Top 10 Most Racist Obama Attacks of Campaign 2012

Jason Thompson, son of GOP Senate candidate Tommy Thompson, told supporters Sunday in Wisconsin that the election was a chance to send President Barack Obama “back to Chicago – or Kenya,” drawing laughter and applause from his audience.

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After four years of an Obama presidency, racial slights and insensitive rhetoric are still fixtures in presidential politics

Before he took the oath of office, before it was clear he’d rise to become the party’s presidential nominee, and before his racially tense exchanges with the Clintons, Barack Obama lit the American conservative extremists’ world on fire.

Upon Obama’s election to the White House, reports of a rise in armed militias and racist groups throughout the nation were no surprise to many people of color who felt the country was not so far removed from its sordid history of human atrocities toward members of various minority groups.

Yet after four years of an Obama White House -- seemingly long enough to dispel any remaining fears associated with having a non-white commander-in-chief -- Americans who were alarmed by and vehemently opposed to Obama’s election the first time around aren’t warming to the idea of a second term. The number of people who question the president’s religion, the frequency of conspiracy theories surrounding his birth, and bad apples in the opposing party openly flying their racist flags, have only increased, according to a group that monitors these things.

Above, view a gallery of racist remarks and displays during the 2012 campaign.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the U.S., says the ranks of extremist groups continued to swell in 2011. According to the law center’s spring 2012  report, “growth of hate groups [rose] to a record 1,018 in 2011, up from 1,002 the year before and [is] the latest in a series of increases going back more than a decade.”