The Confederate generals who loom in granite-and-marble glory over two historic Dallas parks may be standing on borrowed time.

Excuse me while I let this out: Yippee!

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings won't come right out and say this, but he willingly, if somewhat reluctantly, tips his hand.

"Personally," Rawlings said, "I'm careful about espousing my point of view too much but not ashamed to do it. Slavery was the greatest sin that America ever participated in and we need to appropriately own up to that and move beyond it."

When we have "historical reminders" such as the towering statues of Confederate stars planted in public parks, "it's concerning," he said.

With Rawlings' blessing — or insistence — Dallas is finally digging into how it should handle the Confederate symbols that dot the city's landscape and calculating what it would take to remove, relocate or alter the memorials to add historical context.

Two of the four highly visible monuments have drawn the most public attention: Robert E. Lee Park and the statue bearing the Confederate general's name in Oak Lawn. And the Confederate War Memorial, a 60-foot pillar topped with a Confederate soldier and surrounded by three Confederate luminaries in the heart of downtown Dallas.

The other two monuments adorn Fair Park, the city's cultural hub: The Confederacy, one of six statues representing the nations that have claimed sovereignty over Texas, lines the promenade; and the Confederate Medallion, a massive gold panel in the Great Hall that also portrays the six periods in Texas' colorful history.

The Fair Park monuments have stirred up less controversy because they are part of a larger historical narrative, rather than stand-alone public bows to the Confederacy.

Still, anything with a Confederate mark on it is fair game these days.

1 / 6The Robert E. Lee statue is in Robert E Lee Park, in the Turtle Creek area of Dallas.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 2 / 6Jefferson Davis is part of the Confederate Memorial at Pioneer Park in downtown Dallas.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 3 / 6The Confederate Memorial is pictured at Pioneer Park in downtown Dallas.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 4 / 6Part of Fair Park's Hall of State gold-leafed medallion represents the Confederacy as part of the six flags of Texas.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 5 / 6Fair Park's Hall of State gold-leafed medallion represents the six flags of Texas, including the Confederacy.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer) 6 / 6One of sculptor Lawrence Tenney Stevens statues along Dallas Fair Park's Esplanade represents the Confederacy.(Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Last week, Rawlings sent a letter to the Communities Foundation of Texas, beseeching the North Texas nonprofit to let one of its new partners, Dallas Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation, put the Confederate monuments topic on its plate.

The foundation recently won a $1.75 million grant from the W.W. Kellogg Foundation for a three-year campaign to provide more racial equity and healing in a city divided by race on just about every front — from housing to jobs to public education and law enforcement.

Those are the issues that will have the most substantive impact on bridging the racial divide. But these symbols are divisive, too, in cities where black and Latino residents are working to change historical narratives that ignored or marginalized them.

It's time to change that narrative.

"In my view, one of the most pressing issues in this realm that major cities across our country are facing is the matter of Confederate monuments, art and other tributes and what to do with them," Rawlings wrote to David J. Scullin, the foundation's president and CEO. "For many, these are understandably nothing more than tributes to slavery and racism. Still, I have long felt that it is not my place as mayor to dictate how exactly we deal with this issue."

Instead, Rawlings said the city needs "a broad and transparent community input process that includes thoughtful and civil discourse."

Those involved with the new race initiative don't have a problem with the mayor's suggestion. But they don't want to be pushed into a corner right out of the gate, either.

They want to create a framework and build community trust first.

"They are not going to be rushed into something like that," said Scullin.

The co-chairs of the Dallas TRHT — Joli Robinson, manager of community affairs for the Dallas Police Department, and David Lozano, executive artistic director of Cara Mia Theatre — said the same thing.

"We intend to lift this conversation up to our community for their input as our process unfolds this fall," they said in a co-signed letter sent to Rawlings on Monday.

Dallas is already behind the curve on this.

Tino Banda with the Dallas Park and Recreation Department used a power washer to remove the spray-painted word "SHAME" from a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Lee Park in June 2015. (FILE 2015 / Staff Photo)

Ever since white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people two summers ago during a prayer service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., many Americans have demanded the removal of Confederate symbols from the public square.

South Carolina took down the Confederate flag over its statehouse. College campuses, from Yale to the University of Texas at Arlington, erased the names of Confederate heroes from buildings and removed statues from highly visible spots.

No one has made a more passionate, articulate pitch for removing Confederate monuments than Mitch Landrieu, the first white mayor of New Orleans in more than three decades.

Landrieu unapologetically spearheaded a campaign to remove four Confederate statues that long dominated the Crescent City's landscape.

"These statutes are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history," Landrieu said shortly before the last statue was uprooted and hauled off to a warehouse. "These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for."

In his letter, Rawlings also calls for a public discussion about at least three remaining public schools named after Confederate leaders. Last year, students at John B. Hood successfully petitioned the district to wipe the Confederate general's name off that middle school.

Now, some East Dallas parents are looking into changing the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary, which Rawlings' wife attended.

Rawlings said he "won't predict" what will happen to any of the monuments or schools in Dallas that pay tribute to the Confederacy.

"That would be wrong of me," he said. "The community needs to get together."

That's fine. But I wouldn't buy stock in any Confederate icons in Dallas.

No, Rawlings isn't going after these monuments like Landrieu did. But don't let his soft shoes and velvet glove fool you.