Mitch Landrieu, Part 2: A White Southerner Confronts History

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3:37Do you then want to disassociate with those people because... It changed the way you see white people. It changed... Or did it change the way you saw white people? Yeah, it did. I didn't understand. Did it make you defensive about your black friends? There were a lot... Well, first of all, I kind of thought, well, those guys are just white racist people, and not all white people are racist. Some of them are. All white people are not the same, and all white people are not the same. And some black people are racist, too. Absolutely. This is one thing I've learned is we're all the same. And so I didn't necessarily, I had thicker skin than that.

4:11So you didn't change towards - I don't think I changed because what happened was when I would go home, I lived in a neighborhood that was an integrated neighborhood. And it was, I'm not saying it wasn't noticeable to me, I knew my friends were black and that I was white, but it never occurred to me that, oh, I live in a black neighborhood or I just lived in a neighborhood with my friends. It wasn't an issue for you. It wasn't an issue. And my house was always open. We played basketball in the yard. We played football on the street. And we had a great time together. It wasn't until later in my life that some of my white friends told me that I didn't come to your house because you lived in a black neighborhood.

4:44And I thought, I didn't live in a black neighborhood. I lived in a really wonderful mixed neighborhood. But their definition, this goes to the one drop. You got one drop, you're black. Yeah. Their definition is... I said, that definition was different from mine. And it never occurred to me. The fact that there are black people in the neighborhood made it. Well, if there's one black person in the neighborhood means you live in a black neighborhood. And I tell this story about the school that I went to. I went to St. Matthias Parochial School. And when I got to second grade, my friend, Margaret, who I thought my girlfriend in second grade, never showed up.

5:14And I'm like, where's Margaret? And they're like, well, her family moved. Because you see, Keith, the little black boy, came to school here. And her daddy would not let her go to school with a black person. So I was like, well, that was my first introduction. I was like, well, wait. I lost, I don't understand what just happened. And that person happened to be one of my father's best friends. We didn't want to talk to him about it. So tell me about the time you were playing. I think you were in college. Yeah, I was in college. And it was the first time a black person said... I went to Catholic University.

5:41Now remember, I grew up in a neighborhood. I played basketball, football, everything, and never without African-American friends. And so we were always in scuffles, arguing, fighting, just like kids do. There was no racial anything to the way we played football on the street in New Orleans. I never once had a racial altercation about that. I went to Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. I stayed. I didn't go to a spring break one year because I was writing my senior thesis. I was in the gym. We were playing basketball, two on two. It just turned out that it was two black kids versus two white kids.

6:13I was one of the white kids. I got into an argument with this kid. We were going up for a goal. I pushed him. He pushed me. I got elbowed. He elbowed me. I was on the ground. And he stood over me and in an angry, really vicious tone said, you're a blonde-haired, blue-eyed devil. A really racial thing about being white. And it startled me. It was also the way he looked at you, too. It was, he looked, well, he looked at me like he hated me. Yeah. And because I was white. Yeah. And, I mean, it was clearly that was what he was saying to me. And it shook me. That's the first time anybody African-American treated me that way.

6:52And it was a very strange first time I remember thinking wow, you know black people are challenged too About race and that just kind of stuck in my mind So the way this is all adding up now and it's written in the book It's all of these experience the time that I went to Auschwitz and sat there for a minute and thought about oh my god Human beings can do awful things to each other when white people think you know Some people think they're superior to others because of racial religion It's like for me, and I think for anybody that goes to Auschwitz, you come out of it more determined to fight for justice in your own way than ever before.

7:26Well, it did that to me. You can't go there. You can't go there. It did that to me. When you're there, and because you were there, you know this, and you see the prosthetics. I was there with Elie Wiesel. The prosthetics. Oh, my God. I went with Elie Wiesel. So all of a sudden, you're there, and the suitcases are there, and the prosthetics, and the dentures, and the glasses, and the suitcases, and you think, how in the world, how in the world did we ever let that happen? And I thought, and I write about this a little bit in the book, I thought about slavery in the United States of America. And then, as later in my life, as you say, why did you do it?

