Black students across US receive abhorrent racist texts telling them to 'pick cotton' as FBI launches probe
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An investigation has been launched after black students across the US received vile texts telling them they had been "selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation".
While the details in the messages varied, they all contained references to the era of US slavery.
It was unclear who sent the messages, and there was no complete list of where they were delivered, however, teenagers and college students were among the recipients.
The messages were sent anonymously to people living in several states, including Maryland, New Jersey, Alabama, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, New York and South Carolina.
The text message was sent to black students across the country (file pic)
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Talaya Jones, a Black woman who lives in Piscataway, New Jersey, said she was "shocked" to receive a racist text informing her that she had been "selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation".
She told CNN: "My initial reaction was probably like disbelief, like I thought it was like a joke...It really just shows that we didn’t come as far as everybody thought we did as a nation, from back in the day when slavery was still a thing."
Alabama mother Arleta McCall told CNN a text was also sent to her daughter. She said: "It’s eerie that it’s the day after the election. It’s eerie that it came to my daughter’s personal phone. It’s eerie that it’s only going to Black students...Her group of friends have mapped out their paths to class so they can walk together and keep each other safe."
Local media reports that some of the messages sent claimed to have come from "A Trump supporter".
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The FBI has launched an investigation
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Clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic Alejandra Caraballo said this is the first time she has seen a widespread attack using text messages, adding that tracking the culprit may be complicated.
Caraballo told USA Today: "It remains to be seen how widespread this is...If this is a few hundred texts it could be done by a local racist group in an afternoon as a trolling tactic, but if it’s thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people then it would have to be automated and involve a fair degree of sophistication."
President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center Margaret Huang called the texts "a public spectacle of hatred and racism that makes a mockery of our civil rights history" calling on political leaders to "condemn anti-Black racism, in any form, whenever we see it".
Co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism Heidi Beirich said: "This is the first I've ever seen of this kind of racist attack using texts, it's frighteningly personal and harrowing...I've also never seen this kind of racist messaging threatening people directly."
Tasha Dunham of Lodi, California, said her 16-year-old daughter showed her one of the messages Wednesday evening before her basketball practice.
The text not only used her daughter's name, but it directed her to report to a "plantation" in North Carolina, where Dunham said they've never lived. When they looked up the address, it was the location of a museum.
She said: "It was very disturbing...Everybody's just trying to figure out what does this all mean for me? So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern."
A statement from the FBI said the agency is "aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to individuals around the country and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter".
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