The campaign of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.) has been criticized for utilizing stock photos of minorities on a section of its website dedicated to minority outreach, Fox News reports.
It was first pointed out by a reporter from The Intercept that one such stock photo on the website’s “Douglass Plan” section – which is focused on “empowerment of black America” – was of a black woman and her baby who were from Kenya, not America.
Although the campaign eventually removed the photo, it turned out to not be the only one. Another photo depicting a young black woman sitting on some steps and reading a textbook is from a stock photo site called “Nappy,” which specializes in “beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people, for free.” That picture was also removed shortly after this was pointed out.
This gaffe further reflects a major obstacle for the mayor’s campaign, in his struggle to appeal to African-American voters. Although Buttigieg’s numbers have been increasing in polls for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, he faces an obstacle in other key states that have a significant concentration of black Americans, including South Carolina.