8:02Because this sense of denial, it didn't happen. It wasn't that bad. It was about economics. And in the environment that we're in right now, where we're actually relitigating in this country, the notion that diversity is a strength and that out of many we are one and that we want to go back. You see, that's a place where I think, not that every white person in America is thinking this, and there are a lot of people that supported Donald Trump that are not racist, but it is clearly true that the cause of white supremacy has been given new quarter. And I think that we need to speak very forcefully to that.

8:37Conservative, liberal, moderate, whatever it is, this kind of thing that kind of rose its ugly head in Charlottesville. And then, of course, what happened in Charleston, which, by the way, was the moment that I decided to pull the trigger. When Charleston happened, after I had been thinking about this now for a year and a year and a half or so, when Charleston happened and... And the nine people were shot in church. Nine people were killed in that church for praying by a young man named Dylan Roof, who professedly did it for racial reasons. and then Joe Riley, who was the mayor of Charleston, and Nikki Haley, Republican governor, they said, okay, well, let's think about taking down the Confederate flag.

9:14I thought to myself specifically, now is the moment to deal with this issue because it all came full circle. And those monuments, in my opinion, helped facilitate this sense that it was okay to have these public statements of reverence for this superiority. And I said, that's not who New Orleans is. And you had also made a vow to yourself years ago in Auschwitz that if ever you were confronted with a moment of evil, that that is what you would want to do to be able to stand up to it. That came back to me twice. One, when David Duke was elected to the legislature in 1990, and then now today, and then I thought, well, you know, you can't walk away from this.

9:54You have to, you have to step into this. And as I have said before, there had been many, many people that have worked through this on whose shoulders I stood to do this. Mayor Morial worked on it. The The other Mayor Morial worked on it. Mayor Bartholomew worked on it. There's a group in New Orleans called Take Them Down Nola that worked on it. This was a massive group effort fighting against a really difficult foe. But it should not have been this hard. It should not have been this hard. The reason I started the book off about the cranes was because I, as a very powerful mayor of a city that was rebuilding, had the law on my side, I had the political power on my side and yet they still tried to terrorize the people who were trying to help us and make this impossible to do which is really the definition of institutional racism and that in and of itself is a message for the country about how we move forward.

10:44So for the people who are listening to us right now let's talk about the cranes but for those for those few who have not gotten the best seller in the shadow of statues a white southern confronts history you You indeed talk about calling all over the city, trying to find, in a city that has been rebuilding itself, as you've said, and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of construction workers and sites, and not one person will agree to get it. Well, this is where I really feel silly and naive, because I really did think that we were going to take the city through this discussion, and once it was decided, we were going to get them down, because I'm building, I mean, we're building everything, and we're building it fast.

11:24and there's equipment and there's people. There are mechanisms to actually just, these monuments, they're not that big and they're not hard to take down. And it took us like four days totally to take them all down over a longer period of time. So this was not a massive construction project like building a new airport that cost a billion dollars, which we're doing, by the way. And I surely thought to myself, once it was decided and I signed the executive order, it was gonna come down. But no, they fought us in the law. We had, I think, seven different court cases on the federal, state, and local level.

11:53We had 13 judges that decided it. But once the legislative, executive, and judicial branches on the federal, state, and local level was decided in this country, the rule of law is now it's time to execute the law. Well, these guys thought, you know what? Hell no. We're still not going to let them take it down. And they began to engage in what I consider to be domestic terrorism. so that when you're spending money you have to kind of put stuff out for bid so people have to actually put their names in so I didn't use a lot of names in the book because I was trying to protect a lot of people but for the first company that came forward that got the bid to take the monuments down they bombed they firebombed here burned across or blew up the church in Birmingham firebombed his car in the second decade of the 21st century.

12:47And from that moment, nobody would come forward to take these statues down. I literally picked up the phone and called every contractor that I knew of, not only in New Orleans, but in Louisiana and in the entire South trying to find a crane. A crane. Just a crane. And then a crane. And here's the thing, once the crane, a crane operator, and they basically had sent a message to everybody that if you get involved in to somebody that you know is going to get hurt or you're going to lose business. Eventually, we found a number of businesses, some outside, some in the city, that actually were able to do it after we put this huge security blanket around them, which, of course, you know, made us do it at night and made people cover up their identities.

