and guns and of course fists. I've had to physically fight upon occasion, but that is not my first resort. I did not carry any weapons to my interviews. On one occasion, it was only one Klansman who attacked me. On another, it was 3 of them. I won, both physically on the street and legally in court." I would be too scared to do what he has done, even as a white gentile. The more physical distance between me and hate group adherents, the better. But hats off to Davis and anyone braver than me.
dang 9y ago
This is the rare case of a submission that looks like flamebait and really isn't, so I've turned off the flags on it. It's a fascinating story that easily clears the bar for being intellectually interesting, and therefore on topic for HN. Please discuss what's interesting and don't go into flamewar. Hints: to discuss what's interesting, read the article and respond to what's specific about it. To avoid flamewar, if your comment could just as easily be posted to any thread about race, and especially if you're posting to smite enemies rather than learn new things together, stop and read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html instead.
- matt4077 9y ago
  As it happens, it is also the rare story on the subject that plays exactly to the opinion that the HN community already holds; namely that it is more effective to engage even the most vile theories in measured debate, and that any attempt to reduce the publicity that, for example, racists get will only make their ideology spread faster. The irony being that sometimes people opposing that theory are to be found at the bottom of the threat, flagged and dead. But I'm assuming that to be the work of people agreeing with them, trying to empower them. Meanwhile, a writer as mainstream as Ta-Nehisi Coates (https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ta-nehisi-coates/ https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ta-nehisi-coates/) can write all the #1 bestsellers he likes on the subject, but is considered to be "flamebait" here.
  - dang 9y ago
    Well there's some truth to that, but I don't agree with how you interpret it. Unfortunately the question gets so complicated so quickly that I don't know how to write about it in an internet comment. So I'll respond with some things I do know how to say. Perceptions of "the opinion the HN community holds" are in the eye of the beholder. If you don't believe me, take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 and plenty more at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=13110004 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=.... People see X they don't like and conclude that "the community endorses X". Advanced version: "the moderators endorse X". This is not how HN works—the opposite of X is here too, it just doesn't get noticed the same way (people notice most what they dislike the most). Since X varies with the observer, this isn't specific to any political view. You wrote your comment in the combative style that is popular on the internet. From past exchanges, I'm pretty sure you have HN's best interests at heart as well as wanting there to be more good in the world. No argument there! The trouble with the combative style is not that the community (or moderators) disagree with the content ideologically. It's that in this style one comes out swinging and assumes bad faith, and that's bad for good conversation, which is really all we're hoping for. Ideological combat insta-sorts the world into enemies vs. fellows and goes to war against the former. Indeed that's all it does—it's always on a war footing, and we all know how it has been taking over online. We're (hopelessly?) hoping to avoid that on HN. Is that because we hold regressive views about race or are milquetoast centrists? No, it's just that we'd like to have an internet forum that isn't dumb, which is what scorched earth leads to. HN's goal is to be interesting, which means being unpredictable, which means not saying the same things over and over. Ideological battle has a different goal and requires saying the same things over and over. That is why the two are incompatible; it's not because HN promotes ideology not-X where you favor X. I'm sure we could do better and if you know how, I'd love to learn. But we need to agree that HN's goal is to gratify intellectual curiosity [2]. I think it's fair for there to be different forums that optimize for different goals, don't you? That's this one's. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
hirundo 9y ago
When an Antifa member punches someone who they identify as a white nationalist, at best they can make them shut up for a while. At worst the violence is reciprocated disproportionately. If instead the Antifa would attempt to befriend that person and to have good faith dialogues with them, they would at least have the potential to actually reduce racism, and reduce hatred on both sides. Ideally, the result could be one less Nazi puncher and one less Nazi. And with dialog, maybe they'd discover that not every political disagreement reveals a "white nationalist". But I suspect that for many, that would be a whole lot less fun.
- reducesuffering 9y ago
  Can’t upvote enough. Antifa make themselves much more like their opposition than they think by resorting to violence. It’s a whole lot more fun to think of yourself on this grandoise crusade-battle. The irony.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    Shooting, shooting, Nazis is one of the things that Americans spent 60 years lionizing, bragging about, celebrating, etc. How did punching a Nazi once in a while stop being great?
    - Spivak 9y ago
      * Because we're not in a theater of war and they're not enemy combatants. * Because we're no better than them if we inflict wanton violence on people we would rather not have around. * Because it's taking the bait. The whole point in kindling all this anger is bring out the worst in everyone and show the world 'the intolerant left' and stupid 'punch a Nazi' bullshit only proves their point. The more these people are silenced, attacked and marginalized by 'leftists' in power the more they're able to show just how much power 'the left' wields. The more you fight them the stronger they get.
      - jackmott 9y ago
        being tolerant of Nazis is absurd.
techrich 9y ago
He did a documentary on netflix.
Aloha 9y ago
I've long said that progress involves changing individual hearts and minds more than just a political process - the political process is what happens after you've changed hearts and minds. We saw it with the civil rights movement, we saw it with the gay rights movement, and we're going to see at some point with the trans rights movement too. Merely showing up and demanding rights isnt enough, you need to convince people that their needs are bound up with yours.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
AaronFriel 9y ago
