Hate in the Mainstream

"La Raza … is a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses."
— Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), criticizing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on May 28 for her past membership in the human rights group

"They are freaks. They are abnormal. Not because they're girls trapped in boys' bodies, but because they have a mental disorder."
— Rob Williams, co-host of the syndicated radio show "Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning," during a May 28 discussion of civil rights for transgender persons

"I'm sure it's just one of Michelle Obama's ancestors."
— Rusty DePass, former South Carolina State Election Commission Chairman and ex-chairman of the Richland County Republican Party, in a June 12 Facebook comment about a gorilla's escape from a local zoo

"The Swedes have pure genes, because they marry other Swedes. … Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we … keep marrying other species and other ethnics."
— "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade, on the July 8 edition of the FOX News show, discussing scientific findings that marriage increases longevity

"Whatever happened to the good old word 'w------'? What was wrong with that?"
— Austin, Tex., KLBJ-AM radio host Don Pryor, in July 14 comments that resulted in his suspension and apology

"Maybe the people who work for a living didn't want to swim with a bunch of ghetto monkey faces."
— Anonymous comment about 60 mostly black children with advance reservations being turned away from a private Philadelphia pool that was posted July 15 on Domelights.com, a message board run by and for Philadelphia police officers that was later suspended

"This has been a country built basically by white folks."
— MSNBC political commentator Pat Buchanan on the July 16 edition of MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show"

"If I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with [pepper spray]."
— Boston police officer Justin Barrett, who was later suspended, in a July 27 mass E-mail about black Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest in his own home by a white officer after a neighbor reported a possible break-in there

"This president has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."
— FOX News host Glenn Beck on the July 28 edition of "Fox & Friends," attacking Obama's criticism of the arresting officer in the Gates case

Quotes on this page were compiled from media accounts, web pages, e-mail groups and Media Matters for America, a website that monitors the far right.