13:28The guy, they were wearing bulletproof vests, helmets. Correct. And I'm sure they were afraid. They were deathly afraid, and rightly so, because the security threats were real and they were imminent. And the security measures we took, we took at the advice of the highest levels of security. And weren't there reports, too, that people were sending drones in? It wasn't a report. They were actually doing that. They had drones that they were flying around the cranes to try to get them to stop. They actually got to one of the cranes early on and filled up the gas tank with sand. I mean, they were sabotaging what was a legally government-sanctioned process now.

14:04Now, I don't know what else you call that. I call that domestic terrorism. And so eventually what we had to do was do— for your life or your families? I don't want to, there were imminent threats that if precautions would not have been taken, it would cause you to be afraid. But we did everything that you were supposed to do in those circumstances. And so I'm not trying to be cavalier about this, but my entire life there have been innumerable death threats, and you take the appropriate kinds of precautions. And yeah, what I was more concerned about was the people who were not me that were working in this entire process that were feeling very threatened.

14:40The two wonderful women that work at my front desk had to receive lots of really awful phone calls that we kept records of that were just nasty and mean. You couldn't even imagine. Hateful. You don't want to listen to that kind of stuff. And so, look, we worked through it the way we were supposed to. Nobody got hurt. And I think that when we saw months later what happened in Charlottesville, I think the precautions that we took in New Orleans, it became pretty clear to people. that there really were imminent threats and that people can really get hurt. And of course, you know, in the South, we have open carry.

15:13So there were people who were on this cause that were bringing, you know, assault rifles there. And they were in open. And so the police did a really good job of making sure that the individuals who were part of taking down NOLA that were coming, and then the anti-groups were separated from each other, that they were able to exercise their First Amendment rights and we were able to protect everybody. And the police chief and all of the security forces did a great job. A heightened sense of danger and also far more money. Oh, it was incredible. Well, yeah, it got to be three or four times the cost.

15:45It should have never been that way. Because look at all the money you've got to spend protecting people. Correct. But generally speaking, you know, when people got upset about that, I said, listen, you know, New Orleans is a great sports entertainment, cultural place. And we have tons of people. And we just got finished French Quarter Fest with thousands of people. We always do what's necessary to protect people's well-being. And so when this turned into we're not letting you take them down no matter what. But we had to affect the law. It was the right thing to do. And we had to do it in a way where people were safe.

16:10And it cost a lot of money. And we had to get people to donate to it. And they would only donate if I kept their donations confidential, which I have done to this day. And will continue to do until they allow me to release their name. Hi, it's Ashley from OWN. Between diets, workouts, and endless advice, it's hard to know what actually works for weight loss and what's worth your time. That's why HERS offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications that now includes the Wagovi Pill and the Wagovi Pen. Everything is 100 % online through HERS. You'll connect with a licensed provider who will determine if treatment is right for you.

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18:46Yeah, I felt a great sense of relief and pride. There are very few times in your life, certainly in public life, that you get to course correct history, that you get to right or wrong, or you get to make straight what was crooked. And this really, essentially, was what we did. And it's one of the reasons why I actually wrote the speech, because I wanted there to be in writing a historical record of what had happened back then, why we did what we did, what the reasons were for it and then the public argument in favor of it. And essentially, it is a very uniquely American story, which is that out of many, we are one and everybody's included.

19:27And we all come to the table of democracy as equals. That's really who we are. And I couldn't think of a better way for the people of New Orleans to say thank you to the people of America for helping us come out of Katrina than to send that message very loudly and clearly. What you were ultimately trying to do is what I think the Picayunes writer talked about, no justice, no peace. You were trying to bring about a sense of justice so that there could be a leveling of the peace. Well, and another way for people, you know, that's an interesting thing because when I was a kid and I heard, you know, I grew up in adoring Dr.