I've tried this, and sometimes it's worked. When it has, it's usually when I'm part of the group that's hated by someone. As in this article, or in my personal experience talking with people biased against atheists or liberals, I was able to make headway by demonstrating that I am not the idea of what they hate. I have had absolutely no progress with this when talking about homophobia, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, or anti-immigrant biases. I'm a straight white male with no Jewish heritage in sight and an nth generation German-Irish American. I've tried, in earnest, to apply the same "killing them with kindness" philosophy to folks to people who hold abhorrent views towards groups that aren't like me, and it's failed miserably. The cop-out from the other party is that being liberal, I'm brainwashed or following my mainstream media marching orders or something to that effect. That my impression and my testimony that black people aren't lazy, that women are not less capable managers and programmers, et cetera., is irrelevant to the person I'm arguing with. I'm not black/Latino, I'm not a woman, I'm not able to demonstrate those things in a way that is convincing. This is deeply disconcerting to me, because it seems allyship helps in some cases (LGBT movement) but from testimony I've heard at conferences, the best way to change a homophobic or transphobic person's mind is to first, be their friend or family member, and second, come out as LGBT. The monumental success of acceptance of the LGBT movement seems to be almost entirely from encouraging people to come out to their friends and family members. Without downplaying it too much, I think that the language of allyship is primarily helpful at convincing people in power that they can be part of that movement, but it wasn't useful in changing people's minds. My question to Hacker News is: why should the burden be on me, someone who is opposed to the KKK and the resurgent white nationalism in this country, to befriend people? And is there any evidence (or personal testimony from other commenters) that this sort of thing works when not part of the targeted minority? Because I am exhausted. Again, I want to reiterate: "killing with kindness" was tremendously successful for me when I was dealing with people that didn't like some group identity I shared: liberalism, secularism. But it utterly fails when I try to talk to say, a racist friend of a family member who calls Colin Kaepernick "caperdink" and Barack Obama "obummer". Kindness doesn't seem to work when as a white man, they expect me to be kind.
- harpiaharpyja 9y ago
  I don't see why you should feel like the burden is on you. Ultimately you don't decide what other people think, and so you cannot be responsible for changing their minds. You can show them that alternate beliefs (yours) do exist, and that you hold them just as they hold theirs. Unless you're involved in a personal situation where a third person - friend or family - is being a victim of hate, I wouldn't beat yourself up over your inability to do more.
gizmodo59 9y ago
In many cases people just grew up to be and found a community where they are accepted. A dialogue with them like how it has been mentioned in the article is all it takes.
grondilu 9y ago
> How could anybody hate me when they didn’t even know me? That's an easy question to answer. People are not islands. They conform to stereotypes, culture, so at least to some degree one can group people into common patterns of behaviors and values. And people can hate some of those patterns.
tacomonstrous 9y ago
It's not clear to me from this article that the author ever understood why they hated him. From this account, it seems as if he just kept hanging out with them for decades till they magically weren't hateful any more. Not sure if this is very scalable.
- tboyd47 9y ago
  Research more about his style and approach. He goes to great lengths to understand their views before meeting them. In his AMA he mentioned that he would even hold debates with himself in the mirror, representing his own opponent. Extraordinary stuff.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    That's great, but I agree with the OP - I expected, given the headline, to find out why the Klansmen hated him. But the article doesn't actually say. In fact it doesn't give a voice to the Klansmen at all. It just says: I went and talked to them and they became friends. Eventually they changed and gave me their robes. Nice story and I'm sure it's true. But it didn't help me understand the KKK any better, which is a shame.
    - antod 9y ago
      As far as I can tell, the point is that there was NO actual reason why they hated him apart from they didn't know him. Once they knew him, they didn't hate him. The ones that changed their point of view, eventually just realised they had no remaining reason to hate him. And by extension it was irrational to automatically hate every other black person they didn't know yet. It was his attempts to understand them, that helped some of them understand him. As he points out though, there were plenty of klan members that this didn't work out with though. It obviously takes some level of self awareness/reflection to change your mind like that.
BrandoElFollito 9y ago
I witnessed onece how approaching people with genuine openness helps. I was in Aix-en-Provence (south of France) and got lost on the outskirts of the city. I waked into a "cité", which is a large area of block of flags, poor and full of drugs and angry people. I walked to a group, the tension was obvious but I kept on walking and approched them with a simple question about how to get to downtown, and (most importantly), what THEY think is the best way to get there. A normal person talking with normal people. Not only they showed me the way (after arguing about the best one for 10 minutes) but hopped into a car to drive me there. Sometimes treating peooke genuinely kindky goes a long way.
trcollinson 9y ago
This might not be the right place to ask this but I respect the opinion of people who read and post on HN. I don't believe I am racist or sexist. I like to believe that I love everyone. I care about people. I don't want to look at gender or race or sexual orientation or any other differentiator when I get to know someone, or ever. I don't want to judge others. I want people to have equal rights. I want people to live happily, healthy, and safely. But, I am a highly paid middle class white male in the US. I want to know that I am helping to bring about this equality and lack of judgement. I see articles being advertised in the middle of the parent article like "What do black people have to lose under Trump? A lot" and I think "How can that be possible?" Then I realize it is no doubt completely possible. And I know my opinion doesn't matter much but I don't want that to happen. I want people to have equal rights. I want people to feel safe, happy, and healthy. But my desire is not enough. I don't have an answer to this problem. I don't have some ulterior Motive. This is a bit of a rant against myself. I'm upset with myself that I don't know what to do to make it better. Maybe someone here will know.
- tboyd47 9y ago
  I think the easiest thing to do is just be educated in the facts and able to defend your views without getting caught up in the political rhetoric of the day. A lot of racism is just ignorance and callousness towards others, combined with a lack of resolve to do what's right, which is really true about all of us to a degree. People feel like they have enough to worry about without others' problems. Also when you expose racism you are exposing the nasty underbelly of this country's history (assuming you're American), which is hard for people to handle. People will make some of the most embarrassing and extreme statements when confronted about race. I believe that's because the topic puts them in a state of distress. I try and have the mindset of helping and educating people rather than judging them or censoring them. After all, if you are saying racist stuff, it is you who has the problem and no one necessarily has to say anything. It's like telling someone they still have a sticker on their shirt. You are really doing them a favor so if they don't want a favor, there's no harm in just leaving them alone. Like you said, I don't have all the answers and certainly am no Daryl Davis but I think about this stuff a lot and find myself in a lot of debates about it with family and friends.
- 9y ago
ballenf 9y ago
