Landrieu said. The Civil War is over. The city is on far sturdier ground financially than what he was handed after former Mayor Ray Nagin's eight years at the wheel, and there are four fewer Confederate monuments -- an accomplishment Landrieu has seen as his contribution to a "New South." Mitch Landrieu: To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places in honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. But I’m absolutely with them in spirit. But I do understand that I have a responsibility for fixing the results.” That number is actually moving in the right direction. That is impossible. I don’t think you can understate its significance. Hamilton has worked with other economists to develop a "Baby Bonds" proposal to reduce the nation's yawning racial wealth gap. The question says more about the people asking it than those who would have to answer. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans, stands in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 15, 2016. We also had peer intervention, designed to deal with the exact same thing that the young officer needed to know who was standing next to officer Chauvin, which is, if you saw another officer violating a policy, you take action, and you would be praised for it in the department, not punished. When he took over as mayor of New Orleans in 2010, recovery from Hurricane Katrina was still painfully slow. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Change is going to come. "It was that federal policy invested in poor people — not Black people, poor people. "The truth is I do have Black ancestry on my father's side of the family. Mitch Landrieu catapulted from progressive philanthropy darling to household name when he ordered the removal of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans while serving as mayor in … No. Today, Morial is president of the National Urban League, a civil rights organization that produces the State of Black America, an annual statistical analysis of Black well-being. "But instead of saying to ourselves what might be wrong with a system that has only produced one top-level Black competitive driver, the vast majority of white Americans assume one of two things: Wallace is special, exceptional, or African Americans are not trying hard enough.". You’ve been traveling the South asking hundreds of people about race and their lives. The country is lionizing men who killed Americans to maintain slavery, he said. Why shouldn’t we use the names of our military bases to honor American heroes or people who lift us up? Katherine Sayre wrote an article, ”Read Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s speech on removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments” in The Times-Picayune, that included the mayor’s full speech. He's a political commentator for CNN. It is painful for a mayor to assume the operations of a government and see that 60% or 50% of a city’s budget is spent on police or jails. Like most of his endeavors, it failed. How much of Trump’s support do you think is just racism? But does putting a white man, even one with a progressive record, in charge of yet another program challenge or affirm America's notions of who creates, who solves, who leads? After term limits ended his tenure in the mayor's chair, Landrieu was a visiting fellow at Harvard University leading study group sessions and seminars with titles like "Politics, Potholes and Public Service." The removals, Landrieu said, do not erase history. The takedowns and pulldowns are understandable expressions of frustration with symbols of white supremacy. On May 19, 2017, New Orleans, Louisiana Mayor Mitch Landrieu addressed an audience in his city as a backdrop and explanation of the city’s recent decision to remove statues of General Robert E. Lee and other Confederate military and political leaders from public squares in New Orleans. And he expanded job creation efforts. Landrieu has been arguing for the past year that he left the city better than he found it. Mitch Landrieu was elected mayor of New Orleans in 2010. A lot of the white people, not all of them, but many, say, “Look, I don’t have any connection to slavery. It holds all of us back, not just African Americans. Legitimate conversations need to be had about public funds and police reforms, Landrieu said. Trump may be able to delay it for a little bit. 323 talking about this. In the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston church shooting, Mitch Landrieu, then the mayor of New Orleans, decided to remove a prominent public statue of General Robert E. Lee. My great, great grandmother was an African American who was enslaved in Mississippi.". Landrieu toppled a statue of Robert E. Lee. The camera and the viciousness of officer [Derek] Chauvin made it impossible for the country to look away. What do you find that’s hopeful in the protests? But that was only the beginning. Black people get it, of course. Landrieu talked with or surveyed 2,600 people on race, equality and opportunity, wrapping up months before the pandemic began. He is the brother of Mary Landrieu… The people who have wealth today, and by that I mean assets like homes, didn't have it then. "People who defend these things worry: Where will it end?" We need a culture shift, and one of the things that needs to happen is the historical narrative needs to change—all those people who tell stories about the Lost Cause, those things have to go away. The work shaped a 2019 report by Landrieu’s organization E Pluribus Unum Fund titled, "Divided by Design.". Many white Americans need help understanding