20:05King. but also being aware of the historical fight that the people who believed in nonviolent protest were with people that said by any means necessary in the entire historical Malcolm X, Dr. King theory of how you bring about social change. And when I was a kid, no justice, no peace, the way it rang in my ear was wrong, which was like, if you don't give me what's mine, we're going to get in a fight and I'm going to take it from you. what I have come to think more about is that no justice no peace is a statement of fact which goes something like this if there is no justice if I don't feel like I'm being fairly treated if I'm not given the same opportunity if I don't am not afforded the same responsibility if I don't have the same kind of hope I feel alienated from you and when we're alienated we can't be together and there can be no sense of peace there can be no sense of harmony there can be really no sense of communion where you and I create something together that's better than what we could give to each other individually.

21:05That's really in my mind now. I think that's what that means and so it's kind of like the difference between reverence and remembrance. They look a lot the same but they're very different. So if we can find a higher place, if we can find a better place, we're gonna be better when we're together and so that's why that that part of the speech was written to invite people, to invite people. I want to gently peel your hands from a false narrative of history that has been holding us back. It's an invitation to reconcile and to be better if we could get to that place, and that's why I thought it was important.

21:39Was this one of the hardest decisions you ever had to make? Well, you know, I've been in public office for 30 years, so there have been a lot of them. This was certainly one of the most difficult to get through, although I have to say that rebuilding a city that has been completely destroyed and completely rebuilding a health care system and an education system and physically an entire city and given a group of people who have been beaten down badly by history by katrina by rita by ike by gustav by the national recession by the bp oil spill i mean that was a monumental task this one was a really important one it was a critical one because it it i think it helped I think it helped heal a wound that had been making us less than we were and I think now the city of New Orleans has a chance to look forward to the next 300 years in a way that she didn't have in the last three do you think it helped define you as a man oh yeah oh yeah I think I think you know a lot of times and this is what I really think courage is people think it's this bravado thing that we see now about I'm bigger than you and I'm stronger than you actually that's really not what it is.

22:49It's, it's a, um, cause I get afraid a lot and I tell people, you know, one of the ways that it helps me as I write down, I'm really afraid dot, dot, dot, because, and then I just let it sit there. The next day I come back and because if I do this then, and I write that down and you keep writing it down and you keep looking at it. And sometimes you go, Ooh, that's something I really ought to be afraid of. And then the rest of the, I don't need to be afraid of those because the consequences have not been once you confront it And you go, but yeah, you know what? I think that's good. You can't walk away.

23:19You can't walk away from that. I couldn't. You had to be really afraid that somebody would get hurt. Well, I was, first of all, I would do everything I could to make sure nobody got hurt. Yeah. But most of the time, what you find out is the things that you're afraid of, you need to be able to kind of stand up against and say that, you know what you guys are doing are not right. and in this thing I did I did come to this conclusion that I think some people might disagree with but I had come to the conclusion that number one what had happened was wrong that it was a historical lie that they should never have been there and they needed to come down and that I had the risk power and the responsibility to take them down and then here's the next one I could not do it because I would really feel bad about myself and I I tell this story that I I actually had an imaginary conversation with my grandchild who was yet to be, which mirrors the 12-year-old girl's conversation.

24:19If I had to talk to my grandchild and they said to me, Papa, you were the mayor. You had the power. You had the responsibility. You had the authority. Why didn't you do it? I couldn't answer that question either. And so I just concluded to myself that, you know what? This is kind of just the way it falls. And this is your deal. You've got to handle it. because nobody else can do it. And even if they could, it's in front of you now and you cannot walk away from it. And so I felt like I had to do it. I mean, it was just kind of that simple. After all that complexity, it got down to be kind of, you've had this happen to you in your life, you know this.

24:56It just gets to be real clear. There's a moment when you go, well, okay, that's just the thing and the consequences are what they're going to be. And so the taking down of the statues became a symbol for something deeper, greater, more powerful. I just think it was really important. There are people who threaten me. You know, people, besides the physical threats, but people threaten me politically. You lost a lot of white support. I lost two-thirds of my white support. That's what I heard. So the beautiful thing, here's what's really wonderful. When I got elected, both times, but the first time, I got 66 % of the votes in the city, which was pretty good.