The hardest part of his approach is the genuine respect he showed for the racists. He approached them as reasonable and intelligent and let that work to his benefit by essentially forcing them to deal with the resulting cognitive dissonance in their heads. The wrong lesson from this would be "being nice to racists" is somehow a meaningfully important aspect of his approach. He didn't bake them cookies and expect their racism to melt away. He showed them respect and didn't preach or moralize to them. In fact, he didn't seem to directly confront the poisonous beliefs at all. His approach was the same as that of the most effective leaders. So many social groups start from the premise of zero respect for those with whom they disagree. Which is great for feeling superior to others, but not for actually making a positive impact on the world around you.
- kbuchanan 9y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. From the article: Violence happens only when talking has stopped.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Sorry if this comes out wrong, but it have read about a similar approach when dealing with would be IS fighters.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    There really is no difference.
    - banned1 9y ago
      Most white racists are not out to kill others. Most ISIS are out there to kill others.
      - jacobush 9y ago
        This feels like it could devolve into ”true scotsman” argument real quick. Much of ISIS fanbase are NOT out to kill a lot of people. Like a lot of white supremacists they are more about talking the talk than walking the walk. But the narrative and the quick fix for slights against ”your people” offered by ISIS and nazis are very similar.
Animats 9y ago
It's hard to find the Klan online if you use Google. Google is ranking the Southern Poverty Law Center first and the Klan's sites are not on the first page. Bing is more useful: http://kkk.com/ http://www.theuka.us/ Stormfront is back: "https://www.stormfront.org" https://www.stormfront.org". They transferred their domain from Network Solutions to Tucows. Stormfront is just a forum system now. It was originally David Duke's support organization, but he's out of Congress and the Klan, and not doing much with it. The people posting there aren't evil. They're scared. Read "The destruction of white America from the perspective of a rural white man."[1] His town and life were ruined when the factories closed, unable to compete with cheap imports. "The small town that I grew up in would be radically altered and I would experience much change in my personal life as a result of these globalist policies. The company for which my mother worked would move south of the border to Mexico. The company for which my father worked would see its doors close permanently. My reasonably prosperous family in rural America would eventually fall into destitution and dissolve. My parents would split up (in part due to these financial struggles) and I would move in with my grandmother." This is how Trump was elected. [1] https://altright.com/2017/09/21/the-destruction-of-white-america-from-the-perspective-of-a-rural-white-man/ https://altright.com/2017/09/21/the-destruction-of-white-ame...
- FooHentai 9y ago
  >Tucows Now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...
- jhpriestley 9y ago
  This person's life sounds like it has been hard. They have some justification to feel scared and angry at the world. However, I would say that channeling that anger into racist terrorism does in fact make them evil. They had alternatives. In fact, most people in the world have hard lives but do not join organizations committed to racist terrorism.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Sure they had alternatives, but what if it seemed to them the alternatives were "sigh and resign" vs "racist terrorism"?
buyx 9y ago
There is a fine line between collaboration and dialogue. In South Africa, there were a significant percentage of oppressed people who tried to get along with the (white supremecist) apartheid government. They participated in the sham elections that gave them political scraps. They governed the Bantustans that were used to deprive black people of citizenship by driving them into a tiny proportion of the country. The apartheid government ultimately was a creature of greed masquerading behind an ideology. It enabled a part of the population to loot the wealth of South Africa for its own gain, using others as a pool of cheap labour. It deliberately, as a matter of state policy, gave blacks an inferior education, so they could be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Yet it was always open to dialogue, as long as that dialogue enabled it to survive on its own terms. The apartheid government did finally capitulate, but only after it realised that it was utterly alone and isolated and almost universally reviled, and the collapse of world communism meant that it wouldn’t be shielded by its erstwhile allies. FW De Klerk, the then leader of South Africa, boldly ended apartheid, but has tended to equivocate about its evil. And many white South Africans remain somewhat ambiguous, at best, about the evil it wrought. Would white South Africans have eventually seen the light if they weren’t isolated and treated as pariahs for much of the 1970’s and 80’s? I expect not. Although I can admire the subject of this article for trying to reach out to individual racists, care needs to be taken to not read too much into his message. Evil ideologies still need to be condemned, unequivocally, since they crave legitimacy, and are often not just “idealistic but misguided concepts in the marketplace of ideas” but well thought out mechanisms for the exploitation and oppression of others.
- krastanov 9y ago
  You are completely right, but as you condemn the ideology you need to also give a way out (hopefully not a humiliating way out) to those who have been indoctrinated (or those who have gotten used to dehumanizing the "others"). The subject of the article seems to have succeeded in this.
- JacobJans 9y ago
  > There is a fine line between collaboration and dialogue. I think this is a very important point that a lot of people don't quite get. For example, I am a pacificist. When I tell this to people, they sometimes assume I would stand aside and do nothing if a loved one was threatened with violence. In fact, the opposite is true: I would act aggressively and assertively (or I hope I would). Pacifist != Passive Acting with compassion for those who hate you does not disarm your ability to aggressively support and defend your rights. Really, in such a case, one should strive to be increasingly effective. The author of this article found a point of leverage that was effective in achieving his goals. I don't think I'd call what he was doing "dialogue," even though talking was part of it.
zaroth 9y ago
What an incredible collection -- to keep the masks and robes of the people he has led to renounce their membership!
40acres 9y ago
No thanks. Look, I understand where this guy is guy is coming from, but as a black man the last place you'd find me is near a self proclaimed Klansman.
HillaryBriss 9y ago
Daryl Davis's singular story is courageous, fantastic and inspiring. He has risen way, way above an average dork like me.
gdubs 9y ago
Only mentioned in the byline, but there's a documentary out with Daryl: http://accidentalcourtesy.com http://accidentalcourtesy.com
js2 9y ago
The author of this piece was interviewed on All Things Considered about a month ago. http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convince...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
_raoulcousins 9y ago
This reminded me of the podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me: http://www.dylanmarron.com/podcast/ http://www.dylanmarron.com/podcast/
z3t4 9y ago
I think people join gangs and clans because they want to get respect and feel appreciated. If you give them that, the clan/gang is no longer needed.

