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    • FBI investigates racist text messages spamming black students
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    FBI investigates racist text messages spamming black students

    Online Niel Posted on

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    Black college students in several states, including Texas, reported to authorities Wednesday that they had received anonymous text messages using racist references to the era of American slavery. The The FBI is investigating the incidents.

    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 nationwide, and authorities in the Texas, Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina and other states were investigating the messages, which were sent following the announcement of Donald Trump’s election as president.

    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.”

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    Where do students receive racist text messages?

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

    Students appear to be the main target of the messages – but not all recipients were in college.

    High school and even middle school students across the US have reported receiving malicious messages. A 13-year-old from Austin was among those who received such a message.

    “You have been selected to become a slave at your nearest plantation,” the text read. “Please be ready by 12 o’clock in the morning with all the necessary things. You will be picked up in a white van with a Trump representative from your area.”

    “You are in slave pool B,” the message continued.

    Shaun Hinton, a teacher in the Austin School District, KXAN said he had asked his students about receiving any “strange or strange messages”. One student shared about receiving a message saying they would be deported.

    The student was to be “picked up in a brown van” and was assigned to “deportation group A3”.

    Mary Banks, who has a daughter in Columbus, Ohio, said the 16-year-old received one of the hateful text messages Wednesday night that 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, voter registration information is public, including the voter’s race, she said, and that information could be combined with phone records to create a targeted attack like this one.

    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.”

    The federal agency also encouraged people to contact local law enforcement agencies if they feel physically threatened.

    Civil rights leaders urge politicians to condemn ‘public display of hate’

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

    Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the law center, called them “a public display of hatred and racism that makes a mockery of our civil rights history” in a 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 telling messages USA TODAY the campaign appears to represent a tactic not previously used by white supremacists or hate groups.

    “This is the first I have ever seen such a racist attack using texts. It’s frighteningly personal and frightening,” 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.”

    — USA TODAY contributed to this report.

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