25:33But what was really good about it is that my votes were equally white and equally black. And that's never happened before. Usually politicians put together coalitions of one sort or another. After I took the monuments down, two-thirds of the whites in the city, although my city's still pretty progressive, basically said, I'm not for you anymore. Now, the reason that really ticks me off is because I get that I make decisions all the time that people don't agree with. But this is the first one that I've made where people said, that issue will cause me not to vote for you again. Because, you know, we just, we make decisions and they're all hard and we can't ever agree with everybody.

26:14I was honest. I worked hard. I ran a competent government. We turned the city around. We did a lot of great stuff. But I've never had an issue where people severed their relationships with me because of it. Now, to me, that says more about them than it says about me. That means that those individuals, I think, have further to go on this issue, which is why I keep saying you've got to beat this issue down. When you walk through town, do some of the white people treat you differently? Oh, yeah, absolutely. No question. Furious. They're furious. Well, people outside, white people outside of New Orleans particularly, but this is interesting because people that don't live in the city anymore think that they still run the city.

26:49And while we love having them there, and they're welcome in the city all the time, generally the rule is that if you don't own it, you don't have really much to say about it. Like if it's not your property or your government. And so that has been interesting to get through. I will have to say, though, that since it's been over and the book has been out and a lot of people have read the book. I have had a lot of white people come up to me and say, you know what? I didn't see it that way before. I love that, don't you? Well, it's a beautiful thing, but I also have some people say, you ruined the city and I'll never vote for you again.

27:20I said, that's great. I said, I'll never run for anything again. So we're good to go. Never running for anything again. Okay. It's a nice space that you feel free that way. What are you going to do 21 days from now? You wake up after 30 years. I'm going to rest. You're going to rest. You know, it's a... 21 days from now is done. It's really weird. I'm starting to... You can feel the end of something coming. And when you've been doing something for 30 years and you take it for granted, all of a sudden... Could be the beginning of something else. It could be. You never know. Never know. But when you've been in office for 30 years and you stop, I really...

27:58this is going to sound weird but i i need time to rest and to think and to pray and to just get away from what i've been in so that i can see it more clearly because you get there's a lot of this when you're in office a lot of people on you who likes you when you had a schedule schedule every day yeah you're running from thing to thing you don't have time to really Are you prepared for that? Are you prepared? I hope so. Are you prepared? I think I am. Are you? Okay. Well, let me say this. I think it's going to be hard, but I'm very interested and anxious to separate myself. That's interesting.

28:37I do really want to get away. I don't really know. I've been blessed in my life. I have a wife. I have five beautiful kids. I have eight brothers and sisters. I got 33 nieces and nephews. I have been and I've been given the opportunity to do a lot of beautiful things not the least of which is rebuild a great American city Which has been spectacular people of New Orleans are Drop dead fantastic in every way. You know this you've been there. You've worked there. It's a soulful place If you love them, they're gonna love you forever. It's just a great great place But I am very I am very interested in trying to find out what it feels like to just really have your feet on the ground and just to be a regular dude and to get distance and to think about what happened.

29:21And then I'm not anxious about the future at all. I have no concerns or worries in the sense that, like, everything's not going to be okay. It's going to be fine. I don't know what it's going to look like, though, but I am very open to doing something completely different than what I've been doing for the past 30 years, And I'm really kind of interested to see how that develops in my willingness to receive whatever comes. And if it is politics, because I've been asked this question, that's why I'm being tentative about asking you. You can ask me. I'll answer it. About running for president. Are you, would you consider it?

30:00Would you be open to the possibility that that might be? Well, here's the political game that everybody plays, because there are 50 different iterations. Are you running for president? No. Does that mean you're never running for president? You go, well, how would you? No. So first of all, let me just be completely authentic about this. You don't serve in politics and not get pride for when somebody says, you know, you could be a good president. You could be good. Oh, you know, I mean, every human being. It's like saying, you know, when you start playing tennis, well, you could be Roger Federer.

