Black Students Have Been Receiving Racist ‘Plantation’ Texts

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Days out from Donald Trump’s victory, Black Americans are already experiencing a horrifying influx of hate. Per the New York Times, the FBI is now investigating a wave of “offensive and racist text messages” demanding Black people of all ages report for slavery. According to the NAACP, the texts began on Wednesday morning, just as Trump had clinched his second term, and have been reported so far across nine states, including Alabama, Missouri, New York, and California. In a statement, NAACP president Derrick Johnson said that the messages show how quickly Trump’s win has “emboldened” racist groups, pointing to a sharp increase in “vile and abhorrent rhetoric.” “These actions are not normal,” Johnson said. “And we refuse to let them be normalized.”

“Racism has no place in our country — period,” Robyn Patterson, a White House spokeswoman, added in a statement, confirming that the administration is working with federal and state authorities to identify the origin of the texts. “We strongly condemn these hateful messages and anyone targeting Americans based on their ethnicity or background.”

While high-school and college students were aggressively targeted, per the NAACP, the Times reports that texts have been sent to middle-schoolers as young as 14 years old. Nashville’s Fisk University and Kamala Harris’s alma mater Howard University, both HBCUs, were also targeted. Most of the threads begin by addressing recipients by name, instructing them to “pick cotton” on a plantation, and directing them to show up at a specific time. “Our executive slave owners will come get you in a brown van, be prepared to be searched down once you’ve entered the plantation,” one such text read.

Throughout his time in the public eye, Trump has consistently spouted racist talking points and platformed fellow politicians and entertainers who do the same. While some of the text messages mentioned Trump by name, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign told the Times that the president-elect “has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages.”

“Seeing this triggered every ounce of mama bear in me, to want to protect my child,” E.J. Hunter, the mother of a Howard University freshman who received a text, told the Times. “I know Kamala said we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work, but I didn’t think it was going to be, literally, on Day 1.”