Transcription
[Music] I'm proud to call myself a Mississippian. I've always felt a profound sense of belonging here. It's not just the land; it's the people. May we talk food we [Music] eat? Thank you, brother. The way we treat one [Music] another. That doesn't mean that I agree with everybody who lives here. This state was segregated. It was us and [Music] them. Jim Crow may be long behind us, but the state's still separate, still divided. Culturally, politically, it's as if the whole country, even the whole world, is polarizing into separate camps that disagree with one another, can barely even talk to one another. Is this tribalism just part of human nature, or can we bridge the gap that separates us from them? How does division spawn hate? How can you hate me when you don't even know me? What makes hatred turn deadly? Mass killing, a thousand people at a time. And can we find a path towards unity? After all the years that I spent doing destructive things, I want to try to repair. The real lesson of our history is that when you expand the circle, the story of us can also include them. This is my journey to discover the ties that bind us and the common humanity inside us. This is the story of us.
We divide ourselves into us and them in many different ways: by nationality, religion, gender, or which team you support. Some of these divisions are harmless, but others expose the darkest side of human nature. Divisions that once seemed consigned to history are still with us. In fact, they appear to be on the rise. I want to understand how. So I'm traveling to Maryland to meet musician Daryl Davis. He spent his life trying to heal a hateful divide. [Music]
Yeah, man. Thank you. Music is the thing. Thank you. It brings people together, man. You've made yourself some very interesting friends. Yeah, I'm telling you. Why? Why? Well, you know, in the fourth grade, I was one of two black kids in the entire school. Consequently, all of my friends were white. Most of my guy friends were members of the Cub Scouts, and they invited me to join. So I joined the Cub Scouts. On Scout day, we had a march from Lexington to Concord to celebrate the ride of Paul Revere. And I was the only black Scout in this march. And somewhere down the parade route, there was a small group of white spectators, a couple kids, couple adults. And all of a sudden, I began getting hit with uh bottles and soda pop cans and rocks, debris from the street, by this particular group of white spectators. And my first inclination was, "Oh, those people over there don't like the scouts." So when I got home, my mom and dad, who were not at the march, asked me, "How did you fall down and get all scraped up?" I told them I didn't fall down. I told them exactly what happened. For the first time in my life, my parents sat me down and explained to me what racism was. I literally thought they were liars. I did not believe. I could not get my head around the idea that someone who had never laid eyes on me would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin. It made no sense. And I formed a question in my mind. And that question was, "How can you hate me when you don't even know me?" So I figured, in my adult life, who better to ask than someone who would join an organization whose whole premise is hating those who do not look like them and who do not believe as they believe? So I began seeking out members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Okay, now listen. But how do you know where to go to find these people? I mean, they're not hard to find. They went. They're not. They wear masks. They wear hoods. And absolutely. But you know what? When they have a um, a rally in a public park, yeah, they have to apply for a permit. Yeah. So that's public information. Yeah. So I can go there and get the name, get the number, and call and ask for a meeting.
How many people have called you crazy? Everybody. But it's a good kind of crazy. Because you know what? If I can walk away with changed hearts, we all need to be crazy. How do you know that a person who has had one set of beliefs has changed that set of beliefs? When a Clansman or Clanswoman sheds that clothing, they have shed their ideology and given that robe and hood to their enemy, a black man. Yeah. They're done.
What do you mean they've done that to you? Yeah. I have. I have a bunch of robes and hoods, man. So these are a couple of the Klan robes that I have in my collection. I have quite a few more. This Klan robe, Grand Dragon robe, was owned by a fellow named Bob White. Robert White. And, uh, he was sent to prison for four years for conspiring to bomb a synagogue and went back to prison for three years for assault with intent to murder two black men with a shotgun. He went on to become one of my best friends. His day job, Baltimore City police officer, under the color of the law. Now, the gentleman behind you here, uh, you chose. Gentleman, loosely put him there. All right. How did this come to be a way of life? Well, because we all have to have a belief. You got to change that culture, you know, and show them other things that they can believe in. They can be somebody without believing that I need all this around me.