370 points by evo_9 9y ago

Through this story, I get reminded how many times I see discussion being shut down by the phrase "As part of group X, you are not allowed to have an opinion about Y". Talking relieve tensions between groups. It builds understanding. It one of the things in this world that can change how a individual think. Its nice to read such success story.

jfaucett 9y ago

I know this post will probably get flagged because it is so political. Still, I think this article is something everyone needs to read, especially in the current political climate where identity politics and group think have pitted groups of people against one another and spurred them to violence all over the western world. This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress.

lukeqsee 9y ago
I disagree with it being strictly political anymore than any human story is political. Having grown up in the south, it is indeed a powerful and necessary story.
goodcanadian 9y ago
I didn't find it the least bit political, but it was indeed flagged and dead when I came to it. I vouched for it.
Mikeb85 9y ago
> This article shows the classical liberal values of discussion and dialogue are so important to making progress. Values which are disappearing on the "left". I recently lost a friend (extreme lefty) for saying that Trump was elected because of the socio-economic situation of poor white voters in the US. He just railed on about how I was racist for daring to say that the Trump phenomenon is anything more than Americans being a bunch of Klansmen... Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. Edit - deleted the first edit.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  > Oh well, when discussion is lost, you wind up with things like Brexit, nationalism rising in Europe (look at how the election in Catalonia is going today), etc..., when those people whose opinions you previously ignored decide they've had enough. THIS. Grew up in the midwest, could've told the coastal liberals that their nonstop (and unnecessary) attacks on everything even slightly valued by the flyover states was going to cost them someday. They didn't want to hear it.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Well you sure showed us, with this brilliant act of communal decapitation. Never mind that the people who feel hurt the most are hurting themselves the most, you're making a point or something... Seriously, if your narrative for political change is little more than hurt feelings, maybe the "other" isn't the problem. This article should have at least showed you that putting aside the petty can have real impacts on both parties.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      Firstly I'm not a supporter of this Nationalist America First agenda, though the fact that simply because I'm willing to non-judgmentally listen to their side and hear their complaints and say yeah, those things are a problem causes you to react with hostility kind of shows my point well, so thanks. Secondly, this is not "hurt feelings," not that something -just- being emotionally abusive and nothing else should be an excuse for pretending it isn't a problem, but we'll go with that anyways. No, this is the fact that the middle state's economies have been struggling for years, and that was before the 2008 housing crash, which the cities and coasts have recovered fairly well from, but has left everyone else largely in the cold. Now, it's true that a lot of those issues can be fairly directly traced to the local governments and their bad decisions; some cities, for example Chattanooga, have done extremely well at modernizing. But to pretend that the constant drumbeat of the culture that being in the flyover states (itself a term of derision) is terrible, that everything they believe is dumb, that they're uneducated prudes and all the rest of it has caused an incredible cultural scar between the rural and urban portions of the nation. And successes like Chattanooga are in spite of, not because of, that divide.

te_chris 9y ago

It's definitely good to talk to people like this, but it needs to be carrot and stick: their organisations need to be ostracised and labelled as the hateful, racist hellholes that they are, while people of any background still treat each other with respect in their communities. The biggest risk with bringing the members of these organisations in out of the cold is that this might normalise the organisations and ideologies without actually destroying anything. E.g. like having a POTUS who equivocates over their behaviour.

implabknowho 9y ago
you are absolutely correct. if we don’t constantly publicly shame these people from all channels at all times, how else will they know they’re so wrong that signaling their wrongness is the most important function society serves?
gallerdude 9y ago
I disagree. We get nowhere by making fun of other people or taking the moral high-ground. Progress comes by having real conversations with others, no matter how much we disagree with what they have to say. It's easy and fun to call someone racist and walk away, but the right thing to do is having them explain how they feel and just talking to them about it. I also don't understand how normalization is an issue? We get nowhere by censoring the our least favorite ideas in society. We get somewhere by bringing them out, and talking about why we disagree with the points made, in a respectful manner. Relevant article from The Onion: http://www.theonion.com/article/former-conservative-recalls-belittling-tirade-coll-56825 http://www.theonion.com/article/former-conservative-recalls-...
- justin66 9y ago
  > We get somewhere by bringing them out, and talking about why we disagree with the points made, in a respectful manner. It's not as if Neo-Nazis are "making points."
- HillaryBriss 9y ago
  an additional argument for protecting free speech for extremist ideas: the rest of society has a better sense of who these people are, what they're doing, what they're thinking, where they're going. the rest of society has more information about the extremists than it would if they were always suppressed.

adora 9y ago

The story of Derek Black is also interesting. A former white nationalist (godfather was David Duke) who would later denounce his racist views after befriending an Orthodox Jew. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-... https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left-white-nationalism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/why-i-left... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transcript-derek-black.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transc...

