How does the cover art summarize the narrator's core conflict?

How does the cover art (an illustration of a lawn jockey) summarize the narrator's core conflict?

Very clever design. I like the non-threatening pose of the brown-faced lawn jockey shedding light on the community conflicts.

The lawn jockies on he cover represent the sellouts, the blacks who conform to what white America wants them to be.

I hadn't looked closely at the cover until this question. I knew I liked it due to being orderly with the splashes of red. Now I see the stereotypical lawn jockey. Very clever!

The lawn jockey with the left arm raised symbolizes hospitality, welcoming everyone. But many people have come to see it as demeaning and humiliating for black people. I think the narrator has that same conflict. That is why he is called the Sellout.

Like an above reply I did not really notice it but when called to my attention I too found it clever as an intro to the book.

The lawn jockey and what it symbolizes in America, I like some of the others missed this until I read this question. Guess I will have to look at covers more carefully from now on.

The lawn jockey is a stereotype that has, I think, come to be seen as racist. Its use on the cover seems to me to invite the reader to explore the author's core conflicts about being black in the United States in the 21st Century, a time when we may like to think we are "post-racial," when really the opposite is the case. Racism is still very much alive, unfortunately.

I noticed the cover right away. As a little girl walking to school in the first grade, I went past a corner house that had "lawn jockey" where their front door walkway met the public sidewalk. I thought it was cute, and in my childhood innocence did not realize that it was demeaning and a symbol of keeping other people confined to second-class citizenship. I did not have to read very far into the novel to notice its significance. It is a good cover although perhaps not one that would catch one's eye right away in a book store.

The lawn jockey was the symbol of the deep south often appearing at the old mansions as pictured during the slavery times and often pictured with the black household help on the porches, in the yards. It certainly says racism is very much alive in America especially in the southern states I am still dumbfounded at how the blacks are treated in the southern states in this day and age.

The lawn jockey is such a demeaning symbol to black people, yet the whites that have these in their yard would not think about calling themselves racist. I knew a relative who had one in their Front lawn when I was growing up, and they never would have considered themselves racist... they just thought it was "cute"... really? I always thought it was demeaning ..