Jeff Schoep

It's about asking questions and sharing different perspectives.

And that curiosity and that sincerity, it can help restructure the way someone thinks and the way they see people.

So like Dia says to me, and this is actually in the film, White Rite Meeting the Enemy,

You can see the change.

Like I showed a clip a lot of times at my talks and I'll tell the audience, I'll say, take a look at my eyes in that clip because you can see it.

The cameraman caught it, zoomed in on my eyes.

She's saying, you know, the ideology that you, instead of telling me that I was wrong, she showed me, she says, the ideology that you stand for, the things that you believe in, they made me feel less than, ugly, not worthy.

As a child growing up, that's how I felt.

That's how your ideology made me feel.

And no one aside from Daryl Davis had ever approached me with anything like that.

I was told I was wrong.

But that human connection...

When you dehumanize another human being, you lose your humanity in that process.

And I'd lost my humanity a long time ago.

And what Daryl and Dia did is they cracked that door open, that window to compassion, and I could see their humanity.

Daryl did something very similar.

He told me about how racism and hate affected him as a child growing up.

That hurt.

That hurt.

I mean, I'm not going to say it at the time when I'm still in the movement, but on the inside, it really hurt.