Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1419 - Daryl Davis
Uploaded: 2020-01-30T20:00:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1419 - Daryl Davis' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-01-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1419 - Daryl Davis' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-01-30. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1419 - Daryl Davis

two one good hello Darryl hey Joe how are you doing my pleasure for thank you
for being here
really really really appreciate it thank you I read your story I saw a thing
about you on NPR
and it's crazy you've converted how many people 200 KKK members you've got them
to drop their
robes some directly some indirectly yes how did that all happen wow you know I
keep running into
these guys I'm a musician by trade right musician right rock and roll blues
swing jazz my degrees in
jazz but hey I'll I'll play whatever you want me to play you're paying I'm
playing so everybody likes
music even the KKK so use that to to my advantage I was playing at a bar one
night in Frederick
Maryland all-white bar and when I say all white I don't mean that blacks couldn't
go in what I mean
is that blacks chose not to go in they weren't welcome and here I was in this
bar with this
country band a friend of mine's band I was only black guy in the band only
black guy in the bar
and upon finishing the first set this I'm walking to the band table and
somebody came up and put their
arm around my shoulder I turn around see who it was it was a white gentleman
maybe 15 18 years older
than me and he says yeah yeah I really enjoy your all's music I said thank you
I shook his hand and he
pointed at the stage and said you know I've seen this here band before but I
ain't never seen you
before where'd you come from and I explained yeah you know they told me they
played here before but
this is my first time in this place I just joined the band and he said well man
I really like your
piano playing this is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like
Jerry Lee Lewis and I
wasn't um I wasn't offended but I was rather surprised because as I said you
know this guy's like
maybe 15 years older than me and he didn't he did not know the black origin of
Jerry Lee Lewis's style
of piano playing um I explained it to him I got it from the same place Jerry
Lee did from black blues
and boogie woogie piano players where the guy was incredulous oh no no no Jerry
Lee invented that
I never heard no black man play like that except for you something okay well
this this guy never heard
of Little Richard or or Fast Domino and uh I said look man I know Jerry Lee
Lewis he's a friend of mine
he's told me himself we learned how to play the guy did not buy that I knew
Jerry Lee he didn't buy
that Jerry Lee learned anything from black people but he was so fascinated that
he wanted to buy me a
drink I was like a novelty to him so I went back to his table I had a cranberry
juice and then he
announces this is the first time I sat down had a drink with a black man and
now I'm I'm the one who's
incredulous like how can that be you know I've sat down with thousands of white
people anybody else
had a meal a beverage a conversation how is it this guy had never done that and
innocently I asked him
I said why he didn't answer me at first he stared down at the tabletop and I
asked him again and his
buddy sitting next to him elbowed him in the side and said tell him tell him
tell him I said tell me
you know I'm trying to figure out what is this mystery he looks at me just as
plain as day and he says
I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan well I burst out laughing you know because it
was getting weirder by the
second half yeah and uh I knew a lot about the Klan I'd been studying racism
since I was a 10 year old
kid because of an incident that happened to me back then and I bought books on
black supremacy white
supremacy the KKK the Nazis the neo-Nazis um tried to try to understand this
mentality and I knew a
Klansman would not come up and just throw his arm around some black guy's
shoulder and praises talent
and want to you know hang out with him buy him a drink so you know this guy's
jerking me around so I'm
laughing and he goes inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet and produces
his Klan membership card
they have cards oh yeah yeah and he gave me his uh card I looked at it and I
recognized the uh Klan
insignia which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the
center of the cross
and I realized oh man this thing's for real so I stopped laughing it wasn't
funny anymore and I gave
it back to him and we chatted about the Klan and different things but the dude
gave me his phone number
and wanted me to call him whenever I was to return to this bar so he could
bring his friends
meaning Klansmen and Klanswomen to see this black guy play like Jerry Lee I'm
not sure he called me a
black guy to his friends but but uh I said I'll call you so um I would call him
every six weeks
on a Wednesday or Thursday and say hey man you know we're down at the uh Silver
Dollar you know
Friday and Saturday come on out he'd come out both nights and he'd bring Klansmen
and Klanswomen
and they'd come and gather around the bandstand and watch me play the piano or
get out there and dance
to our music now you know they didn't come in robes and hoods right they came
in street clothes
and um on the break I would go to his table say hello some of them were very
curious they'd hang
out there and want to meet me and talk to me others would see me coming and get
up and take off
and go stand some other part of the room where it's like I just want to see you
I don't want to deal
with you kind of thing so that was fine and um I decided later on I would write
a book because I'd
been looking for an answer to a question that I had formed when I was age 10.
