Moral Leadership to Fight Bigotry and Open Hearts
Ralph Bunche
This weekend, as I read The Absolutely Indispensable Man: Ralph Bunche, the United Nations, and the Fight to End Empire, I came across a section about a meeting in San Francisco in 1945 to draw up the United Nations Charter. W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary McLeod Bethune attended as observers.
While growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s, it was common for me to read about historic Afro-American icons such as Bunche and McLeod Bethune, though today, regretfully, they are too often sidelined in historical memory. I closed the 500+ page Bunche biography and consulted Wikipedia to remind myself of the achievements of Bethune, an educator, humanitarian, philanthropist, womanist, and civil rights activist who founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935.
Mary McLeod Bethune
While reading about her manifold achievements during Jim Crow, a representative anecdote stunned me:
When a white Daytona resident threatened Bethune's students with a rifle, Bethune worked to make an ally of him. The director of the McLeod Hospital recalled, “Mrs. Bethune treated him with courtesy and developed such goodwill in him that we found him protecting the children and going so far as to say, 'If anybody bothers old Mary, I will protect her with my life.”
A conversion from racism to goodwill and becoming a steadfast supporter through courtesy! But, I thought, there must be more to the story of how such a conversion takes place. Then I recalled two contemporary examples of such grace and human connection beyond bigotry: Daryl Davis and Loretta Ross.
Daryl Davis’ Weapons: Music and Conversation
Daryl Davis and Klansman
“I got my degree in jazz performance. Music is my profession, race relations is my obsession,” said Davis in an interview for the Harvard International Review. Few would disagree that the epitome of old-style racism and white supremacy was the Ku Klux Klan, a homegrown hate group that terrorized black American citizens for generations after Reconstruction. Check this out: Davis inspired two hundred Klansmen to leave the organization and helped to dismantle the Klan’s operation in Maryland.
How? Conversation. Deep Listening. Responding respectfully (courtesy) while maintaining integrity. Connection on a human level beyond difference, often through music.
When a Klansman walks into a room, his wall is up. I’m trying to bring that wall down. I’ve been to 57 countries on six continents. But no matter how far I’ve gone, I’ve observed the same thing: we human beings all want the same things. We want to be respected. We want to be loved. We want to be heard. And we want the same thing for our families as everybody else wants for their families.
Roger Kelly [then the KKK Grand Dragon of Maryland] wanted to be heard in that interview, so I let him be heard. I knew I didn’t fit into the categories he described, and neither did any of my friends, so I let him spew his hatred. And because I wasn’t pushing back on him, and he was used to pushback, I threw him off his game. Now the wall was coming down. He reciprocated by letting me be heard. I responded to some of his claims calmly but firmly: I don’t have a criminal record, I have never been on welfare, and I went to college.
—Daryl Davis
After such a conversation, former Klansmen have told Davis, they go home and reflect, realizing that they just had a long conversation with a “black” man, agreeing on some things, disagreeing on others. Davis: “Cognitive dissonance starts to emerge: he was black, but he made sense, but he was black, but he made sense. The seed is planted for the next time I see them. Eventually, they have to decide: Do I ignore the fact that he’s black and change my direction, or do I continue living my life as a lie?”
Loretta Ross: Calling In over Calling Out
Loretta Ross
During the height of the cancel culture phenomenon post-George Floyd, a voice of reason and experience arose. I first became aware of Loretta Ross—a legendary activist in feminist circles—when I read her August 17, 2019, Times op-ed, “I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic.”
She gave examples from her own life and career, making mistakes and learning from them, and intervening in harrowing circumstances—when serving as executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center from 1979 to 1982, she spoke with and listened to convicted rapists in prison; as an anti-racist activist who served as the program and research director for the Center for Democratic Renewal in the early 1990s, she spoke with spouses of Ku Klux Klan members so their children wouldn’t end up in the Klan.
In both cases she responded with heart and strategic soul, sharing stories of insult and abuse from her childhood, which motivated the imprisoned men and the wives of Klan members to act against violent behavior that perpetuates abuse and domination. After 40 years of human rights work for women (and therefore on behalf of children and men), her activist credentials are impeccable. So, young activists and others desiring positive change should listen when Loretta Ross speaks.
In an excellent interview from 2022, Ross dropped wisdom. When speaking with people whose views you deeply disagree with, she advised, lay the ground for conversation via a listening technique she calls the “mental parking lot”: “. . . temporarily put aside any visceral reactions you have to what others are saying. It’s a technique that requires you not to pay attention to your reaction but rather to devote your focus and respect to the person you’re talking to.” This technique is a key to Daryl Davis’ success. Another connection between Davis and Ross is their understanding that people must come to their realizations and change their hearts and convictions themselves. “Calling in” before “calling out” can help the process greatly.
Calling in is not what you do for other people—it’s what you do for yourself. It gives you a chance to offer love, grace, and respect, and to showcase one’s own integrity and one’s own ability to hold nuance and depth. People mistakenly think that you’re doing it because you’re trying to change somebody else. That’s not possible. People have to make the decision to change themselves. But what you can do is provide them an opportunity to do so.
There are no magic words that can change somebody else; if there were, couples wouldn’t argue, parents wouldn’t fight with their kids, coworkers wouldn’t have disputes. We don’t have that kind of magical power. And since we don’t have the power to control and change others, the only power we’re left with is self-empowerment: the power to choose how we walk through the world. In this sense, calling in is a conscious decision to not make the world crueler than it needs to be.
—Loretta Ross
This is a leadership challenge we face in these complex, chaotic times. Although we can and should analyze systems of domination, oppression, caste, and so on, where the rubber meets the road is in our moral integrity and consistency, and how these qualities play into our everyday interactions with others. Such leadership isn’t easy, but if Mary McLeod Bethune, Daryl Davis, and Loretta Ross rose to the occasion, why can’t we?