the systems maintaining inequality, Landrieu said. Now, he’s organizing public conversations about race and opportunity while creating a program to help produce elected officials willing to prod their communities toward equity. Landrieu has heard from the defenders of Confederate monuments often enough to anticipate their arguments. "But sometimes there are cataclysmic events — we are dealing with two of them now — that can make the country go, 'Wow. In politics if you’re explaining what something means, you’re generally losing. It's about the proliferation of inaccurate historical education and a media culture that encourages white Americans to regard systems that have produced vast racial inequality as fair. What Mitch Landrieu Learned About Racism in the American South Last year, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu published a book , In the Shadows of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History , a personal narrative built around his decision to bring down four city monuments dedicated to Confederate and white supremacist causes . And we’re still stuck in a place that we should have gone past a long time ago. That’s hard to say. Thank God. Is Landrieu, who has long been supported by good-government groups and other arms of the monied liberal establishment, able to facilitate sweeping change? I think the diversity of the protesters is good. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Hiding your head in the sand about our past and our current structural racism is anti-American. Mitch Landrieu inherited a mess. Just 9.8 percent mentioned the historical impact of racism. Well, Mitch, I still love you for the positive things you have done in the past for our city. The war is over. Landrieu, who earned a B.A. Among them: lionizing white saviors in every story no matter how limited their roles and describing Black activists as ineffective, loudmouth agitators. They're all good people," said Berry, a former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. We have bad people who are going to do bad things that are going to hurt other people. New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu addressed the situation more clearly and with more moral authority than many better-known politicians. It starts with telling the truth about the past.” ― Mitch Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. After negotiating a consent decree with the federal Department of Justice, you made major improvements. What are a couple of the key things you heard? Among other indicators of how much the removals vexed others, a rumor circulated that Landrieu was secretly Black. The United States won. Mitch Landrieu rushed the construction of the airport in the vain hope that it would be done before he left office. That number is actually moving in the right direction. Some white Americans are ill-informed or in a state of denial, Landrieu said. Albin Lohr-Jones / Bloomberg via Getty Images file. Landrieu's father, Maurice Edwin "Moon" Landrieu, who was secretary of housing and urban development in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, and mentors from the Catholic Jesuit order imparted the value of political and moral courage. To the extent that it means eliminating police departments, I think that’s a bad idea. In the aftermath of the 2015 Charleston church shooting, Mitch Landrieu, then the mayor of New Orleans, decided to remove a prominent public … Shortly after his reelection as New Orleans mayor in 2014, Mitch Landrieu had coffee with Wynton Marsalis. The NOPD had a 39% public-approval rating when I took office, and it was 55% by the time I left. We have to tell the real story. And we’re still having an argument about it. There is no defense for having a monument in a place of reverence to a person who fought to destroy the country in order to preserve slavery. As mayor of New Orleans in the 1970s, Moon Landrieu opened the full range of public jobs to all of New Orleans' residents, regardless of race. More wrestle to embrace the comforting fiction that in America, everyone has access to opportunity if they work hard or have the right connections, despite growing economic difficulties. "They aren't. The hearing itself carries a weighty name: "Monumental Decisions: A Long Overdue Reckoning With Racist Symbols on Our Public Lands.". That was terrible. Landrieu said, referring to the NASCAR driver in the news recently for supporting his sport’s effort to ban the Confederate flag. Systemic racism also creates disparities in the environmental conditions of Black and brown neighborhoods. Even with the major progress New Orleans has made since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, there are plenty of challenges for Landrieu to tackle in a second term, including high rates of … In mid-June, Landrieu's fund, a nonprofit underwritten by the Ford Foundation and the Emerson Collective, a social justice organization, began accepting applications from municipal leaders interested not just in setting dates for statue removals, but also in changing how cities do business, fund public services and set priorities. Policing, jail, housing and infrastructure needs remained intense. History has set its course. One of the most powerful things we heard in the African American community was, “Could we just please start with an acknowledgement that slavery was awful, and romanticized versions of it are offensive as hell? It can not be moved like a statue. Mississippi lawmakers voted last month to remove Confederate elements from their state flag. Investments in children and families, community