The mindset of racists seems so entrenched. It's hard for me to believe they could ever really change. So I'm traveling with Daryl to Memphis to meet one of his ex-KKK friends. Uh-huh. Scott Shepherd. How you been, man? Good to see you, my friend. Morgan Freeman. Scott, nice to meet you, sir. Scott, how did you happen to get involved with the Ku Klux Klan? Being from Mississippi Delta, you know, with Klans and all around me, I didn't have any self-confidence. You accept the letter. I do. Yes. And I got sucked in by some of their recruitment tactics, you know, that they used to, uh, get young people in that are troubled, just like gangs in the big cities. For God, God for country, country for the family, family for the Klan. From the very beginning, when I joined and, and, and took the oath, there was an immediate feeling of importance.
How long were you involved? Almost 20 years. You think that period in your life, it was a way to get attached, find a home? Yes, sir. A meaning. I grew up in a really dysfunctional family, an alcoholic father where he was very violent. But I can't blame it on that. I, I take full responsibility for the decisions I made. The Klan, absolutely bound by the rules of no them, no blacks, no homosexuals, no Jews. Did you have any sense that that wasn't quite the way it should be? I always had an internal, internal battle within myself because I was raised by a black lady. So many of us in the South were, yes. Raised my mother, my brother, my sister, all of us. And, you know, I, I distanced myself from her. And it was a constant battle within myself, knowing that I really wasn't doing right.
What made you break from the KKK? I left the restaurant one night from having dinner, and the police pulled me over. I failed the sobriety test. That threw me into the court system. Well, when I got inside the alcohol and drug treatment center, there were people in there of all colors, religions, sexual preferences. I mean, just, you know, the whole gamut of different people. And I got to know them, sat down, we had intimate conversations with each other, talked about our lives. The seed had been planted. I was changing. Had to meet Daryl. I was stuck between a rock and a hard spot, you know, trying to figure out where my life was. And I needed guidance. I, I sent him my phone number and said, "Sure, you know, I'd be happy to talk with you." I had heard about Daryl and saw what he was doing. And of course, I told him before, I thought it was a nutcase, you know. I have an obligation. He's looking for somebody to trust. So why would I turn my back on someone who's looking to trust me, to looking for something different? And I've always believed if you sit down with your worst enemy for five minutes, you will find something in common. If you sit down with them for 10 minutes, you'll find even more in common. And if you build upon those commonalities in that relationship, it will turn into a friendship. And then those things that you have in contrast, such as trivial things like skin color, will begin to matter less and less. I felt trust. I felt trust with, you know, Daryl and what he said. It made sense.
You look back on that. What do you think of it? What did you think of them as an organization? I despise them. And, uh, we do anything I can to break down the racial barriers in this country. But there definitely is still a threat. We can legislate behavior, but we cannot legislate how they think. The day we legislated for blacks to sit on the bus after the Rosa Parks bus boycott did not change the mindset. That came over time through grassroots conversation. Thank you. I'm on your side, Scott. Welcome home. I appreciate it. I'm glad to be home. Been a long journey.
Daryl Davis has proven that when you open your heart to someone, you give them the opportunity to open their heart to you. And an open heart is an open mind. If more of us had the courage to get to know the people who claim to hate us, I believe we could bridge the divide between us and them. But look around today. It is hard to have hope. A new generation is joining the hate groups, and they no longer feel the need to hide behind hoods and [Applause] robes. And around the world, leaders are coming to power who promise division, not unity. We need only to look at history to see the horror of where we might be [Music] headed.
I've come to the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, a city where three different cultures have lived side by side for generations. There are Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslims. But in 1992, that peace came to an end. Civil war and ethnic violence raged across newly independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite all peace efforts of the European community. For 50 years, Bosnia had been a part of the communist state Yugoslavia. But in the early 1990s, Yugoslavia broke apart into five separate states. Serbia's leader, Slobodan Milošević, saw the breakup as an opportunity to capture territory from Bosnia. Milošević used his state-controlled media to spread anti-Muslim and anti-Croat propaganda, encouraging Serbs living inside Bosnia to turn on their neighbors. The war that followed took the lives of 100,000 people. Morgan, I'm meeting with Senad Hasić, come up here, a prominent Muslim TV journalist who lived through the war. This is spectacular. I see maybe a dozen minarets out there. That's unusual for a European city, isn't it? Ottoman Empire founded Sarajevo in the 15th century. Okay. Uh, we have more than 100 mosques. Uh, but we have seven Catholic churches, four, uh, Orthodox churches, and, uh, four [Music] synagogues.