3131s 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Phelps-Roper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Phelps-Roper The same was true for Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. She explained in a TED talk that ultimately after being treated with respect by the people she hated, she could not reconcile her hatred of them with those experiences. "Sometimes the conversation even bled into real life. People I'd sparred with on Twitter would come out to the picket line to see me when I protested in their city. A man named David was one such person. He ran a blog called "Jewlicious," and after several months of heated but friendly arguments online, he came out to see me at a picket in New Orleans. He brought me a Middle Eastern dessert from Jerusalem, where he lives, and I brought him kosher chocolate and held a "God hates Jews" sign." "It took time, but eventually these conversations planted seeds of doubt in me. My friends on Twitter took the time to understand Westboro's doctrines, and in doing so, they were able to find inconsistencies I'd missed my entire life. Why did we advocate the death penalty for gays when Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?" How could we claim to love our neighbor while at the same time praying for God to destroy them? The truth is that the care shown to me by these strangers on the internet was itself a contradiction. It was growing evidence that people on the other side were not the demons I'd been led to believe." https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_phelps_roper_i_grew_up_in_the_westboro_baptist_church_here_s_why_i_left/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_phelps_roper_i_grew_up_in_th... I don't normally like TED talks but hers was pretty interesting.
- 9y ago

kevmo 9y ago

I grew up in the Deep South, and you can really change the way people feel by being unflinchingly friendly. People who hold controversial opinions generally know that they do (if they aren't crazy) and expect people to recoil at first contact. When you don't recoil, it throws them and makes them think. At that point, you are entering mind-changing territory. Then you start asking them questions that allows them to do 80% of the talking. They will usually stumble on their own logical fallacies at that point, and you have thus led the horse to water, which is about all you can do. Not very many people are very good at this. Which is unfortunate. TL;DR When you get all worked up over the way people are talking, you have allowed them to seize control of the debate and have generally lost the opportunity to change that particular mind.

userbinator 9y ago
you can really change the way people feel by being unflinchingly friendly See also: Troll hugging http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging.html http://pugs.blogs.com/audrey/2009/08/my-hobby-troll-hugging....
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Also being heavily advocated by Zoffix right now who is a prominent member of the Perl6 project (trying to get it renamed to Rakudo to distance it from Perl5, which makes some sense).
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Also grew up in the deep south, and my mom would always call this "killing them with kindness"
  - kevmo 9y ago
    That's what my momma said, too.
  - aeountdh34th 9y ago
    As a northerner who lived in the South I can unequivocally tell you this doesn't work. Southerners who do this come off as saccharine and insincere. It's incredibly transparent and irritating (which I always felt was the point) to people who don't agree with you. You aren't fooling anyone.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

I grew up in the south and I think people are genuinely polite to each other. African Americans, redneck racists, everyone is polite in public, but the bad stuff comes out in private, in groups and friendships. That's where the hate festers.

userbinator 9y ago

Oddly enough, the pictures of Daryl in the article seem to show he has a lighter skin colour than the other pictures of him you can find elsewhere... in case anyone else is wondering whether that may have been a factor in his successful relations.

pgodzin 9y ago

Daryl Davis had a really interesting AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis_a_black_musician_here_to_discuss/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis...

mlinksva 9y ago
I've seen stories about Davis in the past but never read closely, though I've idly wondered how much danger he has been in. A couple questions ask about this and it seems he has been attacked a few times. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis_a_black_musician_here_to_discuss/dn64fba/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis... https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis_a_black_musician_here_to_discuss/dn6485e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/70vcr0/im_daryl_davis... I'm not sure where the quote comes from, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis says: > However, not all Klan members were receptive to Davis's advances. Some reacted with anger or even violence. Davis stated, "I was not seriously injured. I've faced knives and guns and of course fists. I've had to physically fight upon occasion, but that is not my first resort. I did not carry any weapons to my interviews. On one occasion, it was only one Klansman who attacked me. On another, it was 3 of them. I won, both physically on the street and legally in court." I would be too scared to do what he has done, even as a white gentile. The more physical distance between me and hate group adherents, the better. But hats off to Davis and anyone braver than me.

dang 9y ago

This is the rare case of a submission that looks like flamebait and really isn't, so I've turned off the flags on it. It's a fascinating story that easily clears the bar for being intellectually interesting, and therefore on topic for HN. Please discuss what's interesting and don't go into flamewar. Hints: to discuss what's interesting, read the article and respond to what's specific about it. To avoid flamewar, if your comment could just as easily be posted to any thread about race, and especially if you're posting to smite enemies rather than learn new things together, stop and read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html instead.

