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Black students receive racist messages in the US

Online Niel November 8, 2024

Black college students in several states reported to authorities on Wednesday that they had received anonymous text messages using racist references to the era of American slavery.

The messages varied in detail but followed the same basic script, saying that the recipient “has been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.”

Officials could not say Thursday where the messages originated.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate incidents nationally, and local authorities in Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina and other states were investigating the messages, which were sent after the announcement of Donald Trump’s election.

It is not clear who sent the messages and how many were sent. At least some of the messages claim to have come from “A Trump supporter.”

A statement from the FBI said the agency is “aware of offensive and racist text messages being sent to individuals across the country and is in contact with the Department of Justice and other federal authorities on this matter.”

Representatives of civil rights advocacy organizations, including the SPLC and the Columbus chapter of the NAACP, said the content of the messages constituted hate crimes.

Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, called them “a public display of hatred and racism that makes a mockery of our civil rights history” in a public statement Thursday.

Huang called on political leaders to “condemn anti-black racism in any form whenever we see it.”

Experts on domestic extremism were shocked by Wednesday’s messages, telling USA TODAY that the campaign appears to represent a tactic not previously used by white supremacists or hate groups.

“This is the first I’ve ever seen such a racist attack using text – it’s frighteningly personal and appalling,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “Also, I’ve never seen this kind of racist messaging that directly threatens people.”

Where do students receive racist text messages?

Authorities began investigating the text messages following reports from students Clemson University in South Carolina; Ohio State; THE University of Alabama and other schools had received them.

But not all the beneficiaries were in college.

Mary Banks, who has a daughter in Columbus, Ohio, said her 16-year-old daughter received one of the hate messages Wednesday night, which included her full name. Several of her daughter’s friends in the Columbus City School District have received similar messages, she said.

Banks said she is not surprised that racist hatred would emerge at this point in history.

“I feel like white supremacy has gotten stronger since the election,” she said.

Ben Johnson, a spokesman for Ohio State University, told The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, that hateful messages were sent to “several students.”

Bethany McCorkle, a spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office, said the office was aware of the text messages and was investigating them.

Columbus NAACP President Nana Watson told The Columbus Dispatch that she believes the text messages are a hate crime.

“This is racism at its highest level,” Watson said.

Diedre Simmons, a spokeswoman for the University of Alabama, told the school’s newspaper The Crimson White that university officials reported similar messages to local authorities sent to the students there. Clemson University officials are also investigating racist text messages sent to black students in South Carolina, according to Greenville News, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.

RJ Polite, a senior at Clemson who received a version of the text, said he was shocked by the message and noted the negativity he’s seeing on social media following Trump’s results. “It was ignorant and somewhat childish.” said Polite. “I’ve really tried to stay away from the phone and the internet for a day because there’s so much going on. It was just bad.”

Who sends the messages?

It is unclear who sent the text messages.

Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, said it was the first time she had seen a large-scale racist attack using text messages. Tracking down the culprit behind the campaign can be complicated, depending on how widespread it is, she said.

And that is not clear.

“It remains to be seen how widespread this is,” Caraballo said. “If it’s a few hundred texts, it could be done by a local racist group in an afternoon as a trolling tactic, but if it’s thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, then it would should be automated and involve a fair. degree of sophistication.”

If the attack is so widespread, Caraballo said, she would not rule out foreign actors trying to foment discord in the United States in the days after the presidential election. she said bomb threats at majority-black polling stations on Election Day were reported to be from Russian email addresses.

Bad actors can fairly easily buy lists of phone numbers — some categorized by race or other demographic characteristics — on the dark web to use for everything from sales campaigns to cybercrime, Caraballo said.

In some states where voter registration information is public, including the voter’s race, she said, that information could be combined with phone records to create a targeted account like this one.

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow X at @kaylajjimenez.