Now, you were broadcasting in 1992 and you predicted that war would come. How did you know? I had the interviews with every president of Yugoslav Republic. Everyone knew. But I am first who said after three days, April 5th, war starting in Sarajevo. We were sleeping citizens, media, politicians. When war starting, you mean you had Serbian tanks and stuff in the streets here overnight? First grenades from this position, grenades, snipers directly attack on the city. Front line around Sarajevo, and we stayed under siege for years. The Bosnian Serb Army, backed by Milošević, hoped to divide Sarajevo's ethnic groups. But the besieged citizens continued to see one another as friends and neighbors, no matter what their ethnicity. Senad used his television show to make sure a voice of unity could still be heard. We was together. Together. Serbian, all Croatian, Jewish, from Sarajevo, all Bosniaks or Muslims, together. Senad even tried to end the war. When his studio phone rang live on air, leader of Bosniaks said, "Call me live in program." And I said, "I have one, one question for you. You are leader of Serbs. Can you call all Serbs who hold guns to stop fire on Sarajevo?" And he said, "Okay, okay." After that, I said, "I, I said live in program, President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, can, can you call us?" And he called. And I asked him, "Can you call your Bosnian people with guns to stop fire?" And he said, "Okay." And we have two days peace of peace. And some called Senad peace. This is, this is what two days. We have, we have peace. But the peace did not last. Outside Sarajevo, the divisive rhetoric of Slobodan Milošević was tearing Bosnia apart. Ethnic cleansing began, and soon there came the horror of genocide. To see the devastation caused when a country splits into us and them. Senad Hasić is taking me into the Bosnian countryside. It was here in a town called Srebrenica that the clash between ethnic groups will be remembered for generations. It's now the final resting place of at least 8,000 Muslim fathers and sons, all killed in July [Music] 1995. They were all civilians. Just like Senad and his son, Fahrudin. Today, I'm here in Srebrenica with you and with my son, Fahrudin. Hi, Morgan. It's a pleasure to meet you. Welcome. What in the world happened here? So, Morgan, uh, what actually happened here? It's a genocide. This border of Serbia is near. Uh-huh. Very, very, very close. They came here, they wanted to kill everybody and just together to give this territory to separate it from Bosnia and pass it to Serb, back to Serbia. Yeah. The Serbian Army collected all women, men, and children into these factories over there. And from there, they were separated. And men, men, boys, they were, they took them all around these mountains to kill them and to shoot them. From there, they started to the mass killing, you know, a thousand people at a time to mass graveyard. Mass graveyard. Soon after, NATO bombing helped end the war, but it was too late to save the victims of Srebrenica. So you were five, six years old when this happened? I was six years old. And, uh, there were a lot of boys my age that were killed that day here. And I still can't believe, like, how is it possible for people to be blind because of their own belief? And how can they not see this humanity? For me, it's like unimaginable that exist people who can do this kind of atrocity. Entire family lines were wiped out here. The Serbian nationalists hoped to kill off the very idea that Bosnia could be a melting pot of ethnic groups. But that belief is still alive in Senad and his son, Fahrudin. This is Flower of Srebrenica, and this represents, uh, mothers around one coffin of a small child. So this is like the mothers from the top with scarves. Yeah. And these are like their hands on the coffin. On the coffin. This is actually my first time here, so it's even harder for me to handle all of this. I'm crying. I just can't imagine that you can go through this and then come out whole on the other side. You have to learn to live with it. But also, you can't forget it. At one point, you can forgive, but not forget. You have to forgive each other. Not say forget. Yeah. Yeah. You forget, you'll do it again. Yeah.
