Utterly sloppy—not to mention scurrilous—reporting in this “News Analysis” in the Times:
Mr. Obama and his detail have been keenly aware of the risks inherent in the job of protecting the first black president and his family. That has been true since Mr. Obama started receiving Secret Service protection in the spring of 2007, nine months before the Democratic primaries began.
The article does not provide any further “analysis” of such racially-motivated threats to the president. The first sentence is a complete non sequitur, but we can suppose that New York Times reporters are so inured to the narrative of America as an institutionally racist country that they casually refer to “inherent” “risks” without any substantiation. Even if we grant that the Secret Service felt the need for an abundance of caution, due to the candidate’s race, in spring 2007, we don’t see any evidence on which anyone—except, perhaps, the usual suspects such as the Southern Poverty Law Center—can legitimately assert that President Obama faces more “risks” than any other president by virtue of his race. Yet the Times article mentions this in passing as if it’s an established fact.
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