Widespread racist texts investigated by FBI (original) (raw)
Ku Klux Klan at a rally in Florida in 1970. (State Library and Archives of Florida/Public Domain)
The White House has denounced, and the FBI is investigating a wave of racist texts, received in at least seven states, attacking Black people.
It did not take long. Emboldened by racism and sexism's grand triumph in the United States, bigots took to sending insanely offensive texts. Texts were received but K-12 aged and college students, and were address to them by name.
Some examples of the messages were shared by recipients and reviewed by The New York Times. They followed a pattern: addressing recipients by name, telling them they had been selected to "pick cotton" on a plantation and ordering them to show up at a specific time to be picked up by slave handlers. Some included a reference to the president-elect, Donald J. Trump.
A spokesman for the Trump campaign, Steven Cheung, said in an email that the "campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages."
Mr. Trump stoked racism throughout his campaign in speeches that included false accusations against immigrants and inflated crime figures. He demeaned the intelligence of his opponent, a Black woman; repeatedly amplified a lie that Haitian immigrants were eating neighbors' pets in Ohio and held a rally near the end of his campaign at Madison Square Garden that was rife with bigotry and misogyny.
The messages hark back to the most painful past for Black Americans. "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 version said.
Previously:
• 1927 news report: Donald Trump's dad arrested in KKK brawl with cops
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