Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America

[StevePulaski]

Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America (2016)
Directed by: Matt Ornstein

Daryl Davis makes it his mission to talk with Klansmembers in Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America.

Rating: ★★★½

Within two minutes of watching Daryl Davis as a panelist on a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, I put a hold on the DVD of his documentary Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America at the local library. I couldn't imagine not being smitten with his persona for an upwards of 90 minutes coupled with his move for unity by directly trying to bond with people who proclaim to hate him and people of his race.

And low and behold, I come back in awe of Davis's charisma and bravery along with high-praise of his persistence to do the unthinkable. Davis, a lifelong musician, actor, and lecturer, now in his late fifties, has dedicated much of his later life to forming direct relationships and dialogs with members of the Ku Klux Klan. With intent to understand their unabashed rage and hatred for people like Davis simply for their skin color, Davis's meetings with these individuals are usually in their homes or at restaurants, where casual conversation unfolds with the Klansmembers doing much of the talking. Davis doesn't attempt to talk them into contradicting circles, but rather, uses a heart-to-heart method that strives to understand them as individuals while questioning their racism in very succinct ways.

Davis tells us early in Accidental Racist that anti-racist groups are fine and dandy, but they are echo-chambers. He absolutely has a point; if I tell you racism is bad and you agree with me and we both proceed to form a group of like-minded individuals, what are we accomplishing if we're not seeking out those that live their lives spewing racist ideology? Those people look at us as the "liberal" enemy. The same can be said for homophobic individuals as well as xenophobic, transphobic, and other people afraid of someone who appears vastly different from them.

That fear, Davis articulates, is easy to triumph when that emotion is addressed while it remains a fear in a person's mind. When it manifests into hatred and condemnation, he says, is when it's difficult to overcome.

After successfully converting a wife and two daughters of a man who bred everyone around him into "white power"-spewing racists to more accepting people over a period of years, Davis found that encouraging this dialog was not only helping but he had a particular prowess for it. This level-headed, welcoming mindset was a result of a childhood spent traveling around the world, visiting dozens of countries with his mother and father, the latter one of the few African-American members of the Secret Service at the time. Davis got a taste of countless cultures and races so much so that when he came back to settle in America and joined the boy scouts in the 1960s, that a group of thugs pelting him with rocks and bottles in the middle of a boy scouts parade simply harbored malice for the scouts. It wasn't until he got the conversation from his parents, as I'm sure many black children in America often do, that informed him that there are several people in the world that hate and will continue to hate him for the color of his and their skin. Davis's perplexed feelings eventually manifested into the thesis of his mission, and later, this documentary: "How can you hate me if you don't know me?"

Then Davis recognized he didn't know the racists that were throwing junk at him in the public eye, so since 1990, he has been adamant about visiting Klansmembers to hear the justifications for their hatred. He doesn't bring the intent to change their opinions or views with him on his journeys; he lets them come to a decision to leave the Klan themselves but is perfectly content if they do not. If they do, however, he is happy to take their Klan helmet, robe, and other memorabilia and store it in his garage; he intends to open up a museum one day.

Throughout Accidental Courtesy, Davis travels all over the United States to initiate a dialog. He talks to the owner of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, the last motel Martin Luther King Jr. stayed at before his assassination, which has since been upconverted to an intimate museum housing information and artifacts of the civil rights movement. Later on, he talks with Thomas Robb, a pastor unafraid to spew his hateful ideology from the pulpit with his wife and young children, at the time, operating an internet-based web-series known as WhitePrideTV. Every conversation is a civil one, and even as Davis is sometimes personally attacked or judged, he remains collected, waiting for his turn to speak while listening intently the entire time.

Strangely enough, the most opposition and direct animosity he faces is from two young black men championing the "Black Lives Matter" movement in Baltimore, both and many others still reeling from the recent murder of Freddie Gray at the hands of police officers. The two men believe that Davis befriending Klansmen for over twenty years with little to show for it, in their minds, is fetishistic and pales in comparison to the work of them and their leader who are organizing marches in the streets. The exchange turns hostile and the even-tempered Davis remains remarkably composed even as his alleged statements and motivations come into question. Through it all, Davis reflects on the soured conversation with the belief that one day, he'll be marching in unison with the men, and if the three listened, they might've agreed with his reflective statement: "I know what a Klansman stands for," Davis says, "when I see a police officer in uniform I know what they should stand for."

Accidental Courtesy is a lesson in militant individuals truly committed to making America great. Regardless of one's beliefs, whether one prefers introspective examination, one-on-one conversation with their enemies, or large gatherings, little will change overnight, especially in the regard of people's perceptions and actions. Davis may not be doing enough in the eyes of many, but he's doing something and that something is a lot braver than many are liable to give credit to. Meanwhile, director Matt Ornstein provides audiences with a look at Davis's fieldwork with a disregard for partisan. Our feelings and opinions that emerge when we see the subjects and their beliefs unfold on-screen are byproducts of our own; both Orstein and Davis do little to nothing to curb or change them and that's perhaps one of the most noble things about this project.

Directed by: Matt Ornstein.