Many of you readers have written in to flag this Op ed piece in The New York Times by Harvard Professor Orlando Patterson about Hillary's 3 A.M. ad.

In the piece, Patterson makes an intriguing insinuation, saying that the imagery of the ad -- the children sleeping amid an atmosphere of vague external unease -- is reminiscent of the imagery in the notoriously racist movie "Birth of a Nation," which helped revive the KKK.

Patterson adds that if the Hillary campaign had wanted to do away with the alleged racial subtext, they could merely have stuck a black child into the spot...

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.

Now, in a somewhat unusual way, the Hillary campaign has officially responded to the Op ed. The Hillary campaign argues that, in fact, the ad does have an image of a black child in it, and points to this shot to back up its claim...

Discuss.