This is the Mayor of New Orleans, addressing the press about his decision to remove four confederate statues in the city. This speech says so much so well.

These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.

It’s long but I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.