Friday, November 8, 2024, 10:16 p.m
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US citizens of African-American origin in several states were targeted in the days after Trump’s election by racist text messages.
In some messages they are asked to “report to the plantation to collect the cotton” or they are informed that they have been “selected as house slaves”.
African-American residents of four American states – North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Pennsylvania – reported that they received, in the first two days after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, anonymous text messages asking them “to present at a plantation to gather cotton”.
The information was made public by the NAACP – one of the main organizations for the defense of the rights of African Americans, reports AFP.
The NAACP strongly condemned this evocation of slavery in America.
“A sad reality of the election of a president who has historically adopted, and sometimes encouraged (speech) of hate is materializing before our eyes,” denounces the president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson.
The sender of these text messages is unknown. But the federal police (FBI) announced that it is “aware” of this “racist SMS” campaign, without specifying whether it has opened an investigation in this regard.
The American press revealed, on Thursday, that racist text messages were sent to African-American students in several states, some of the text messages bearing the signature “a supporter of Donald Trump”.
“You have been selected to be a house slave on the plantation in Abingdon”, can be read on a screenshot of one of these messages, posted on social networks.
“These people feel like they’re growing wings to say out loud what they’ve always been silently thinking,” explains Internet user Joshua Martin, who posted this screenshot.
“The message sent to young African Americans, including some students at the University of Alabama, is a public display of hatred and racism that makes a mockery of our civil rights past,” said Margaret Huang, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Donald Trump campaigned using an increasingly authoritarian rhetoric, especially against immigrants. However, this did not prevent him from gaining some points among African-American voters.
In 2023, 11,447 hate crimes were reported in the United States, according to the FBI, more than half of which were motivated by ethnic hatred. As of 2020, at least 30% of these crimes targeted African Americans.
Between 1525 and 1866, more than 12.5 million Africans were forced across the Atlantic Ocean in the slave trade, mostly to work on cotton plantations in the United States.
i’m genuinely just terrified. I don’t like that i keep seeing multiple people are receiving text messages telling them they will be taken back to a plantation or that they’ll be raped. I feel so uneasy bro. what the fuck is this. pic.twitter.com/3NjDVihPIz
— marci (@casketprettyyy) November 7, 2024
Source: ziare.com
