The uproar over the banana hanger did not come out of nowhere, and this was not the first time that Snyder, a Republican who was elected mayor in March 2021, has been accused of racial insensitivity. Three years ago, when he was a council member, Snyder was named in a race discrimination and breach-of-contract lawsuit against the city. The imbroglio featured at the Sept. 7 council meeting, where one resident slammed Snyder for allowing “bananas on the dais with a monkey.”

The morning after the council meeting, Facebook posts featuring Calderone’s speech and her gift began to pop up. Several residents told The Daily Beast that they immediately thought the fruit stand was racially charged and an example of Snyder’s insensitivity to minorities.Still, nobody could have foreseen that a special summertime council meeting to discuss a new revenue tax proposal would leave Snyder under such intense public scrutiny. The lawsuit and the massive jury verdict—a sum that exceeds more than 10 percent of the city’s entire budget—put Snyder in a precarious position. The City Council meeting in Hutto, Texas, had been in session for just a few minutes on Aug. 31 when local resident Nicole Calderone stepped up to the podium, moments after another speaker angrily rebuked Mayor Mike Snyder. In an interview last week, Snyder “100 percent” denied all the allegations made at trial, said there was “a lot of misunderstanding,” and predicted the truth would come out during the appeal. Jones disagreed—and seems to be well aware of the current race controversy enveloping Snyder. To understand the five monkeys experiment is to understand a little bit of the politics that’s been happening in Hutto,” Calderone explained. “I refer to myself as a monkey trying to climb the ladder and getting pulled down, and then what those bananas represent.”

Before long, the banana stand with the monkey motif was the talk of Hutto—a town previously best known for its official symbol: a hippo. Despite the deepening discord, Snyder told The Daily Beast he has no intention of resigning because he does not believe that will solve the problem. He said he hears the community’s anger and wishes he had handled the gift, which he threw away at home after the meeting, differently. Also, he noted, he is allergic to bananas.At the Sept. 28 meeting, Calderone once again stood at the podium, thankfully without a shopping bag this time. She slammed the anti-banana stand group for never reaching out to her and said they had “no intention of trying to make this into a teachable moment.” Thompson said that he did not think the “over-the-top” gift was racially motivated until after Calderone stressed that it was specifically for Snyder. “Then I started to get very angry,” he said. “I understand bringing a prop and presenting it to get your point across, but then gifting it to a mayor, knowing that the mayor has had allegations of being racially biased?” Meanwhile, residents are worried what Snyder’s refusal to resign and the continuing hostility will mean for a community centered around the “hippo way” of kindness and inclusiveness. Terrence Owens, a school board member, also skewered Snyder. “When he spoke, we saw bananas,” he said, demanding that the council get diversity training. “We have to do better.”