matt4077 9y ago
As it happens, it is also the rare story on the subject that plays exactly to the opinion that the HN community already holds; namely that it is more effective to engage even the most vile theories in measured debate, and that any attempt to reduce the publicity that, for example, racists get will only make their ideology spread faster. The irony being that sometimes people opposing that theory are to be found at the bottom of the threat, flagged and dead. But I'm assuming that to be the work of people agreeing with them, trying to empower them. Meanwhile, a writer as mainstream as Ta-Nehisi Coates (https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ta-nehisi-coates/ https://www.theatlantic.com/author/ta-nehisi-coates/) can write all the #1 bestsellers he likes on the subject, but is considered to be "flamebait" here.
- dang 9y ago
  Well there's some truth to that, but I don't agree with how you interpret it. Unfortunately the question gets so complicated so quickly that I don't know how to write about it in an internet comment. So I'll respond with some things I do know how to say. Perceptions of "the opinion the HN community holds" are in the eye of the beholder. If you don't believe me, take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15032682 and plenty more at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=13110004 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=.... People see X they don't like and conclude that "the community endorses X". Advanced version: "the moderators endorse X". This is not how HN works—the opposite of X is here too, it just doesn't get noticed the same way (people notice most what they dislike the most). Since X varies with the observer, this isn't specific to any political view. You wrote your comment in the combative style that is popular on the internet. From past exchanges, I'm pretty sure you have HN's best interests at heart as well as wanting there to be more good in the world. No argument there! The trouble with the combative style is not that the community (or moderators) disagree with the content ideologically. It's that in this style one comes out swinging and assumes bad faith, and that's bad for good conversation, which is really all we're hoping for. Ideological combat insta-sorts the world into enemies vs. fellows and goes to war against the former. Indeed that's all it does—it's always on a war footing, and we all know how it has been taking over online. We're (hopelessly?) hoping to avoid that on HN. Is that because we hold regressive views about race or are milquetoast centrists? No, it's just that we'd like to have an internet forum that isn't dumb, which is what scorched earth leads to. HN's goal is to be interesting, which means being unpredictable, which means not saying the same things over and over. Ideological battle has a different goal and requires saying the same things over and over. That is why the two are incompatible; it's not because HN promotes ideology not-X where you favor X. I'm sure we could do better and if you know how, I'd love to learn. But we need to agree that HN's goal is to gratify intellectual curiosity [2]. I think it's fair for there to be different forums that optimize for different goals, don't you? That's this one's. 1. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment&query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&date... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

hirundo 9y ago

When an Antifa member punches someone who they identify as a white nationalist, at best they can make them shut up for a while. At worst the violence is reciprocated disproportionately. If instead the Antifa would attempt to befriend that person and to have good faith dialogues with them, they would at least have the potential to actually reduce racism, and reduce hatred on both sides. Ideally, the result could be one less Nazi puncher and one less Nazi. And with dialog, maybe they'd discover that not every political disagreement reveals a "white nationalist". But I suspect that for many, that would be a whole lot less fun.

reducesuffering 9y ago
Can’t upvote enough. Antifa make themselves much more like their opposition than they think by resorting to violence. It’s a whole lot more fun to think of yourself on this grandoise crusade-battle. The irony.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  Shooting, shooting, Nazis is one of the things that Americans spent 60 years lionizing, bragging about, celebrating, etc. How did punching a Nazi once in a while stop being great?
  - Spivak 9y ago
    * Because we're not in a theater of war and they're not enemy combatants. * Because we're no better than them if we inflict wanton violence on people we would rather not have around. * Because it's taking the bait. The whole point in kindling all this anger is bring out the worst in everyone and show the world 'the intolerant left' and stupid 'punch a Nazi' bullshit only proves their point. The more these people are silenced, attacked and marginalized by 'leftists' in power the more they're able to show just how much power 'the left' wields. The more you fight them the stronger they get.
    - jackmott 9y ago
      being tolerant of Nazis is absurd.

techrich 9y ago

He did a documentary on netflix.

Aloha 9y ago

I've long said that progress involves changing individual hearts and minds more than just a political process - the political process is what happens after you've changed hearts and minds. We saw it with the civil rights movement, we saw it with the gay rights movement, and we're going to see at some point with the trans rights movement too. Merely showing up and demanding rights isnt enough, you need to convince people that their needs are bound up with yours.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

AaronFriel 9y ago

I've tried this, and sometimes it's worked. When it has, it's usually when I'm part of the group that's hated by someone. As in this article, or in my personal experience talking with people biased against atheists or liberals, I was able to make headway by demonstrating that I am not the idea of what they hate. I have had absolutely no progress with this when talking about homophobia, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, or anti-immigrant biases. I'm a straight white male with no Jewish heritage in sight and an nth generation German-Irish American. I've tried, in earnest, to apply the same "killing them with kindness" philosophy to folks to people who hold abhorrent views towards groups that aren't like me, and it's failed miserably. The cop-out from the other party is that being liberal, I'm brainwashed or following my mainstream media marching orders or something to that effect. That my impression and my testimony that black people aren't lazy, that women are not less capable managers and programmers, et cetera., is irrelevant to the person I'm arguing with. I'm not black/Latino, I'm not a woman, I'm not able to demonstrate those things in a way that is convincing. This is deeply disconcerting to me, because it seems allyship helps in some cases (LGBT movement) but from testimony I've heard at conferences, the best way to change a homophobic or transphobic person's mind is to first, be their friend or family member, and second, come out as LGBT. The monumental success of acceptance of the LGBT movement seems to be almost entirely from encouraging people to come out to their friends and family members. Without downplaying it too much, I think that the language of allyship is primarily helpful at convincing people in power that they can be part of that movement, but it wasn't useful in changing people's minds. My question to Hacker News is: why should the burden be on me, someone who is opposed to the KKK and the resurgent white nationalism in this country, to befriend people? And is there any evidence (or personal testimony from other commenters) that this sort of thing works when not part of the targeted minority? Because I am exhausted. Again, I want to reiterate: "killing with kindness" was tremendously successful for me when I was dealing with people that didn't like some group identity I shared: liberalism, secularism. But it utterly fails when I try to talk to say, a racist friend of a family member who calls Colin Kaepernick "caperdink" and Barack Obama "obummer". Kindness doesn't seem to work when as a white man, they expect me to be kind.

