FBI investigating racist text messages spamming black students

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

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

Officials could not say Thursday where the messages came from.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate incidents across the country, and authorities in Texas, Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina and other states investigated the messages, which were sent after the announcement of Donald Trump’s election as president.

It is unclear who sent the messages and how many were sent. At least some of the messages are said to have come from “a Trump supporter.”

Where do students receive racist text messages?

Authorities began investigating the text messages following messages 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 targets of the messages, but not all recipients were in college.

Middle school and even high 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 the nearest plantation,” the text read. “Make sure you are ready at 12 noon with all your necessary items. You will be picked up in a white van with a Trump representative from your region.”

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

Shaun Hinton, a teacher from the Austin school district, told KXAN he had asked his students if they received “weird or strange messages.” One student said he received a text message saying he would be deported.

The student would be ‘picked up in a brown van’ and was placed in ‘deportation group A3’.

Mary Banks, who has a daughter in Columbus, Ohio, said the 16-year-old received one of the hateful text messages that included her full name on Wednesday evening. Some of her daughter’s friends in the Columbus City School District received similar messages, she said.

Banks said she isn’t surprised that racist hatred is surfacing at this point in history.

“I feel like white supremacy has become 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 spokesperson 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,” Watson said.

Diedre Simmons, a spokesman for the University of Alabama, told the school newspaper The Crimson White that university officials informed local authorities of similar reports sent to the students there. Authorities at Clemson University are also investigating racist text messages sent to black students in South Carolina, according to the 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 mentioned the negativity he sees on social media following Trump’s results. “It was ignorant and a bit childish.” Politely said. “I really tried to stay off my phone and the internet all day because there was 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 this is the first time she has seen a widespread racist attack using text messages. Tracking down the perpetrator who carried out the campaign could be complicated depending on how extensive it is, she said.

That is also unclear.

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

If the attack is so widespread, Caraballo says, she does not rule out that foreign actors may want to stir up discord in the United States in the days after the presidential election. she said bomb threats to most black polling stations on election day would come from Russian email addresses.

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

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

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

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

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

Representatives of civil rights groups, including the Souther 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 spectacle 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 when we see it.”

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

“This is the first time I have seen this kind of racist attack using texts. It is frighteningly personal and poignant,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “I have also never seen these types of racist messages directly threaten people.”

– USA TODAY contributed to this report.