Tearing down hate

13th July 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

There’s been a lot of talk of late about the removal of racist symbols and monuments like the Confederate flag and statues honoring Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard. I’m with all of that.

But I’m also with going beyond the removal of racist symbols and monuments to obliterate practices and policies that marginalize, criminalize, dehumanize, exploit and exterminate people of color in the United States.

How do we do that?

By addressing age-old practices like bank redlining, predatory lending, racial profiling, economic exclusion, wage discrimination, unfair sentencing and unequal justice.

For the record, the Black people of this city did not need a lofty racial reconciliation initiative to convince them that the various racist symbols and monuments throughout New Orleans need to be removed from public places. We’ve been saying that for decades.

And over the past few years, Re­move Racist Images, a grassroots organization led by Rudy Mills, has stepped up its efforts to do away with these racist monuments.

In making its own pitch to remove these monuments, the administration has never acknowledged the work of Remove Racist Images and has acted as though the movement to scrap these offensive statues was solely the brainchild of the mayor and his Welcome Table initiative.

By doing so, the administration has essentially hijacked this grassroots movement to remove these monuments and made it appear as though everyday people in New Orleans who have been organizing with this goal in mind for years had nothing to do with it.

As a result, 50 years from now, the Eurocentric history books will credit this mayor and his administration with being the great white emancipator who singlehandedly freed the Black masses and tore down these symbols of white privilege.

But what about the white supremacy and privilege behind these monuments?

By tearing down these statues without addressing the ongoing subjugation of Blacks in New Orleans, the administration is essentially saying, “I want these monuments removed but I don’t have a problem with the Recovery School District building a new school for Black children atop a toxic landfill.

“I want these statues removed but I don’t have a problem with the tourism industry continuing to pay Black and poor people slave wages and City Hall continuing to routinely marginalize Black contractors.

“I find these statues deplorable, but I don’t care if the criminal justice system continues to violate Black people’s constitutional rights and allows police officers to continue to get away with racially profiling and murdering unarmed Black men, women and children.”

You get the idea.

More than a handful of Black people were offended when the mayor told people at Essence Fest that he has apologized for slavery and that it’s now up to Black people to accept that apology, as with a few buttery words anyone could wipe away past and present racial inequities and injustices.

In this age of police shooting down unarmed Black men, women and children, mass incarceration, an expanding income divide and the ever-growing prison industrial complex, we need substantive change.

Among other things, substantive change entails ending the stranglehold the white business community has on the overwhelming majority of poor and Black people in cities like New Orleans, expanding educational opportunities and dismantling the systemic racism that continues to sentence the Black masses in this city and others to lives of abject poverty, chronic unemployment and underemployment, low-wage jobs, substandard housing, inadequate health care and senseless violence.

It is both sinister and criminal for any elected official to claim to be committed to ending the scourge of senseless violence in the Black community without first addressing the policies and practices of local government and the business community that contribute directly to the problem.

If anyone thinks we the people are going to satisfied or narcotized by the removal of these racist symbols and monuments, think again.

We won’t rest until the City of New Orleans also tears down the systemic racism, draconian practices and de facto slavery that continue to impede the growth, development and progress of Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people in this city, state and nation.

Tear down the mindset that compels European Americans to believe that it is their Manifest Destiny to control the life chances of every other people on the planet. Tear down the myriad laws that continue to oppress people of color and give whites an unfair advantage in every facet of life.

Tear it all down and build up a new, democratic system, one that recognizes every resident of this city, state and nation as free and equal human beings.

This article originally published in the July 13, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.