Republican candidate questions mural for depicting Indian people as too 'dark'

Friday, October 13, 2017  

A Republican candidate in New York is being dropped by her own party after questioning a mural of Indian people.

Jean Jacobs told Hudson Valley One that the mural in Kingston was "divisive" and failed to represent the city's "original heritage." She wondered why the artist chose to depict Indian people at all and why they were shown with "dark" skin.

“It was supposed to be Indian, but it didn’t look Indian,” Jacobs told Hudson Valley One. “Maybe a black Indian.”

After the comments drew widespread outrage, Jacobs deleted her campaign page on Facebook. And now the City of Kingston Republican Committee is refusing to support Jacobs in her bid to represent the city on the Ulster County Legislature, Hudson Valley One reported.

“Her views are her own and have nothing to do with us,” the committee's chairman told the paper. The local party's motto, incidentally, is "#RestoreKingstonPride."

Vince Ballentine painted the mural as part of the city's O+ Festival. He titled the work "Moving Mountains."

"This piece deals with generational wisdom and love, displacement, the environment, and honoring the indigenous," Ballentine wrote on Facebook.

Ballentine finished the mural on October 9. Jacobs's negative comments about it appeared in Hudson Valley One the following day.

"This thing isn't a week old and this lady has ruined her own career," Ballentine wrote on Facebook as he shared the latest story about Jacobs.

Read More on the Story:
Kingston GOP drops support for candidate who criticized Native American mural (Hudson Valley One October 12, 2017)
GOP county legislature candidate calls O fest mural ‘divisive’ (Hudson Valley One October 10, 2017)