FBI Investigates Racist Text Messages That Spam Black Students
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FBI Investigates Racist Text Messages That Spam Black Students

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Black college students in several states, including Texas, reported to authorities on Wednesday that they had received anonymous text messages containing 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, stating that the recipient had 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 across the country, and authorities in the Texas, Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina and other states investigated the messages, which were sent out after the announcement of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency.

It is unclear who sent the messages and how many were sent. At least some of the messages purported to be from “A Trump supporter.”

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Where do students get racist text messages?

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

Students appear to be the primary target of the messages — but not all of the recipients attended college.

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

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

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

Shaun Hinton, a teacher in the Austin School District, told KXAN he had asked his students about receiving any “strange or strange messages”. One student told of receiving a text message that they would be expelled.

The student was to be “collected in a brown van” and 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. Some of her daughter’s friends in the Columbus City School District received similar messages, she said.

Banks said she is not surprised that racial hatred would emerge at this moment in history.

“I feel like white supremacy got stronger after 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 considers the text messages a hate crime.

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

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

Clemson senior RJ Polite, who received a version of the text, said he was shocked by the message and cited the negativity he’s seen on social media following Trump’s results. “It was ignorant and kind of childish.” said politely. “I really tried to stay off my phone and the internet for the day because there was so much going on. It was just bad.”

Who sends the messages?

It is unclear who sent the text message.

Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, said this is the first time she has seen a widespread racist attack using text messages. Tracing the culprit who carried out the campaign can be complicated, depending on how extensive it is, she said.

It is also unclear.

“It remains to be seen how widespread this is,” Caraballo said. “If this is 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, it has to 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 sow discord in the United States in the days after the presidential election. she said bomb threat to majority Black polling stations on Election Day were reported to have come from Russian email addresses.

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

In some states, voter registration information is public, including a voter race, she said, and that information can be combined with phone records to create a targeted attack like this one.

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

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

Civil Rights Leader Urges Politicians to Condemn ‘Public Spectacle of Hate’

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

Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the justice center, called them “a public display of hatred and racism that makes a mockery of our civic history” in a statement Thursday.

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

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

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen this type of racist text attack. It’s frighteningly personal and upsetting,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “I’ve also never seen this kind of racist messages that directly threaten people.”

— USA TODAY contributed to this report.

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