Ex-New Orleans mayor urges all to fight resurgent racism in U.S.
Mitch Landrieu spoke to students and faculty at University of Texas.
These are not normal times, former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Tuesday of the Trump presidency, and the way to preserve American values is to confront this abnormality head on, offering as an example the way he and other Louisianans fought the rise of the former Klansman and neo-Nazi David Duke three decades ago when he made his foray into mainstream politics.
“Historically, when you allow those things to fester and you don’t address them directly, it can get away from you, and it has encapsulated the country, from the populism of Huey Long to the populism/racism of George Wallace to the just straight-out racism of David Duke, and now it’s this nationalist/isolationist piece where Donald Trump seems to be playing very dangerously,” Landrieu told the American-Statesman while in Austin to talk to students and faculty at the University of Texas.
“I’m hoping the country doesn’t want to go there, but we’re in a different time and we’re in a special moment, and it’s worth recognizing that it is not a normal moment,” said Landrieu, who was interviewed on stage Tuesday at
the Texas Union Theatre by Angela Evans, dean of UT’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
“This is not just the United States,” Landrieu said. “It’s happening around the world, and in some instances it’s being accepted, in some instances it’s being pushed back.”
“The play to white nation- alism in coded language is very powerful. Southern- ers know them as dog whis- tles — and other people call them train horns. You can’t take these things for granted as if they’re one-offs,” said Landrieu, whose second term as mayor ended in May, after a long, difficult but ultimately successful effort to remove four Confederate monuments from places of prominence ahead of the city’s tricentennial celebra- tion this year. The sometimes harrowing political battle is recounted in his book, “In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History.” It includes a chapter titled “David Duke and Donald Trump, a Night- mare Loop.”
“We’re out of bou nds now,” he said. “There are now fundamental questions that are in play that didn’t used to be in play. Are you for socialism? Are you for capitalism? Are you for autocracy? Do you believe in white supremacy? Do you believe in nationalism? All these big- ger, larger issues that haven’t been litigated in this country in a long time, and now that they’re being litigated, you have to litigate them, you can’t just shout them down.”
Landrieu’s book grew out of a speech he delivered in May last year in which he described the removal of Confederate monuments from places of honor in his city as a moral imperative.
“After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purpose- fully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city,” Landrieu said in the speech that gained him national acclaim and, Politico reported, the favorable attention of former President Barack Obama, who “has said privately that he could see the appeal of a bald white guy from Louisiana talking up progressive politics in a smooth Southern accent.”
Landrieu said Tuesday he has no plans to run for any office, but he does plan to be at the forefront in confronting questions of race and diversity.