The heart-wrenching story of Bosnia chose the dark side of humanity. People who once shared a common Yugoslav identity began to see their neighbors as the source of their problems because they could no longer see their humanity. But there is hope amid the horror that happened here. There are people like Senad. He's proud of his Bosnian Muslim identity, sees himself as a global citizen, happy to live alongside Serbs, Croats, Christians, and Muslims. And he's using his voice in the media to promote that belief. That's the kind of voice the world needs, one that inspires us to believe in our common humanity. Looking back, the Bosnian War now seems like a turning point. [Applause] The beginning of a backlash against the global merchant of cultures and economies that had held sway since World War II. Across Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, nationalism is on the rise. "We've got our country back." Can we hope to escape this fractious tribalism? To find out, I'm headed to Manhattan to speak with a man with a rare insight on national and global politics, the 42nd President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton.
It seems like at one point the world was kind of coalescing, coming together. On the other hand, we're getting out towards a kind of tribalism. What's going to happen? I don't know. Defense in general, we're experiencing a period of this kind of tribal nationalism. You see it all over the planet. "We don't need y'all here. Go home. Go back to Africa." People saying that. I, I can't stand all this change. That's understandable. It was never going to be that simple to build a so-called New World Order. Dominant groups, whether ethnic or racial or religious or economic, tend to see the world in zero-sum gains. That is, if somebody gets more, I must be getting less. And nobody gives ground willingly. I believe the real lesson of our history is that when you expand the circle of opportunity, you have multiplication, not just addition. And when you shrink it, you don't just have subtraction, you get division. Then you, in the end, do far worse.
President Clinton gives the example of Europe, a continent devastated by the bitter rivalries that caused two world wars, is now a prosperous, united economy. Former enemies have turned their back on division and embraced unity. The motto of the United States of America, E pluribus unum, means "out of many, one." One nation rises from a diverse collection of states. And today, many Americans regard their country's ethnic diversity with pride. We are now probably the most diverse community on the planet, I would say, in terms of people who can call themselves Americans. And I believe it has made us a lot stronger. Queens, for example, we're doing this interview in New York City. In Manhattan, Queens is now the most diverse urban center with more than two and a half million people in the world. And we have many, many American counties with people from a lot of countries. But as you know, we have many people who feel threatened by all these immigrants coming in. Well, that's always been the case, though, hasn't it? Always. But it's never stopped us. No, not yet. We're still here, and we are thriving because at every critical juncture, when we could have gone back, we found a way to go forward.
Looking outside America, do you think the whole world will ever come together? I do. But I think we have to do it in steps. People need personal experience with the others so that the story of us can also include them. And that's going to happen literally billions of times. This is not going to be an easy deal. Mark the King's words: "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." It also bends toward growth, inclusion, intelligence. But it's a rocky road. Always has been. And all of us have a complicated way of our identifying who we are. Who is we? Who is us? Who is them? It's the oldest question in human society.
President Clinton's words resonate with me. Who are we, and who are we not? Could be the most ancient and most difficult questions societies ask themselves. But one tribe living deep in the Central American jungle may have found the balance between tribalism and globalism. I'm in Panama, headed upriver from Panama City and into a different world. I've learned of an indigenous group that has developed an unusual balance between us and them. The Emberá live in and around the rugged and inhospitable area that separates North and South America, the Darién Gap. The group I am meeting today lives less than three hours from Panama City, but their way of life remains largely as it always has been. [Music]
See, I'm very good. Me too. Yeah. My name is Nelson. Nelson? Yes. How'd you get a name like Nelson? Um, when I born, yeah. Yes. My teacher gave that name, Nelson, from Nelson Mandela. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. How come you speak English? There is a missionary school outside from here, near of the city. Stay for four years there. Very good. Yeah. Morgan, this is my village here, up on this hill. And let's go and see what kind. I want to [Music]
How many structures? We are around 134 people here. Uh-huh. Between kids and adults. Uh-huh. So it's around 28 houses. Each house is one family. Ah. Life here may look to be free of Western influence, but look deeper, and you find signs of contact. The village has a thriving jewelry and carving industry that caters to weekly visits from tourist boats. It looks like we're busy right now. He's carving little boats, canoes. This kind of wood is, we call it coco bolo. It's, it's kind of like a rosewood. Yeah. For the Emberá. Regular tourist business is a sign that their culture is valued by others and worth maintaining. It's also a source of revenue with which to buy a handful of Western goods that make their lives easier. You don't have a lot of modern conveniences, but you got those 200 horsepower outboard engines. Yes. In the old days, we used, um, we call Palanca. The current. I imagine it'd be hard to get upriver. Yes. Now we have motor, and it's more easy, of course. Yes. On the other hand, unlike many other indigenous cultures in Central and South America, the Emberá have not taken to Western clothing. Their loincloth is not only practical in this climate, it's also part of their identity. I asked Nelson to introduce me to a village elder to understand how the Emberá managed to live between two worlds.
