President Obama’s campaign has released a radio ad that is designed to target black voters. It’s not even subtle. “Four years ago we made history,” the narrator in the ad begins. “Now it’s time to move forward and finish what we started together. We have to show the President we have his back.”

A number of the President’s campaign remarks are played synched with a catchy R&B tune and a chorus of “we’ve got your back.”

TheGrio, an “African-American” news site that’s a division of NBC News, reports the following:

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. …

The ads are being placed nationally by Fuse Advertising, an African-American owned agency based in St. Louis, Missouri, which also was contracted by the Obama campaign in 2008.

Here’s the website the ad points listeners to: gottavote.org/.

This supposedly post-racial president is all about race and class distinctions. Liberalism has been making race an issue for more than 50 years.

What should we make of the NAACP, an acronym that stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?

There’s the Congressional Black Caucus, a congressional group organized to promote the cause of blacks.

A 17-year-old student with a 4.25 cumulative grade-point average returned a $1,000 scholarship intended for black students because he is white. The award from the Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club specified that African Americans were “encouraged to apply.”

There is the Hispanic organization The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) or simply La Raza, “The People,” sometimes mistranslated (according to officials at the NCLR) as “The Race.” I don’t know enough Spanish to know where the truth is on the controversy over the meaning of La Raza. (It seems to me that to avoid all confusion and controversy, the organization should have chosen the words gente or personas. It’s interesting to note that on the SpanishDict.com site for the translation of “people,” la raza does not appear.) I do know that the NCLR has Hispanic interests in mind.

I’m OK with people from different racial and ethnic groups wanting to organize to retain cultural and social traditions, but not for political reasons. There shouldn’t be any racial interests in politics. There shouldn’t be any political set-a-sides or legislation tailored for ethnic or racial groups.

There is still racial prejudice in America. I know it. Highly inflammatory comments on some of the articles on GodfatherPolitics are evidence that people still think in terms of race. (Do you know how stupid your comments are?) But that’s true on both sides of the racial divide.

I also understand why blacks would vote for a black man for president. Blacks have come a long way in America, and electing a black man is evidence that a long road was travelled from the confines of the slave trade to the prestige of the White House.

But race is not a prerequisite for good government or a qualification for political office. There comes a time when racial and prejudice of all kinds must be put aside. In the end, it only breeds resentment.