According to this news story, today President Obama’s reelection campaign “will air its first radio ad targeting African-Americans, campaign officials confirmed.”
The 60-second ad, entitled “We’ve Got Your Back,” appeals to black voters’ nostalgia about the election of the nation’s first African-American president, calling for those voters to stand with the president again in November.
As I said when a TV version of this ad ran, this kind of race-based appeal is reprehensible. And I especially don’t like the imagery in the “We’ve Got Your Back” slogan: It is “a not-so-subtle suggestion that the president’s critics are (a) threatening him with something more than just criticism, and (b) doing so in a somehow cowardly and unfair way. So if you’re black and you don’t support the president, well then you’re practically just standing around with your hands in your pockets while a brother gets lynched. No? Well, you explain why that phrase was used then.”