My question was how can
you hate me when you don't even know me and this was a result of having marched
in a Cub Scout parade
at the age of 10 being the only black scout in this parade and while most
people on the streets and
sidewalks were cheering us we were marching from Lexington to Concord
Massachusetts to commemorate the
ride of Paul Revere and people were like waving flags and yelling and screaming
the British are coming
and all a good time except for one small pocket of people who were throwing
rocks and bottles at me
and at age 10 um my first thought was oh those people over there don't like the
Scouts that's how naive I was
it wasn't until my den mother my cub master my troop leader all came rushing
over and huddled over me with
their bodies these white people and escorted me out of the danger that I
realized I was only target
because nobody else was getting this protection and these were adults or these
were other children these
were a couple it was maybe about five people I remember there being a couple of
kids maybe my age a
year older uh and some adults adults were thrown rocks and bottles at a 10 year
old boy that's correct
yeah wow and um you know I I kept saying to my uh my scout leaders I didn't do
anything I didn't do
anything because now I'm trying to find out what did I do right you know why
are they
doing this to me right and they kept you know shushing me telling me to hurry
up move along it'll be okay
so they never answered the question as to why this was happening when I got
home that day
after this parade my mother and father who were not there were putting the cure
chrome and band-aids
on me and asking me how did I fall down and get all scraped up I told them I
didn't fall down
I told them exactly what had happened and for the first time in my life my mom
and dad sat me down
and explained to me what racism was at the age of 10 I had never heard the term
racism
now what year was this 1968 okay um I'll tell you why because my dad was a u.s
foreign service
so we spent a lot of time overseas every two years you go to a country you're
there for two years
come back home for a few months and then you get reassigned to another country
so when I was overseas
in elementary school my classes were filled with kids from all over the world
anybody who had an
embassy in those countries all those embassy kids went to the same school my
class was full of kids
from Nigeria Italy France Germany Japan Russia you name it um if you were to
open the door to my
classroom and stick your head in you would say this looks like a united nations
of little kids because
that's exactly what it was and we all got along then I would come home after
that two-year assignment
and I would be in either all black schools or all white schools I'm sorry all
black schools or all black
and white schools meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated schools
and there was not the
amount of diversity in my classroom that I had overseas today you walk into a
classroom you know you can't
tell where people people are from from all over so literally um between 1961
and like 1968 1970
I was living about 12 years into the future when I was living overseas because
that that multicultural
scene had yet to come to this country and um when it did of course I was
already prepared unfortunately
many of my peers were not so I didn't experience racism had I lived here my you
know my whole life
I might have had a different perspective and not taking this path um so I was
very curious about it
and fascinated with it like how can somebody hate you when they don't even know
you it was just beyond
my comprehension and I knew something was wrong because the people who did this
to me did not look
any different than my little French friends my Swedish friends or my fellow
Americans from the embassy
or for that matter my fellow Americans right there you know at the school where
I went where we did the
march so I knew it wasn't a color thing in fact when my parents told me this I
did not believe my parents
I thought for some reason my parents are lying to me because my 10 year old
brain could not process
the idea that someone who had never seen me had never spoken to me knew nothing
about me would want
to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin so I did
not believe them well
a month and a half later that same year 1968 on April the 4th Martin Luther
King was assassinated
and I remember it very well we were in Massachusetts same place and nearby
Boston Washington DC my hometown
Chicago Illinois Philadelphia Detroit Baltimore Richmond LA all burned to the
ground
with violence and destruction all in the name of this new word that I had
learned called racism and so
then I realized my parents had told me the truth this this phenomenon called
racism does exist but why
I don't understand why okay so it's here but why and so that's when I formed
that question
how can you hate me when you don't even know me and so I've been looking for
the answer to that question
now for 51 years I'm 61 years old so um after I uh I uh met this Klansman oh
maybe I don't know
three or four months later I quit that band and went back to playing rock and
roll and blues and R&B
and then it dawned on me Daryl you know the answer that you've been seeking
since age 10
fell right into your lap um who better to ask that question of how can you hate
me when you don't even
know me than to ask it of somebody who would go so far as to join an
organization whose whole premise
has been hating people who do not look like them and who do not believe as they
believe
and this organization has been around for over 100 years somebody would go that
far to join the KKK
should damn sure have an answer to your question so get back in contact with
that guy
and why don't you write a book because I had every book I still do every book
written on the Klan
and they all were written by white authors obviously because a white author
would have you know less
fear of ramifications talking to a Klansman or interviewing them um who have
easier access
or could join the Klan undercover get the story get out and write about it so
my book became
the first book ever written by a black author on the Ku Klux Klan from the
perspective of sitting down
face to face I decided I would go around the country interview Klan leaders
there in Maryland where I live
up north down south midwest and west and I said I would start right there in
Maryland so I got a hold of
that guy and I wanted him to introduc