Black Lawn Jockey Rides One Of Pataki's Horses.

The following is an updated and revised version of an earlier post.


I haven’t seen a Black lawn jockey in probably twenty-five years, but I stumbled upon this one on a dead end street in a high class neighborhood in Amsterdam yesterday. Many sites on the internet attempt to dispel the racist, or at least stereotypical, overtones of these statues, but it appears that such attempts are simply part of revisionist history. The cover below of an African-American magazine seems to indicate that at least some Blacks find these statues offensive.



Anyway, I did a little more sleuthing and found that the owner of the house where this lawn jockey is located is Jeffrey Rosenthal, Deputy Counsel in the New York Governor's Office of Regulatory Reform.

The fact that Mr. Rosenthal has this statue on his front lawn does not, in my opinion, make him a racist. He may have bought the urban legend about these statues. In any event, he has the right to display the lawn jockey. On the other hand, I do believe that it shows a lack of propriety for someone who was once an assistant district attorney and judge and who is now an attorney for one of Governor Pataki's offices.