harpiaharpyja 9y ago
I don't see why you should feel like the burden is on you. Ultimately you don't decide what other people think, and so you cannot be responsible for changing their minds. You can show them that alternate beliefs (yours) do exist, and that you hold them just as they hold theirs. Unless you're involved in a personal situation where a third person - friend or family - is being a victim of hate, I wouldn't beat yourself up over your inability to do more.

gizmodo59 9y ago

In many cases people just grew up to be and found a community where they are accepted. A dialogue with them like how it has been mentioned in the article is all it takes.

grondilu 9y ago

> How could anybody hate me when they didn’t even know me? That's an easy question to answer. People are not islands. They conform to stereotypes, culture, so at least to some degree one can group people into common patterns of behaviors and values. And people can hate some of those patterns.

tacomonstrous 9y ago

It's not clear to me from this article that the author ever understood why they hated him. From this account, it seems as if he just kept hanging out with them for decades till they magically weren't hateful any more. Not sure if this is very scalable.

tboyd47 9y ago
Research more about his style and approach. He goes to great lengths to understand their views before meeting them. In his AMA he mentioned that he would even hold debates with himself in the mirror, representing his own opponent. Extraordinary stuff.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  That's great, but I agree with the OP - I expected, given the headline, to find out why the Klansmen hated him. But the article doesn't actually say. In fact it doesn't give a voice to the Klansmen at all. It just says: I went and talked to them and they became friends. Eventually they changed and gave me their robes. Nice story and I'm sure it's true. But it didn't help me understand the KKK any better, which is a shame.
  - antod 9y ago
    As far as I can tell, the point is that there was NO actual reason why they hated him apart from they didn't know him. Once they knew him, they didn't hate him. The ones that changed their point of view, eventually just realised they had no remaining reason to hate him. And by extension it was irrational to automatically hate every other black person they didn't know yet. It was his attempts to understand them, that helped some of them understand him. As he points out though, there were plenty of klan members that this didn't work out with though. It obviously takes some level of self awareness/reflection to change your mind like that.

BrandoElFollito 9y ago

I witnessed onece how approaching people with genuine openness helps. I was in Aix-en-Provence (south of France) and got lost on the outskirts of the city. I waked into a "cité", which is a large area of block of flags, poor and full of drugs and angry people. I walked to a group, the tension was obvious but I kept on walking and approched them with a simple question about how to get to downtown, and (most importantly), what THEY think is the best way to get there. A normal person talking with normal people. Not only they showed me the way (after arguing about the best one for 10 minutes) but hopped into a car to drive me there. Sometimes treating peooke genuinely kindky goes a long way.

trcollinson 9y ago

This might not be the right place to ask this but I respect the opinion of people who read and post on HN. I don't believe I am racist or sexist. I like to believe that I love everyone. I care about people. I don't want to look at gender or race or sexual orientation or any other differentiator when I get to know someone, or ever. I don't want to judge others. I want people to have equal rights. I want people to live happily, healthy, and safely. But, I am a highly paid middle class white male in the US. I want to know that I am helping to bring about this equality and lack of judgement. I see articles being advertised in the middle of the parent article like "What do black people have to lose under Trump? A lot" and I think "How can that be possible?" Then I realize it is no doubt completely possible. And I know my opinion doesn't matter much but I don't want that to happen. I want people to have equal rights. I want people to feel safe, happy, and healthy. But my desire is not enough. I don't have an answer to this problem. I don't have some ulterior Motive. This is a bit of a rant against myself. I'm upset with myself that I don't know what to do to make it better. Maybe someone here will know.

tboyd47 9y ago
I think the easiest thing to do is just be educated in the facts and able to defend your views without getting caught up in the political rhetoric of the day. A lot of racism is just ignorance and callousness towards others, combined with a lack of resolve to do what's right, which is really true about all of us to a degree. People feel like they have enough to worry about without others' problems. Also when you expose racism you are exposing the nasty underbelly of this country's history (assuming you're American), which is hard for people to handle. People will make some of the most embarrassing and extreme statements when confronted about race. I believe that's because the topic puts them in a state of distress. I try and have the mindset of helping and educating people rather than judging them or censoring them. After all, if you are saying racist stuff, it is you who has the problem and no one necessarily has to say anything. It's like telling someone they still have a sticker on their shirt. You are really doing them a favor so if they don't want a favor, there's no harm in just leaving them alone. Like you said, I don't have all the answers and certainly am no Daryl Davis but I think about this stuff a lot and find myself in a lot of debates about it with family and friends.
9y ago

ballenf 9y ago

The hardest part of his approach is the genuine respect he showed for the racists. He approached them as reasonable and intelligent and let that work to his benefit by essentially forcing them to deal with the resulting cognitive dissonance in their heads. The wrong lesson from this would be "being nice to racists" is somehow a meaningfully important aspect of his approach. He didn't bake them cookies and expect their racism to melt away. He showed them respect and didn't preach or moralize to them. In fact, he didn't seem to directly confront the poisonous beliefs at all. His approach was the same as that of the most effective leaders. So many social groups start from the premise of zero respect for those with whom they disagree. Which is great for feeling superior to others, but not for actually making a positive impact on the world around you.

kbuchanan 9y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. From the article: Violence happens only when talking has stopped.
digi_owl 9y ago
Sorry if this comes out wrong, but it have read about a similar approach when dealing with would be IS fighters.
- jacobush 9y ago
  There really is no difference.
  - banned1 9y ago
    Most white racists are not out to kill others. Most ISIS are out there to kill others.
    - jacobush 9y ago
      This feels like it could devolve into ”true scotsman” argument real quick. Much of ISIS fanbase are NOT out to kill a lot of people. Like a lot of white supremacists they are more about talking the talk than walking the walk. But the narrative and the quick fix for slights against ”your people” offered by ISIS and nazis are very similar.

