How American monuments sometimes perpetuate white supremacy myths

Writer Irvin Weathersby Jr. explores America's museums and monuments in his new book, "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space."

It's part memoir and part reflection on how our creation myths as Americans often contradict our nation's true history, according to Weathersby. He said the book tries to encapsulate that feeling of what it means to be a Black American.

ABC News' Linsey Davis sat down with Weatherby to discuss his book in more detail.

ABC NEWS: Protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 sparked a cultural reckoning of sorts in the United States. Change in some cities and towns meant better policing practices and Confederate statues being torn down.

February is, of course, Black History Month, and Irvin Weatherby Jr., a writer and professor from New Orleans who teaches at Queensborough Community College at the City College of New York, has written a new book "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space," that is part memoir and part reflection on how our creation myths as Americans often stand in opposition to our nation's true history. Irvin Weatherby Jr., welcome to the show.

WEATHERBY: Thank you.

ABC NEWS: Thank you so much for coming on. First of all, let's just start with the title there "In Open Contempt." What does that mean?

WEATHERBY: So I got this title from a Frederick Douglass autobiography. So it really tries to encapsulate that feeling of what it means to be a Black American. And so when Frederick Douglass first understood that he was enslaved was a very pivotal moment in his life. He was very young. And this was the moment when he was about to be sold on an auction block. And there's a moment in his autobiography when he's reflecting upon that realization. And he says, "How are we reduced, held in open contempt of our humanity and reduced to beasts like cattle and swine?"

ABC NEWS: And you go further "Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space." And throughout the book, you talk about visiting different monuments, museums -- Mount Rushmore, for example. How do you decide which ones kind of pass the muster and don't?

WEATHERBY: You know, that's a really good question. There's a lot of places that didn't make the cut, a lot of places that I wanted to kind of include. Ultimately, you know, I got with my editor and we figured out like, hey, these are the moments that resonate the most. But I wanted to focus primarily on New Orleans because that's how I inject my own story. That's how I really kind of think about the story of America as told through New Orleans, as told through me.

ABC NEWS: You mentioned New Orleans, of course, your hometown, really at one point, the epicenter of the slave trade. In what ways would you say there are successes in New Orleans and also failures, with regard to some of these open spaces?

WEATHERBY: Yeah. You know, so the book opens in a space that was formerly titled Jeff Davis Parkway. The city has now decided to change that since I wrote the book. But when I started it in 2017 and I'm engaging with white supremacists who are huddled around this statue, this bust to the first Confederate soldier who was killed in the war. I'm there and I'm on this street. I'm engaging with them. But years later, now that street is named after Norman C. Francis, who is the longtime president of Xavier University.

So there's moments like that where streets have been changed. There's monuments that have come down, they've been renamed. There are spaces that we are seeing that are moving forward. But there's still a lot more to go. So New Orleans is only a microcosm of what change could look like, but then we still have some steps ahead of us.

ABC NEWS: With regard to some of those statues coming down, in your epilogue, you write "Across the country, change has come." And I'm wondering now when you fast forward to just the first weeks of the new administration, rolling back DEI, for example, do you still feel that change is coming, in a similar fashion in which you initially intended it?

WEATHERBY: You know, unfortunately, no. I think there's a clear moment of retrenchment that we're facing right now and with DEI rolling back, there's so many different directives and executive orders that are seeking to actually erase what we've done here in this country. And I think that is going to be an issue. And I think this is what this book is about.

And so if I could give you a quote from James Baldwin, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it's faced." And I think what's happening in this country is that we need to face ourselves. We need to look at each other in the mirror and say, is this what we are going to become? Do we really want to be controlled by oligarchs? Do we really want to prop up white men as the only position of power in this country?

ABC NEWS:  Irvin Weathers, Jr., we thank you so much for your time. His book, "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy and Art in Public Space," is available right now.