In 2016, I followed from home as the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution for all “brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag”. The word “Southern” in the SBC’s name makes that resolution all the more uplifting. Many of the “messengers” (a distinctly Baptist term) to the convention were descendants of Confederate soldiers, yet they were eager to repudiate the Confederate flag, as the text says “as a sign of solidarity of the whole body of Christ, including our African American brothers and sisters”. Here is an excerpt from James Merritt’s speech in support of the resolution and in condemnation of the Confederate flag:
"All the confederate flags in the world are not worth one soul of any race."

I was both stunned and filled with joy. Earlier that year, I had read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ amazing Between the World and Me. From there, God started working in me on racial reconciliation and has continued through the books I read, the podcasts I listen to, and the people I meet.

So you could say I was primed to read Mitch Landrieu’s new book In the Shadow of Statues (available in bookstores everywhere). Written by the mayor of New Orleans, it is a book about Landrieu’s experiences with race as a white politician from Louisiana (D), and it gets its title from his decision to take down four Confederate monuments (of Robert E. Lee, PGT Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and the so-called “Liberty Place” monument put up by the White League). I’m personally very supportive of this action, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but I had high hopes for Landrieu’s account. I was disappointed. I even actively disliked it at times. But, to employ a maxim I use often in my life, sometimes you have to take the meat and spit out the bones. There is still a lot of meat here.

In the introduction, Landrieu seems to lay out the setting for the book. In 2015, he resolved to do everything in his power to remove the four confederate statues from the streets of New Orleans. That began a two-and-a-half-year struggle that included death threats, car bombs (aimed at the contractors who were supposed to carry out the action), and the like: acts of terror perpetrated by American citizens. Landrieu puts it in context:

Can you imagine? In the second decade of the twenty-first century, tactics as old as burning crosses or social exclusion, just dressed up a little bit, were being used to stop what was now an official act authorized by the government in the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
Racial reconciliation is necessary. Even for those of us who do not blow up cars in the name of white identity. That much is clear. I’ve realized this for a while, but it still hits me hard every time I see more proof of this fact. I am the descendant of Confederate soldiers as well. But whether it is a Confederate flag or a monument to a Confederate soldier, to paraphrase James Merritt, they are not worth one soul of any race. And souls have been lost because of the myth of the Lost Cause.

I can’t turn this book review into a description of the myth of the Lost Cause (a myth which many Southerners, even ones I am close to, believe), because others have done that and Landrieu adequately describes it himself, so I’ll halfheartedly assume you’re with me on that statement and let Landrieu (who went deep into historical research before moving forward with the monument decision) describe what this means for those historical works of art:

The statues were not honoring history, or heroes. They were created as political weapons, parts of an effort to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity … And the misuse of history is inflamed by the anger burning through demonstrations today, anger fueled by white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have stolen the meaning of Southern heritage from many white who abhor their ideology but still hold hard to a rose-colored nostalgia for the past. It is a view of history that I, respectfully, do not share; but I understand where they are coming from, and why many people feel as they do.
He understands because he was there. While his parents were also pioneers of racial reconciliation in the 1960s and 70s, Landrieu admits that the Confederate statues didn’t bother him until recently. I’ll quote him one more time to give an idea of where he is coming from, because I think this is where a lot of us are right now.

This is what I have come to call transformative awareness. We are all capable of it; but we come kicking and screaming to a sudden shift in thinking about the past. To get there we have to acknowledge that we were inattentive, insensitive, myopic, or God forbid, hateful in our earlier view. This is one of the hardest things for human beings to do, especially when someone calls us on a belief.
"My education came late, but it caught up in a hurry … We can be proud of our ancestors who served the Confederacy as men who fought courageously for a cause greater than themselves. We can also recognize that in the context of history they were wrong. Which is to say they were human."
I think this is a good way to think about our Confederate heritage as Southerners. My ancestors were wrong, but I’m sure there was much more they were wrong about too. This is just the one thing that’s apparent from our current perspective.

Landrieu is able to bring this fresh perspective to other portions of the book too, on occasion. His ideas and vague outline of policy on curbing gun violence (a policy which includes the novel idea of not incarcerating so many Black men) is needed in our moment. I wish this voice could have been so consistently thoughtful throughout the rest of the book.