All right. Now, there's a big city not too far downriver. Cars, big hotels, tall buildings, paved streets. How come you don't want to go there? Hey, one of the big things that the Emberá people have, the Emberá people like to live in the, in the jungle, you know, live together like a family. Mmm. Because he can eat, he can work in the jungle, and all the people here, they love the jungle, you know. But to you have that, you're holding on to that. We wouldn't see in the city. This is one of them. Paint. We use this many years ago. The fruits that we call jagua, which is this, a tattoo you can see. And also this can work for mosquito net, for subl, for your hair. We use these paints, the ink for the baby. For the baby can be saved, you know, on the different bubs around. That's fantastic. It's amazing to me that, uh, every culture, particularly in yours, you have knowledge. Mmm. Of plants, what they're good for. The jungle for him is his gun, you know. Everything is here. [Music]
This is a culture that trusts the jungle to provide, including remedies for its ills, like the fever that has afflicted this girl. The Emberá don't reject Western medicine. When people are seriously injured, they take them to the hospital in Panama City. But for most ailments, the Emberá do what they have done for generations. They call on healing spirits and prepare remedies from healing [Music] plants. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. It's a blending of us and them that has worked for the Emberá for centuries. They take what they need from the outside world, but they cherish and maintain their traditional way of life. The Emberá are completely connected to the natural world around them. Forest, river, living for centuries surrounded by the jungle, they've developed a deep spiritual connection. SW is still here, thriving, even as the modern world creeps closer and closer. Our modern world is a mosaic of different tribes, each with its own customs and belief systems. In many places, those tribes live shoulder to shoulder. The challenge we face is learning how to accept those who are not like us. [Music]
I've come to Los Angeles to meet someone who has faced that challenge head-on. Megan Phelps-Roper was born into the Westboro Baptist Church, a religious cult notorious for its hate-filled interpretations of the Bible. Members of a fundamentalist Kansas church believe US deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are punishment of the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. Megan grew up indoctrinated into these divisive beliefs. Where did Westboro Baptist Church come from? It was started by my grandfather in 1955. "God hates, except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. And God is not running out of room in hell." Your grandfather started this movement, right? So we thought it was our duty to go out and warn people when we saw them sinning, to rebuke them so that they wouldn't go on in their path to [Applause] hell. Anybody who came out against what we were saying, we thought they were coming out against the word of God. So we started protesting churches. We started protesting the government. We thought that God was punishing America by killing her soldiers in battle. We thought we have to go to these families at these funerals and say, "This is a curse. God has cursed you because you're fighting for a nation that has made God its number one [Music] enemy." Because of course, we believed that outsiders were all evil or delusional. And so the Megan, hold on a minute. Mhm. There are about 80 people in your church. Mhm. And you think 80 people are right and maybe 7 billion are wrong? Right. Megan Phelps-Roper was one of the staunchest advocates of the hateful ideology of the Westboro Baptist [Music] Church. She spent her days preaching division, condemning those outside her cult to damnation in hell. You had to wear this shirt and others like it. Are you going to all these places, holding up these signs and stuff? Yeah. We protested every single day in Topeka, but we were also traveling across the country. We believed the nation had been promoting this lifestyle that God calls an abomination. God decides who God loves, not you and I. And I believed that I was doing good. I believed that I was doing what God wanted. You went on Twitter yourself, right, to start spreading the word of, uh, right, the church? Right. So in 2009, I started tweeting for the church. It seemed like it was a growing body of people that I could preach to. One of the very first people that I attacked was a man named David Abbott Ball, who ran a blog called Julicious. I was trying to find ways of explaining to him that he was wrong, that to reject Jesus was going