development, job training and social services also create safe, healthy communities. It took a huge investment of money. What about defunding police departments that have failed, over a long period of time, to stop abusing civilians? But far too many of us have, in our minds, defined racism as whether you have done anything to physically harm a person because of their race or called them a nasty word.". We had to have a new lens through which we recruited and hired police officers. Janell Ross is a former reporter for NBC BLK. But policy that leads to direct investments in people is how you improve lives.". © 2021 Condé Nast. Some of what followed was difficult or, at least, complex. An attorney and former mediator, Landrieu, 59, is the son of former New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu, who served from 1970 to 1978 and later served as President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But to others, Landrieu may be effective in the long term in a country with a history of racial progress followed by backlash. Still, it was the statue removals that brought national attention. We saw this after Katrina," the hurricane that killed more than 1,500 people in Louisiana in 2005. Crisis energy is, to Landrieu, the best explanation for the sudden attention paid to Confederate icons. In a remarkable speech, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu declared with astonishing moral and historical clarity that these were not monuments to some bygone way … Some National Democrats Are Speculating That Landrieu’s Popularity, Particularly … The disparate impact that COVID has had on African Americans is certainly part of it. But they are not going to be able to hold it back. Does it just mean only that, or does it mean something else?” Well, it means something else. "The country can also be guided by young Black people who are doing this work and doing it well right now.". Come on, white people, help us out a little here.” And I think when a lot of white people saw George Floyd laying there, they thought, “Wow. Mary Frances Berry, an activist and professor of American social thought and history at the University of Pennsylvania, has known Landrieu for decades. All rights reserved. Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) Wednesday poured cold water on speculation that he might run for president in 2020. “I don’t think so. Landrieu was talked about as a 2020 White House contender. Like water. "And it is rooted in racism. History cannot be changed. — The Parallel Universe of Ivanka Trump, America’s Dissociated Princess— “No, I Am Not Okay”: A Black Journalist Addresses His White Friends— Why Bankrupt Hertz Is a Pandemic Zombie— Scenes of Fury and Mourning at the Minneapolis Protests— Civil Rights Advocate Brandi Collins-Dexter on Why Facebook Chooses Trump Over Democracy— Democrats’ Blue-Texas Fever Dream May Finally Become a Reality— From the Archive: Taking Stock of Melania Trump, the Unprepared—And Lonely—FLOTUS. He wrote a New York Times bestseller. A lot of people have asked me that. The whole point of reverential monuments in public spaces is to encourage people to be like that person. Given your experiences with the New Orleans Police Department and your recent work on racism, were you expecting this convulsion to happen at some point? What’s done is done. That's a position Landrieu said he was all but raised to take. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu addresses a crowd during an event marking the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2015, in New Orleans What Mitch Landrieu Learned About Racism in the American South The former New Orleans mayor’s report back from his 11-month tour of the … Now, with Mitch Landrieu stepping down as mayor on May 7, the long-running political dynasty is coming to an apparent end. The battle took two years but a crane finally pulled Lee from his pedestal. … Mitch was forced into the position he took. By the end of his tenure as mayor, every member of Landrieu's family needed a security detail. the proliferation of inaccurate historical education, lionizing men who killed Americans to maintain slavery, emphatically describes Martin Luther King Jr.'s admonition for white moderates, accepting applications from municipal leaders, people who have wealth today, and by that I mean assets like homes, didn't have it then, young Black people who are doing this work. Among the things Landrieu and his 11-person team found was that when asked about the community impact of racism, more than one-quarter, 28.7 percent, focused on personal experiences with acts of racism. The 1619 Project’s reframing of slavery is central to understanding our past and present. As mayor you inherited a notoriously corrupt, violent, and hated police department. And President Donald Trump has made defending the statues a priority. When Landrieu became mayor in 2010, New Orleans was a city with the usual problems, in addition to the myriad that remained five years after Hurricane Katrina. Berry doubts that America can fix its problems without changing habits, she said. And Black people were largely excluded. "To suggest you can care about the rights and plight of Black Americans only if you are Black or have Black blood is insidious," Landrieu said. They cannot stand, he said, urging governments to take action and predicting protests and unrest around the statues if they do not. The same day, Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who started the movement to take down the monuments in 2015, gave a speech explaining the reasoning behind their