Top 90 Quotes & Sayings by Daryl Davis
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Daryl Davis.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Venues had segregated seating - but when Chuck Berry fused together blues, boogie-woogie and country music, it caused people not to be able to sit still. They bounced up out of their seats, knocking over ropes, dancing together.
I have just about every book written on the Klan and I've read them all.
It was incomprehensible to me that someone who had never seen me before, someone who knew absolutely nothing about me, would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin.
There are a lot of well meaning white liberals. And a lot of well meaning black liberals. But you know what? When all they do is sit around and preach to the choir it does absolutely no good. If you're not a racist it doesn't do any good for me to meet with you and sit around and talk about how bad racism is.
If you were to talk to somebody from Georgia you would understand what he's saying, he wouldn't sound like your next-door neighbor in Montana, but other than that it's the same language, just with a few little different nuances. That's just like country and blues, or blues and rock 'n' roll. They're the same music with different accents.
Keep in mind, when two enemies are talking, they're not fighting, they're talking. They might be yelling and screaming, but at least they're talking. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence.
He spoke nine languages. You know some people can just pick up an instrument and play. My father was like that with languages.
You can legislate behavior but you cannot legislate belief. Patience is what it takes. But patience doesn't mean sitting around on your butt waiting for something to happen.
Music absolutely played a massive role in bridging many gaps in the racial divides I would encounter.
I was no stranger to racism. Having grown up a black person in the '60s and '70s, I knew that prejudice was common.
What we do too much of is, we talk about each other, we talk at each other, or we talk past each other. I have found that talking with each other is much more effective.
You cannot hate the hate out of a person. You cannot beat the hate out of a person. But you can love it out of a person.
I decided to go around the country and sit down with Klan leaders and Klan members to find out: How can you hate me when you don't even know me?
We would not have rock and roll without Chuck Berry, and when I first heard Chuck Berry, I fell in love with that music, and when I saw him, I changed my whole career trajectory that I was on as a kid.
There have been some incidents in which I was threatened and a couple of instances where I had to physically fight. Fortunately, I won in both instances.
Racism is a cancer. You cannot ignore it and it'll go away. If you ignore cancer, it simply metastasizes and consumes the whole body.
I knew as much about the Klan, if not more than many of the Klan people that I interviewed. When they see that you know about their organization, their belief system, they respect you.
I have a former Baltimore City police officer's uniform and his robe and hood. He was the grand dragon, which means state leader. His day job, what paid his bills, he was a Baltimore City police officer, not an undercover officer in the Klan gathering intelligence, but a bona fide Klansmen on the Baltimore City police force.
1983 - Country music had made a resurgence in this country so I joined a country band. I was the only black guy in the band and consequently, usually the only black guy in many of the places where we played.
Invite your enemies to sit down and join you. One small thing you say might give them food for though, and you will learn.
There has always been a great deal of racism in the U.S. before and after Obama.
A Klan member is not stamped from a standard cookie cutter. They come from all walks of life and various education levels and environmental situations which have led to their decision to join the Klan. The one common denominator that all share is lack of exposure to others who may not look like them or believe as they do.
Our society can only become one of two things, it can be become what we let it become or it can become what we make it, and I choose the latter.
A stupid person is someone who has the facts, who has the proper information, and still makes the wrong decision.
There are many controversial topics out there - abortion, nuclear weapons, the 2nd Amendment, guns, whatever, the war in Iraq. You're going to be on one side, somebody's going to be on the other side. Invite those people to the table. Sit down and talk.
There's a difference between being ignorant and being stupid... For me, an ignorant person is someone who makes the wrong decision or a bad choice because he or she does not have the proper facts. If you give that person the facts and the proper information you have alleviated that ignorance, and they make the right decision.
I am not so naive as to think everyone will change. There are certainly those who will go to their graves as hateful, violent racists.
People learn racism through dialogue. Somebody tells them about it. So if you can learn it through dialogue, you can also unlearn it through dialogue.
Knowledge, information, wit, and the way you disseminate these attributes can often prove to be a more disarming weapon against an enemy or some with whom your ideology is in conflict, than violence or lethal weapons.
Music is my profession but learning more about racism on all sides of the tracks was my obsession.
I never set out to convert anyone in the Klan. I just set out to get an answer to my question: 'How can you hate me when you don't even know me.'
I didn't vote for Trump, but I do believe his coming to power has done its own bit of good. People are coming out to protest against issues they so far didn't talk about - sexual abuse, gun control, racism - because a bunch of crazies are out propagating them.
The most important thing I learned is that when you are actively learning about someone else you are passively teaching them about yourself.
If you don't keep hatred in check it will breed destruction.
My parents were U.S. Foreign Service, so I spent a lot of time you know, overseas in various countries around the world, you know, I was an American Embassy brat and today, as a professional musician, I travel all over this country and around the world.
There are plenty of people, including good friends of mine, who are not racist, and who voted for Trump. A lot of people wanted a change from what they were accustom to for the last decades... they wanted a change of the status quo, a changing of the guard. And they were willing to overlook his misogyny, his racist or bigoted comments.
When something bothers me, I try to learn about it.
I'd had a racist experience as a child at age 10, where people had thrown rocks at me and bottles. I didn't understand. And all it was, was because of the color of my skin, nothing I had done, nothing I had said.
I don't consider myself to be a racist, but to me there's not much difference between a black racist or a white racist.
When you make friends with me, you have a friend for life.
Back in the day, prior to rock and roll, music halls, concert venues were segregated if they allowed black people in at all. You know, there were ropes that went around the sitting sections with signs hanging that would say, 'Sitting for white patrons only,' or 'Colored sitting only.'
If you have an adversary, an opponent with an opposing point of view, give that person a platform, regardless of how extreme it may be.
Every racist that I know - and I know a lot of racists - every racist that I know voted for Donald Trump.
I did not vote for Donald Trump and I do not support him but I believe that Trump is the best thing to happen to this country in a long time. He's bringing out the country's ugliness. There's no turning a blind eye anymore.
If you spend five minutes with your worst enemy - 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 relationship and as you build about that relationship, you're forming a friendship.
We spend too much time talking about each other, at each other, past each other, and not enough time talking with each other.
Always keep the lines of communication open with your adversaries.
Some black people who have not heard me interviewed or read my book jump to conclusions and prejudge me... I've been called Uncle Tom. I've been called an Oreo.
Am I going to vote for Trump? Absolutely not. I do not believe in his platform.
If you have an adversary, you don't have to respect what they're saying, but respect their right to say it.
We've simply been putting Band-Aids on the wounds of racism. We haven't drilled down to the bone to get to its source.
I have been attacked and mistreated for my skin colour since I was a child.
A lot of the media says, 'oh, black musician converts X-number of Klansmen.' I never converted one. But over 200 have left that, the white supremacy movements, because I have been the impetus for that.
It's very important that we learn how to communicate... and learn to respect each other.
Believe it or not, the best way to put somebody at ease or bring them to a level of trust is to know as much if not more about them than they know about themselves or the organization to which they belong.
At the end, ignorance is the source of biases. If we cure that, there's nothing to fear and hate.
When you seek to destroy somebody, all you do is empower them, because they feel like, 'you see? They don't want us to have our rights to feel the way we want to feel.' And they get more and more emboldened and more and more empowered.
Chuck Berry had a very profound impact on me. The man was a genius.
I don't believe that Donald Trump is a racist, per se. But some of the things that he does, some of the rhetoric that he uses, attracts racists and that sets the tone. And of course, you are judged by the company you keep.
I try to bring out the humanity in people.
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