Animats 9y ago

It's hard to find the Klan online if you use Google. Google is ranking the Southern Poverty Law Center first and the Klan's sites are not on the first page. Bing is more useful: http://kkk.com/ http://www.theuka.us/ Stormfront is back: "https://www.stormfront.org" https://www.stormfront.org". They transferred their domain from Network Solutions to Tucows. Stormfront is just a forum system now. It was originally David Duke's support organization, but he's out of Congress and the Klan, and not doing much with it. The people posting there aren't evil. They're scared. Read "The destruction of white America from the perspective of a rural white man."[1] His town and life were ruined when the factories closed, unable to compete with cheap imports. "The small town that I grew up in would be radically altered and I would experience much change in my personal life as a result of these globalist policies. The company for which my mother worked would move south of the border to Mexico. The company for which my father worked would see its doors close permanently. My reasonably prosperous family in rural America would eventually fall into destitution and dissolve. My parents would split up (in part due to these financial struggles) and I would move in with my grandmother." This is how Trump was elected. [1] https://altright.com/2017/09/21/the-destruction-of-white-america-from-the-perspective-of-a-rural-white-man/ https://altright.com/2017/09/21/the-destruction-of-white-ame...

FooHentai 9y ago
>Tucows Now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time...
jhpriestley 9y ago
This person's life sounds like it has been hard. They have some justification to feel scared and angry at the world. However, I would say that channeling that anger into racist terrorism does in fact make them evil. They had alternatives. In fact, most people in the world have hard lives but do not join organizations committed to racist terrorism.
- jacobush 9y ago
  Sure they had alternatives, but what if it seemed to them the alternatives were "sigh and resign" vs "racist terrorism"?

buyx 9y ago

There is a fine line between collaboration and dialogue. In South Africa, there were a significant percentage of oppressed people who tried to get along with the (white supremecist) apartheid government. They participated in the sham elections that gave them political scraps. They governed the Bantustans that were used to deprive black people of citizenship by driving them into a tiny proportion of the country. The apartheid government ultimately was a creature of greed masquerading behind an ideology. It enabled a part of the population to loot the wealth of South Africa for its own gain, using others as a pool of cheap labour. It deliberately, as a matter of state policy, gave blacks an inferior education, so they could be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Yet it was always open to dialogue, as long as that dialogue enabled it to survive on its own terms. The apartheid government did finally capitulate, but only after it realised that it was utterly alone and isolated and almost universally reviled, and the collapse of world communism meant that it wouldn’t be shielded by its erstwhile allies. FW De Klerk, the then leader of South Africa, boldly ended apartheid, but has tended to equivocate about its evil. And many white South Africans remain somewhat ambiguous, at best, about the evil it wrought. Would white South Africans have eventually seen the light if they weren’t isolated and treated as pariahs for much of the 1970’s and 80’s? I expect not. Although I can admire the subject of this article for trying to reach out to individual racists, care needs to be taken to not read too much into his message. Evil ideologies still need to be condemned, unequivocally, since they crave legitimacy, and are often not just “idealistic but misguided concepts in the marketplace of ideas” but well thought out mechanisms for the exploitation and oppression of others.

krastanov 9y ago
You are completely right, but as you condemn the ideology you need to also give a way out (hopefully not a humiliating way out) to those who have been indoctrinated (or those who have gotten used to dehumanizing the "others"). The subject of the article seems to have succeeded in this.
JacobJans 9y ago
> There is a fine line between collaboration and dialogue. I think this is a very important point that a lot of people don't quite get. For example, I am a pacificist. When I tell this to people, they sometimes assume I would stand aside and do nothing if a loved one was threatened with violence. In fact, the opposite is true: I would act aggressively and assertively (or I hope I would). Pacifist != Passive Acting with compassion for those who hate you does not disarm your ability to aggressively support and defend your rights. Really, in such a case, one should strive to be increasingly effective. The author of this article found a point of leverage that was effective in achieving his goals. I don't think I'd call what he was doing "dialogue," even though talking was part of it.

zaroth 9y ago

What an incredible collection -- to keep the masks and robes of the people he has led to renounce their membership!

40acres 9y ago

No thanks. Look, I understand where this guy is guy is coming from, but as a black man the last place you'd find me is near a self proclaimed Klansman.

HillaryBriss 9y ago

Daryl Davis's singular story is courageous, fantastic and inspiring. He has risen way, way above an average dork like me.

gdubs 9y ago

Only mentioned in the byline, but there's a documentary out with Daryl: http://accidentalcourtesy.com http://accidentalcourtesy.com

js2 9y ago

The author of this piece was interviewed on All Things Considered about a month ago. http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes http://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convince...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

_raoulcousins 9y ago

This reminded me of the podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me: http://www.dylanmarron.com/podcast/ http://www.dylanmarron.com/podcast/

z3t4 9y ago

I think people join gangs and clans because they want to get respect and feel appreciated. If you give them that, the clan/gang is no longer needed.