Post-racist America? Not according to the Secret Service

The next time someone comes up to you and tells you that racism in America has gone out the window, point them to this morbid report: the Secret Service is so overwhelmed with death threats to President Obama that they’re not even able to function efficiently anymore, as the menace has increased by 400% since Bush’s time in office.

The Boston Globe reports that a new internal Congressional Research Service report and government sources say there are an unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama -- and that the Secret Service is insufficiently funded and staffed to deal with them.

[…]

In total, the Secret Service regularly protects 32 people and arranges security for high-profile events. But the election of Barack Obama has increased threats against the president's life by 400 percent from his predecessor, according to "In the President's Secret Service," Ronald Kessler's account of presidential security. The Secret Service has looked into a number of race-based threats since Obama took office, and a Facebook poll that asked "Should Obama be killed?" President Obama also had a Secret Service detail 18 months before the election, the earliest of any Presidential candidate.

[…]

The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report back in August that found that the number of white supremacist militia groups has spiked by 35% since 2000. The Secret Service has, in turn, increased its employees from 6,700 two years ago to a projected 7,055 in the coming fiscal year, almost entirely devoted to protecting national leaders. But that's a staff increase of just 5.3 percent -- nowhere near the 400 percent increase in threats to the president's life.

“We now live in a post-racist America with the election of the first Black president …” My hairy white ass. A country’s people that has become non-racist does not pose a threat to its own president solely due to the man’s skin color.

But, dear right-wingers, do keep on telling us how wingnuts and lunatics are a tiny, imperceptible minority, how they haven’t overtaken the right-wing movement, and how they don’t pose any sort of real threat to anyone (and much less the President). Yeah. We believe you.

(via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)
Technorati tags: racism · Secret Service · President Obama · right-wingers