My film, The Neutral Ground, opens on a scene of frightened white people who cannot let go of statues. It is 2015 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the city council is voting to remove four confederate monuments.
A panicked white woman shouts: ‘If we take down these monuments, where does it stop? Are we going all the way to Washington DC to take down every memorial there?
To her surprise, the crowd applauds. They couldn’t agree more. To them, this question isn’t a cudgel to end the debate – it is a crowbar to pry it open.
United States: Crimes that built a nation
CJ Hunt applauds the toppling of statues to slave owners and colonizers but wonders where our monumental reckoning will end