to land him in hell for eternity. He kind of, at first, responded with sarcasm and anger and hostility, but almost immediately, he sort of changed tactics. He started asking me questions about Westboro picket signs, and I started asking him questions about Jewish theology. So throughout this conversation, I was seeing his interactions with his friends and photos of his life in Jerusalem, where he was living, and coming to understand him and see him as human, as as a person with good intentions who was trying to, what he believed was right. This conversation, you know, it became much more friendly. And then he asked me a question that I didn't have an answer for. What was the question? He was asking me about one of our picket signs that said, "Death penalty for..." And that, you know, comes from Romans 1:32, that was the penalty prescribed. And David said, "Didn't Jesus say, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'?" And I responded, "We're not casting stones, we're preaching words." And he said, "Yeah, but you're advocating that the government cast stones." And I was kind of, you know, shocked at that point, because I had never connected that if you kill somebody, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent and be forgiven. And that's what we were advocating. We were telling people to repent. So as time goes on, and more of these situations come up, the weight of that, of all these contradictions, over time, became, became so heavy. Well, now, that's not going to make you leave the church. It just makes you start to think. Exactly. I stopped holding the sign, but it was the first time that I thought that the church could be wrong about something. It became more terrifying to stay and less terrifying to leave.
So now you're in a quandary, right? You're sort of half in and half out. The day that I actually first thought of leaving, it was just, it was agonizing and excruciating. I mean, just imagine if you thought you were going to lose everyone that you loved and cared about to go to a world that was full of people who hated you for all the things that you've been doing to hurt them. There were so many things like our family recipes and photos and home movies and our, yeah, yeah. So it's like trying to collect these. Like, once you leave, you're going to lose everything and everyone. And it was like, where am I going to go? Yeah. Where am I going to be? Yeah. The idea of, of losing all of them, and it was just, it was awful. It was terrifying. Not long after I left, I actually met David Abbott Ball, and he told me about this idea, this concept in Judaism. It's to see the brokenness in the world and to help repair it in, in as many ways as you can find it. And he said, "You and your family have added to the brokenness of the world, and you should try to do what you can to repair it." After all the years that I spent doing destructive things, I know I can't undo it, but I want to try to repair it.
Megan went through a complete reversal of her lifelong mindset. The key to her turnaround, she says, was the lack of hostility in conversations with people like David Abbott Ball. The fact that people are being kind and understanding and compassionate to me, that contradicted what I had been taught to believe about outsiders. They didn't seem to be the demons that I'd been taught that they were. Like, what's the first thing that happens when someone approaches you with hostility? How do you get hostile back? Kindness is powerful, and I think it's more powerful than hostility, aggression, or anything else. It's so important for us to learn how to reach out across these intense divides. I think we can do that. I have. Your story will help a lot. I really do. I hope so.
Today, we are inundated by news stories that make us feel divided by our different political and religious beliefs. Our compulsion to sharing news on social media only seems to make those issues wider. But Megan's story is encouraging. It shows that we can harness the power of social media for good. That it can be a medium for gentle and patient conversation that can help us to find our shared [Music] humanity. This journey has shown me how dangerous it can be to divide into us and them. But the people I've met give me hope that these divides are not impossible to bridge. We are a species that thrives on working together. I mean, look at the city around me. Buildings that reach for the sky, a diverse population living shoulder to shoulder, and new technologies that help us connect in a heartbeat, all created out of a spirit of cooperation. It will take humility, understanding, respect for our differences, and time. But I believe there is room for everyone in the story of us. [Music] [Music]