30:34Really? You know, so I mean, I hear that, right? I've been there 30 years. And it feels like what when you hear that? It just feels, it makes you proud that somebody thinks that you might be the President of the United States. Yeah. That makes you proud. You can't say that it doesn't. But the next questions get really, really hard. Would you ever think about it? Well, of course. I mean, when people are talking about you possibly doing that, yeah, it makes you think about it. But then it gets really hard. It's like, well, would you do it? Now, that's a really hard question. because the truth of the matter is I don't, I don't, I'm not really planning to do that.

31:12Now, politicians all the time say, well, I'm not planning to do it, but they really are. I'm really not. Okay, but what would make you do it? What would cause you to do it? Is there something that could cause you to do it? I'm sure that there is. I've always had a sense of, um, a sense of always wanting to be in a place where you use whatever gifts or talents you have to help other people. I will say this though, and I have a very strong feeling about this. That's not the only place where you can do that. You are the perfect example of that. And sometimes people can get deluded into thinking that that's the only place where that can be done.

31:50Now you know President Obama. There are lots of different ways to touch people. You know President Bush. You know all of these people. You know that in a very personal way that that job is an incredible sacrifice. It's a life-ending sacrifice in some ways. Not physically, but spiritually and in a way that, like, once you do that, there's really nothing else you've done. And so it's not an easy sacrifice to make. And plus, it takes a lot of hubris and arrogance to think that you're the only person that can do that. And there are a lot of other people that can. I happen to think that the country's in a really bad place right now.

32:24I don't think that what's happening on the federal level is really what we need to be doing. And I think the country is in a space that we have to get out of. And it's an interesting thing for us to think about as a people. That's not just a political question. Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have-to-dos so you can focus on the can't-wait-to-dos. It's a new Workday.

32:57What's the worst about where we are right now? When you wake up and you think about... We're fighting with each other over a bunch of silliness. Like, I think we're relitigating issues that should be closed, like is diversity a strength or a weakness. We are a multicultural country. That's who we are. And the fact of the matter is that in 2040, we're going to be more multicultural as we are now. So why are we resisting what we know is coming to be and not making it better and making it worse? We're actually going backwards right now on this issue. And I think everybody in this country has to be seen and everybody has to be heard.

33:30And this is about race and it's about class. And I think that we have to learn that as a matter of fact, as a matter of economic sense, as a matter of national security, in every way the United States of America is better today than in many ways it has ever been. So why are we so afraid of each other? Why are we fighting each other so much? Why are we actually, just by forced error, our own forced error, moving backwards rather than forward? Everybody knew this. When Barack Obama got elected, this entire country, people that voted for him didn't, and went, wow, we just did something that we have never done before.

34:04And he served very well, and he served admirably. He was a great president. People may not have agreed with everything that he'd done, but there's no doubt that he moved the country forward. Why do we now feel like everybody's got to go back and say, that was a terrible mistake. Let's go ahead and divide the country racially again and not think about how we can, you know, be great. And great not just as a government, but great as a people. I don't really understand that right now, And I don't think the country really has a good feeling at the moment that we know the answer to that question. Have we lost our moral authority?

34:39Well, I think we're working at it. I think that we as a country are working at it. But my sense is that long term, even though I wouldn't take this for granted, because I think you have to fight for freedom. I think freedom doesn't come on its own. You've got to fight for it every day. and you've got to fight for what your idea of America is. And that fight goes on every day with mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins. But if you don't believe that we're stronger as one, then you don't believe in the United States. I agree. That's what I think. And I think that that idea is worth fighting for.

35:15But I don't think, to answer your question more directly, that the only way that you can do that is to be in government. And I think that there are lots of different ways. For example, when Disney did Black Panther, transformational movie. Now, you've been doing this your entire life, a transformational movie, back to the little 12-year-old girl. When she goes and watches Black Panther, now does she feel open and invited and powerful? And does she feel like, oh, my goodness, now I can be great? The answer is yeah. You go watch that movie. That movie is so spectacular. So artists, writers, poets, playwrights, musicians, social activists, they can all change the world.