removal. "But he took advantage of all the work that activists in New Orleans did to demand that the city remove those statues. And the coronavirus' toll on Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans reflects who is hired for high-risk work (as opposed to the C-suite) and who lives in conditions that help disease spread, he said. "Just one example. But as Landrieu establishes himself as an evangelist of equity, questions loom. It's about policy and social attitudes, he says. It is impossible for me to imagine a public official giving … 3 likes. Given the coronavirus, the better part of wisdom for me is to use my voice on national media platforms. Mayor Landrieu… That is just upside down for our country. Has seeing more statues banished left you feeling vindicated? That was the message of a recent talk by Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans who addressed The Catholic University of America community on November 7. "Mitch is a nice guy. However, I am foursquare in support of reimagining police. "There are days when I think, my God, it is going to take a long time," Landrieu said. Landrieu gained recognition in progressive circles and material support from multiple foundations for delaying rookie police hires, balancing the budget and insisting on a goal of awarding 35 percent of city contracts to businesses owned by women or people of color, a goal he exceeded. Sometimes when something is so shocking, the public's mind is pried open and then is able to go to a new place. We had to retrain every police officer. In June 2015, more than a year into his second term, nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina were killed by a white supremacist. It’s going to come easy or it’s going to come hard. I did think that there was nothing that we were seeing that is any different than what I have witnessed since the day I was born in 1960. Mitch Landrieu was the 61st Mayor of New Orleans. Over the weekend, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu won a triumphant re-election victory. "He believes the things he's been saying about this country," said Morial, who is also a member of the E Pluribus Unum Fund's advisory board. Mitch Landrieu: No. Next year, New Orleans will celebrate its 300-year anniversary, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu has an ambitious vision that has been relatively unheard of in the South. Confederate statues in multiple cities have been toppled or removed. On May 19 2017, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, gave a speech at the Gallier Hall at the same time the final four Confederate monuments were being removed. So that was kind of encouraging. Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, on the removal of four Confederate monuments and what it means for the city’s future New Orleans … But let me just tell you one thing I’m sure about. And in those circumstances, you need well-trained police officers. I would have expected much lower. With the publication of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s new book, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History that question has shifted to why four monuments in the Crescent City were removed this past spring. Mitch Landrieu catapulted from progressive philanthropy darling to household name when he ordered the removal of four Confederate monuments in New Orleans while serving as mayor in 2017. White people who participated really kind of rejected the notion that there’s institutional racism. But "if we are trying to address white supremacy, it is also important that Black voices are lifted, not just for symbolism, but included in the design and function of such a program," Hamilton said. But Landrieu also worries that the growing "defund the police" conversation requires too much explanation, an indication that it will not score well politically, he said. Lots of other people say, “All you politicians are a bag of bad apples, but Trump is giving me what I want in tax cuts or conservative judges, and he’s giving me at least lip service that he cares about me and sees me.” I’m a little bit chastened by the fact that his public-approval numbers still stubbornly remain around 42, 43%, after everything that he’s done and how much he’s abused his power. And then we had to have much more robust supervision, with an early warning system so that if any officer had an innumerable amount of complaints, we would flag them. Or is he merely a voice of those with power seeking to adjust a few things? And this whole wave of white nationalism that has been given amplification through the president’s office has taken us to a place we had not been before. The specific spark to the recent toppling of Confederate monuments and to the mass protests against racism and police abuses was the killing of George Floyd. The point has to be to get away from the notion that you have to shoot first or use force first to that being the absolute last option. This is the first time in my adult life people are really beginning to understand how critically important it is to deal with institutional racism and institutional reform. Punishing schools that teach it is an insult to our multiracial democracy. By Mitch Landrieu and Leon McDougle, opinion contributors — 12/25/20 12:00 PM EST The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill View Latest Opinions >> "Law enforcement alone will not make us safer.". Over the weekend, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu won a triumphant re-election victory. Like “They were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.” That