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“I knew it was a prank, but to see that so early after the election I was shook.”
Harmful Prank
Across the United States, Black Americans are getting horrible text messages telling them that they’re going to be enslaved under Donald Trump’s second presidency.
As CBS News reports, people in states as politically and demographically diverse as New York, Ohio, California, Alabama, and Pennsylvania have reported these horrible anonymous texts to authorities. As a result, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Federal Communications Commission, and at least one state attorney general, are investigating the matter.
The nature of the texts vary slightly according to location, but all seem to adhere to a specific script telling Black recipients that they had been “selected for cotton picking” and should pack up their things to head to “the plantation.” Though not all texts include references to the president-elect, many seem to.
In its investigation, CBS found that area codes from 25 different states had been used to send these vile missives sent to people as young as middle school age. When contacted, many of the numbers had been disconnected, while others went to voicemail boxes saying they’d been created using TextNow, an app that allows people to create phone numbers for free.
After learning its service had been used to send these messages, TextNow said in a statement to CBS that it had shut down the offending accounts and would be working with authorities to make sure they don’t sign up again in the future.
Officials condemned racist text messages that were sent to Black residents in several U.S. states after the election. The messages, which had almost identical language, told the recipient they had been “selected for cotton picking.”
The texts were sent from numbers with area… pic.twitter.com/ZDR1A9RsVA
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 8, 2024
Fear and Loathing
In an interview with the broadcaster, a 29-year-old Atlanta woman said that both she and a friend in North Carolina had received similar messages earlier this week.
“I knew it was a prank, but to see that so early after the election I was shook,” the woman said. “Just made me be more cautious of my surroundings and where I go.”
Reporters at CBS also managed to get in touch with one person who’d sent a version of the messages as well. That individual said that they’d sent the texts as a prank before abruptly ending the call and rejecting all other attempts at contact.
That exchange seems very much to indicate the mindset behind these disgusting dispatches, showcasing not just the cowardice of hiding behind an anonymously-created phone number, but also an unwillingness to discuss outright the hatred that’s clearly bubbled back up to the surface.
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