Is Mitch Landrieu the "White, Southern Anti-Trump"?

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.5 • 11.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2018

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mitch Landrieu is the white mayor of New Orleans, and he wants America to talk about race. Landrieu is the author of the new book, In The Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. The statues he refers to are Confederate war memorials, four of which he controversially took down in May of 2017. "These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for,” Landrieu said, in a speech that went viral nationally. "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 purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.” Since then, Landrieu's profile has skyrocketed. He is often talked about as a Democratic candidate for 2020. In the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg called him "the white, Southern anti-Trump." In this conversation, Landrieu and I discuss how he came to believe it necessary to remove the statues, and what happened in the aftermath. We also talk about his experience serving in the Louisiana legislature with David Duke ("a dress rehearsal for the rise of Donald Trump,” he says), the power of dog whistle politics, why you can’t run a government like a business, whether Democrats can still talk to the whole country, what makes a “ radical centrist," why leaders need to get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations, and whether confronting America’s divisions opens a path towards healing or just deepens our divides. Recommended books: Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, by Martin Luther King Jr. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you don't acknowledge, for example, that the statues were part of a purposeful effort
0:05.5	to send a message to the African-American community about who was still in charge,
0:08.8	notwithstanding the fact that the Confederacy lost the war, then it's hard to get to another place.
0:25.7	Hello, welcome to the Ezra Clanchon, the Box Media Podcast Network. How are you?
0:29.6	I'm well. Thank you for asking. I guess this week is Mitch Landry. He is the mayor of New Orleans
0:34.9	and the author of the new book in the shadow of statues, a white southerner confronts history.
0:40.4	Landry made headlines over the past couple of years for taking down a series of Confederate
0:46.4	statues in New Orleans. His book is about that, about his political career, about the way race has
0:51.8	played out in Louisiana politics. And I'm appreciative that he took the time today to have a pretty
0:57.2	deep conversation about those issues and others. I think you'll enjoy it. As always, you can
1:01.4	send me show feedback at Ezra Clanchon at box.com, ideas for guests, anything you might want to tell me.
1:07.2	And you should be checking out our new podcast today, Explained, which is fantastic. I don't know
1:11.9	what more I can tell you to subscribe. So if you have not subscribed, just to know that I am thinking
1:18.2	of you with disappointment and disapproval. But with that said, here is Mayor Landry. Mayor Landry,
1:25.0	thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you, Ezra. Great to be here. So I'd like to begin with
1:28.8	your background in politics. Your father was also mayor of New Orleans. What do you learn growing up
1:34.2	the son of a mayor? Oh my goodness. Well, first of all, I'm one of nine kids. I grew up.
1:41.2	It's a lot of kids. Yeah, it's a lot of kids. My mom. My mom had nine children in 11 years.
1:45.8	She's a saint and a spectacular woman. Where are you in the birth order? I'm the fifth right in the
1:50.3	middle and kind of been there my entire life and amazingly. And almost everything that I do.
1:56.3	But I grew up in the deep south grew up in the city of New Orleans, born and raised in a neighborhood
2:02.1	that from my perspective was the first integrated neighborhood in the city of New Orleans.
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