Barack Obama’s campaign has a new series of Spanish-language ads that will debut on Texas radio stations and highlight how Obama is poor! And hardworking! Just like Latinos:

The theme of the ad is that Obama is speaking to Latinos.

Because the facts that the ad is in Spanish and in Texas aren’t enough of a tip-off:

A narrator says in Spanish that Obama’s parents were not wealthy, but that he worked hard, earned a scholarship and found his path — graduating from Harvard Law School.

The narrator also says that Obama rejected offers to make more money, opting instead to work with churches to help the less fortunate.

“Obama is talking to me. About the chance to get a college education and to ensure that my parents and grandparents get healthcare,” the narrator says.

Now, ok. We understand it’s a common understanding that Latinos are into family and there’s been studies and surveys and whatnot used to support this. Whatever, that’s fine, true or untrue as that ultimately may be. And we understand that certain voting demographics involve people from certain social and economic backgrounds. Ok. But why do politicians continuously feel the need to drive home the stereotype that Latinos are poor? Why that particular stereotype, that particular segment of the population? We guess it’s probably easier to brainwash appeal to a group that already feel disenfranchised or marginalized but, God. Why the need to paint the “average Latino” as this poor, humble person huddled against the Statue of Liberty? If you are going to speak to a specific demographic based on economic class, make that clear. There’s a different between ethnicity and economic stature and to state they are one in the same and that all people within a very broad group are essentially a caricature and all one in the same is, quite frankly, insulting.

If you can study a group, you’re not immersed in it enough to be a part of it. Your understanding is clinical. So for Obama or any current politician to say he or she has anything at all in common with, say, a poor Mexican-American in Texas is, frankly, ridiculous. It’s patronizing and it’s offensive.

There are poor Latinos. There are hardworking Latinos. There are family-oriented Latinos. There are Latinos that fit any and all categories. Can that disparity among us please get recognition not only from the popular media but from politicians? Give us a little credit, is all we ask.

End rant. And curtsy.

Obama launches Spanish radio ad in Texas [Statesman]