Over the last few days, an unofficial portrait hanging in the office of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has generated a flurry of interest on social media sites and at mainstream media outlets, from People Magazine to the congressional daily The Hill.

At issue in the portrait, donated by a constituent, is the depiction of Jindal’s skin color, which renders him phenotypically white. A photo of the portrait was tweeted on February 3 by liberal Louisiana blogger Lamar White. A few hours later, the governor’s chief of staff, Kyle Plotkin, responded with a tweet that read in part: “Thx 4 ur race-baiting tweet.”

In a follow-up email Plotkin continued, “Liberals want to race-bait and they think the governor looks insufficiently brown in the picture. No other reason to tweet that picture.” Since then liberals have shared the portrait widely on social media, presumably to demonstrate the difficulty a largely white Republican Party has with a brown party leader, particularly in a southern state.