New Orleans shows the better way to resolve Confederate monument issue
Published August 24, 2017
by John Davis, The John Davis Political Report, August 17, 2017.
The issue of what to do with North Carolina’s Confederate monuments is a matter that must only be answered locally, city by city, “in accordance with the law,” by way of a process that recognizes and respects opposing views. Otherwise, we risk more of the destruction of monuments and the disfiguring of statues, as we have seen in Durham, or the violence we saw in Charlottesville.
It is a mistake for our statewide politicians, including our Democratic governor and our Republican state legislature, to force how local communities resolve this matter. If the governor and legislature want to provide leadership on the issue, they need to call a Special Session and pass a bipartisan model process for how each city in North Carolina can resolve the issue of Confederate monuments locally.
The primary reason we need a sensible process for to how to resolve the issue of Confederate monuments locally is because too many people on all sides think that their moral authority on racially sensitive issues is so absolute that it warrants the dismissiveness of other views. That it justifies the enforcement of their views on everyone else.
Far too many of us … including many in the university community, rural conservative Southerners, members of the news media, liberal elites clustered in big cities and elected officials in both parties … bask in an air of righteous dismissiveness, especially on matters of racially sensitive issues.
That’s why, after considering the lawlessness in Charlottesville and Durham over the issue of Confederate monuments, I would like to recommend a more civil model … the way the City of New Orleans resolved the issue after decades of anger, anxiety, anticipation, humiliation and frustration … as detailed in a speech delivered on May 23, 2017 by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