36:01And you've seen presidents and their post-presidents, Jim Carter being one of them, who would admittedly himself say that I was much better not being in office than not. And so what I want Americans to really kind of get keyed in on is that when 300 million people decide that they want to do something, when each of them does something on their own, the country can move forward, and it doesn't have anything to do with politics. And that is a very interesting concept to me. And so as I think about what the next iteration is going to be in my life, you know, I don't want to get stuck in this thing that I've been stuck in without having really, really, really thought about it.

36:35And, you know, the sense of helping other people do it is more important to me than me being the guy. That's not saying that you never say never because you don't ever know what God wants you to be and you don't close off those possibilities. But it's not something that really is at the forefront of my mind at the moment. I hear that answer and I trust that it's true. I can feel that that's true. That does not sound like... Things change, who the heck knows? Yeah, who the heck knows. I want to end this conversation with the words from your son that struck me so. At the end of the book, In the Shadow of Statues, a white southerner confronts history, you came across your son's essay, right?

37:20That he was writing for college. And he says this. His name is Will Landrieu. Will, you get the last word. Growing up as the son of the mayor of New Orleans, I've seen the struggles of leadership. In response to years of discussion, my father decided to remove the Confederate monuments found across our city. He delivered a speech on the topic that, though nationally it was applauded, was locally controversial. There was discord in the city, leading to tense protests that bordered on violence. Despite 30 years of earning the public's approval, the vitriol thrust through my father's professional life directly to the daily lives of our family.

38:01We didn't feel safe anywhere or with anyone. For the two days after the removal, I walked down the school hallway bracing myself as my classmates yelled out, nigger lover, and your dad is ruining the city. My closest friend even sent me articles with false rumors about my father. Until now, I have kept these words to myself. Standing up for others is excruciatingly lonely. I know my dad must be more hurt and lonely than I am. As my black friends explain, at least my family is lonely by choice. They were simply born just a little bit darker than I was. Until the monuments were removed, my friends never imagined they would live a day where they wouldn't walk the hallways or sit in history class in fear of the next hateful comment.

38:59I know the decision is right because my friends would want someone to stand up for them. I have the ability to do that. So I intend to take full advantage of my privilege. I know that great decisions have great costs. Those costs are a fraction of what the people we are making them for have endured. Thank you, Will Landrieu. Thank you, Mitch Landrieu. Thank you. In the shadow of statues. Thank you. It's great being with you. Great being with you. Hey there, podcast listeners. I have exciting news. We're launching a brand new podcast. In addition to Super Soul Conversations, it's called Oprah's Masterclass.

39:40The Masterclass podcast allows you to hear the greatest life lessons from some of the most respected and renowned actors, musicians, public figures, and athletes in their own words. Listen as Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Ellen DeGeneres, Shaquille O 'Neal, Reba McIntyre, Dwayne Johnson, and Jane Fonda, just to name a few, share what they've learned about life and their own insights into their personal stories and challenges. I believe that there's something to be learned from every experience and everyone can use their life as a class. Oprah's Masterclass Podcast will be available July 19th on Apple Podcasts.

40:18Subscribe now and listen free. Go to applepodcast.com slash Oprah's Masterclass. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.

40:53Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hello, everyone. Sarah Lane here with Roger Chang. Hey, Roger. Hello, everyone. And Tom Merritt. Hey, everybody. We wanted to give you a big update we're very excited about on our weekly product review series called Live With It. Yes, Live With It started as an occasional DTNS segment for our patrons over at patreon.com slash DTNS. But because of such great feedback, we decided to open it up as a standalone show with even more reviewers and a wider range of products. And now, because of even greater feedback we've gotten since then, we're giving Live With It its own YouTube channel.

41:37Yay! It's still produced by the DTNS family of folks and friends. Nothing changes content-wise. We'll be reviewing all the tech products, services, and platforms that we think you'll care about. We are also leaning on all of you, our community, for ideas and suggestions. Are you thinking about a new smart speaker, robo-vacuum, modular laptop, kitchen gadget, or a software purchase for your next creative project? We'll live with it, so you stay informed. We've also heard you like our show to be easier to access on YouTube and especially easier for new subscribers to find us. So that's exactly what we're doing.

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