2 weeks Ago By [email protected] (Oliver Willis)
Black Americans across the country received racist texts referencing the return of slavery in the hours following Donald Trump’s election win. Among those who received the messages were Black high school and college students. Some of the messages told recipients they had been “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.
” One message posted to social media was addressed to “Negro Breed” and referred to Trump’s win, adding, “You have been selected to perform in SECTION 487 at George Pickett cotton picking plantation.” The post also used the term “nigger.” The FBI released a statement on Thursday about the messages, saying the agency “is aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to individuals around the country and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter.
” Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also weighed in via a press release . “These messages are unacceptable,” she said. “That’s why our Enforcement Bureau is already investigating and looking into them alongside federal and state law enforcement.
We take this type of targeting very seriously.” The NAACP also reacted to the racist attacks. “The unfortunate reality of electing a President who, historically has embraced, and at times encouraged hate, is unfolding before our eyes,” the civil rights organization said in a statement.
It is currently unclear who sent the texts and how those who sent the messages knew their targets were Black people. Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, told NBC News it was “absolute nonsense” to connect the messages to Trump. But the messages are arriving after the reascension of a man with a long history of open racism, particularly directed at Black people.
During the recently concluded presidential campaign, Trump alleged that Vice President Kamala Harris had “happened to turn Black” recently, and falsely accused Black Haitian immigrants of stealing and eating pets. And during his first term in the White House, Trump referred to countries with large Black populations as “shithole” countries. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Trump referred to it as the “China virus” while hate crimes against Asian Americans increased.
Trump called the neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, “very fine people.” Before he first became president, Trump was the leading promoter of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama wasn’t a rightful American citizen, and he called for the Black and Latino young men in the Central Park Five (now known as the Exonerated Five) to be executed—before their trial and despite their eventually proven innocence. Trump’s win has emboldened racists who once again will have someone who reflects their world view in charge of the U.
S. government. He can rhetorically distance himself from attacks like this all he wants, but racists know they will have a sympathizer in the Oval Office.
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