Between the introduction and the final chapter, In the Shadow of Statues is definitely not about statues. To Landrieu’s credit, it stays in the vein of race relations with chapters on David Duke, Hurricane Katrina (which quickly became a story with racial tension), the rebuilding of New Orleans, and inner-city violence. The idea is to show that all of this happened “in the shadow of statues”. I don’t think that was made clear throughout the book (Landrieu says those exact words once and might allude to it another time or two), but even if it had been, there is something else at play that supersedes the narrative. Right now Landrieu is approaching the end of his term as governor, and everything he writes about is something he has personal experience with during his political career. I could be wrong, but it really feels like he’s angling to run for something. And it seems that is the hidden message of the majority of the book.

Take for instance, the chapter on David Duke. He perpetually makes connections between David Duke and Donald Trump to make a more contemporary parallel, but David Duke is both recent enough history and discussed enough in political culture that there is no parallel needed in order to relate it to the current climate. While Donald Trump and David Duke do have some political similarities (for instance, both have policies that are or were actively bad for their core supporters: poor whites), I thought that Landreiu’s chapter-long comparison of the two was more political soapbox-shouting than anything else. Although there is relevant information about Duke’s political career, no one’s mind is being changed by this comparison. You’re simply preaching to the admittedly-large choir. He does, however, manage to write possibly the nicest thing I have seen anyone from the opposite party say of the President: “Donald Trump is not a Nazi.”

I understand that all politicians do this. If Mitch Landrieu is truly running for President on the Democratic side in 2020 (which he says he isn’t), writing a book is almost as necessary as filing the official documents. Maybe he’s hoping to be Vice President, which would also almost require a book. Either way, I understand. But I was expecting a thoughtful examination of the history of these monuments (which was sort of promised in the introduction but only partially delivered) and a case for all such monuments to be removed. What I received was a personal story of a man’s encounters with racial issues, which I mostly enjoyed, but also a political polemic. Polemics don’t persuade. People do. And Mitch Landrieu was almost there but also so far away.

There is a sense in our society that a white man cannot speak on racial reconciliation, but I vehemently disagree. This past Wednesday, I was sitting in a DVD Bible study from Tony Evans, the pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. His lesson was not about racial reconciliation but about the story of Joseph and its relation to forgiveness. He defined the difference between unilateral forgiveness and transactional forgiveness. Unilateral forgiveness is when you decide to forgive someone independent of their repentance. We are capable of this kind of forgiveness, and this is what God asks of us because this is what He provides to us. But transactional forgiveness is a separate type of forgiveness that is capable of restoring the relationship between two people. In the context of racial reconciliation, this is two large groups of people (at least): Black and white. In order for that reconciliation, that forgiveness, to occur, there has to be a large amount of work involved. Tony Evans says transactional forgiveness starts with a private conversation, not a public display.

Landrieu’s book felt like a public display, but I think it did provide some necessary background and ideas for private conversation. I plan to have these private conversations as often as possible, and there are many possibilities in the world in which we find ourselves. If we can talk about racial reconciliation without falling back on polemics, maybe we can see all the statues and flags come down. Maybe at some point it will happen without threats and violence.

Landrieu’s ‘In the Shadow of Statues’ is a thoughtful personal examination of race, culture, and politics in the city of New Orleans. Anchored by the recent removal of confederate monuments in the city, the story winds through the biographical reflections and moral examinations that preceded the decision. I (cynically) expected some political posturing here, but Landrieu’s writing is earnest and it honestly feels like he’s trying to air his case (even on behalf of New Orleans as whole) for why the statues needed to be removed. As someone who grew up in Southeast Louisiana in the 80s and 90s, I appreciated Landrieu’s telling of moments in local history (David Duke’s political showboating and the decade after Katrina especially). This book is also fascinating as a public administration study, often showing the stark (sluggish) realism of putting local politics to work, along with the unique challenges facing New Orleans. I thought the chapter detailing the statue removals might be anticlimactic but (spoiler alert), it was actually shocking and very compelling.

In this compact telling of why as a born and bred Louisianan, southerner and American he could not let several Confederate monuments stand in his city any long, Landrieu serves both as a solid voice against the white resentment is still an all-too-strong force in the US and a well-fitting read for these times.