Recently, many teens and college students received racist text messages following Election Day, Nov. 5.
At first, I assumed it only occurred in Montgomery because only a few people mentioned receiving one. However, I later found that they were sent all over the country. The messages said the following: “Greetings/Congratulations! You have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. Be ready at 1 p.m. SHARP with your belongings. Our executive slaves will get you in a brown van. Be prepared to be searched once you have entered the plantation. You are in Plantation Group C.”
Black college students and teens receive these messages as well as Black children and working professionals. These messages represent an alarming increase in vile and shocking rhetoric from racist groups across the country, who now feel encouraged to spread hate and stoke the flames of fear that many of us are feeling after Tuesday’s election results.
A spokesperson in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign assured the public that Trump’s campaign had absolutely nothing to do with these messages. Trump, a man with racist and sexist views, may not have ordered anyone to do this directly, but his election win could have been that fuel for his supporters to unleash these kind of racist texts.
It is unclear who sent the messages, and there is no complete list of who they were delivered to. Whoever created these messages used anonymizing software to hide their location. Some messages were sent using an email service routing traffic through Poland. But that does not mean it is where the sender is located; authorities say it could be coming from anywhere and they do not know where it originated. The FBI believes some messages were sent through the app TextNow, which the company believes is a widespread, coordinated attack, now causing the FBI to partner with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter.
Students at Alabama State University also reported receiving these messages. Many were shocked, to say the least. Some students thought it was a joke and some thought it was just a sick game someone wanted to play. But situations like this are disappointing because I thought the U.S. has come far as a nation. I thought we, Black people, were considered equal to our white counterparts, but as we can see clear as day, we can never be equals because they still see us as slaves, not equals or superiors through a sick joke.
This is disheartening because we constantly have to fight for our lives and rights in this country we were forced into. Someone even reported receiving an email addressing them as the N-word, containing a similar message about being selected to pick cotton, and someone went as far as putting racist graffiti in the bathrooms on campus at Missouri State University. Yet what bothers me the most is that young Black children, as young as elementary and middle schoolers, received these messages. Young Black children learn about the history of slavery and racism in class, only to experience it firsthand today. This can be traumatizing, especially at a young age, because they do not understand how detrimental racism and prejudice are.
Who is doing this, and how are they able to continue this? People do not feel safe anymore because no one knows who is doing this or how far they will take it. Some students at various HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) were afraid to leave their dorms because they felt unsafe.
How long is it going to take until action is taken and people are found accountable for these atrocious actions? For generations, Black people have questioned why they hate the color of our skin. We try to understand why, but there is no true reason why. Personally, it seems that they have hated us for so long that they keep up with it like a tradition. They even teach their children hatred. But I pray that our near future makes them understand that we will fight for our rights and equality no matter what.