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Everyone needs to listen to this powerful message about race in America

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Getty Images / DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS / Stringer

"Race is America's most traumatic issue."

Mitch Landrieu, the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans, didn't shy away from hard truths in his recent video op-ed for Mic.

In New Orleans, where around 60 per cent of residents are African American, the city's confederate monuments were widely viewed as an offensive celebration to the system of slavery the confederacy fought for.

No wonder each was pulled down, the last falling in May 2017. Much of this charge was driven by Mayor Landrieu, the mayor who - less than a week on from the Charleston massacre - told Time Picaynethat he would "look at the symbols in the city to see if they still have relevance to our future".

The Mayor opened up to Mic about the decision in New Orleans to remove the statues.

It turns out that in our most public spaces, the very few that we have, we had these monuments of reverence to the Confederacy.

It was pretty clear that they did not have a place in the history of New Orleans, much less the future of the city.

Confederate statues are falling, but hundreds still stand across the United States. To topple them, America needs to better learn to talk about race, said Mayor Landrieu:

We have to find a way to [talk about this].

You can’t go over this, you can’t go under it, you can’t go around it. You have to go through it, and we should start that conversation now.

HT Mic

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