happened a long time ago. "The idea of training leadership is a good one," said economist Darrick Hamilton, the director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Over the weekend, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu won a triumphant re-election victory. More Americans may better understand the racial dynamics of policing now, but they need help grappling with residential covenants, redlining, housing and mortgage discrimination and the role of each in the nation's widening racial wealth gap, Landrieu said. Since leaving office in 2018, he’s traveled to 28 communities in 13 Southern states, leading conversations about racism to produce a detailed 2019 report, “Divided by Design.” Landrieu is now using the report’s results to create grants and fellowships designed to promote greater racial equity and understanding. "It would be hilarious to see someone doing those kinds of mental gymnastics if the consequences weren't so terrible in Black communities.". Removing Confederate statues has become a pretext for white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity, most memorably in Charlottesville, Virginia, a couple of weeks ago. "And he can say some things that somebody else can't and be heard, precisely because he is white.". Well, I don’t like the word defunding, because it means so many different things to people. Even with the major progress New Orleans has made since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, there are plenty of challenges for Landrieu to tackle in a second term, including high rates of unemployment and crime. One of Time magazine's “Best Memoirs of 2018” Featured in Newsweek's "50 Coolest Books to Read This Summer" Included in Esquire's "Best Nonfiction Books of 2018" “[Mitch Landrieu] has done something, in his speech and his book, that other politicians should emulate. And for those who bemoan applying today's values to the past, Landrieu points to 18th and 19th century abolitionists. Some of the sessions helped Landrieu analyze what he had heard on his yearlong listening tour — 13 Southern states, 28 communities large and small. "Let me tell you the reason why we got out of the Depression," said Andre M. Perry, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Over the weekend, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu won a triumphant re-election victory. He changed the bail system, cutting what was then the nation's largest jail population by more than half. In the wake of the recent hopeful upwelling, the mayor talks about small increments of progress—and how much still has to be done. So it happened once, I’m absolutely clear it can happen again. Vanity Fair: Your removal of the Lee statue in New Orleans helped set the stage for the wave of Confederate monuments torn down in the past few weeks. In the end, what Mayor Landrieu chose to do was issue the most direct public statement against the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War to date. And it is painful for a mayor to take office, as he did, and discover that 50 percent to 60 percent of the city's budget is dedicated to policing, he said. Trump demonstrated how a person that gets only 44, 45% in the right states can take the power of the presidency away from a majority of the people of the country. His father was a nice guy. That's what you are talking about.' That was so controversial that a teenage Mitch Landrieu needed a bodyguard, and father and son sometimes traded dark stories about foiled threats. Wealthy white people and elected officials warned Landrieu that they were prepared to make his life difficult. Why in the world would we want our young kids, Black or white, walking by names that communicate to them that you don’t belong here or, if I would have had my way, you wouldn’t currently be capable of reading or writing? I’m encouraged that the protesters have been doing what I think is a patriotic duty to call the country to our promise to each other. Maybe 20%, maybe 25%. IE 11 is not supported. City workers prepare to remove the statue of Col. Charles Didier Dreaux, the first Confederate officer from Louisiana killed during the Civil War, after it was pulled from its pedestal on South Jefferson Davis Parkway on July 10, 2020 in New Orleans. Today, the younger Landrieu emphatically describes Martin Luther King Jr.'s admonition for white moderates, an often overlooked part of the King oeuvre, as a prescription anti-racists need right now. The freshest-and most essential-updates from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. Ad Choices. "We, particularly white Americans, have been putting off all but the emergency work needed to wind up anywhere else.". Then he hijacked the credit in a systematic way, wrote a book promoting the idea that he was brave.". "Far too many of us have, in our minds, defined racism as whether you have done anything to physically harm a person because of their race or called them a nasty word.". Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. That is the kind of no-but-yes position that worries activists like Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns at Color of Change, a civil rights organization that has worked to reform bail systems and elect progressive prosecutors. "That is just upside down for our country and it is not working," Landrieu wrote in a follow-up email. The furor also helped spur Landrieu to create a nonprofit, the E Pluribus Unum Fund, backed in part by money from the Ford Foundation and Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective to study and tackle the legacy of slavery.