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Republican Congressional candidate Vernon Parker’s photo in an Arizona Democratic Party has several African-Americans upset from both sides of the aisle.
The ads targeting Parker — who’s running against Democrat Kyrsten Cinema in CD9 — are in full color, except for Parker’s picture.
The state Democratic Party has said they didn’t do any malicious editing of Parker’s photo, saying that’s just how it came out in black-and-white, but others have disagreed.
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Self-described “liberal Democrat” Reverend Jarrett Maupin claimed the state Democratic Party was trying to portray Parker as an “angry black man,” and said it reminded him of the same kind of racially motivated things that have targeted President Obama over the years.
“Somebody decided that it would hurt Vernon to make him blacker, that it would stir something in voters if he were made to look like a villainous field-negro cut-out from some Jim Crow-era minstrel-show poster,” Maupin says. “These photos are insulting and do not respect the ethnicity of Vernon, President Obama, and all Black Democrats.”
Parker has also voiced complaints about his photo in the mailers.
This morning’s question: are the mailers racist?
Cast your vote below:
