WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Federal and state authorities are investigating racist text messages sent anonymously to Black Americans across the country this week telling them they should be enslaved, prompting widespread condemnations as well as warnings.
The NAACP civil rights group said the messages urged recipients in multiple states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, to report to a plantation to pick cotton, an offensive reference to past enslavement of Black people in the United States.
It remained unclear which individuals or entities were behind the reported texts, or how many people had received them.
People in at least 21 states received the texts, including high school and college students, CNN and the Associated Press reported.
“These actions are not normal. And we refuse to let them be normalized,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement from the civil rights organization, which advocates for racial justice and rights for Black Americans.
“These messages represent an alarming increase in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist groups across the country.”
Many in Black American communities say they anticipate a rollback of civil rights after Republican Donald Trump, who won Tuesday’s presidential election over Democrat Kamala Harris, takes office on Jan. 20. Trump pledged during his campaign to end federal diversity and inclusion programs.
“President Trump’s campaign has absolutely nothing to do with these text messages,” his spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Friday.
An exit poll conducted by Edison Research on Election Day showed Harris winning 85% of the Black vote nationwide while Trump won 13%, up 1 percentage point from an exit poll in 2020 when he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden.
“We strongly condemn these hateful messages and anyone targeting Americans based on their ethnicity or background,” Robyn Patterson, a White House spokesperson for Biden, said in a statement on Friday confirming the investigations.
“Racism has no place in our country. Period.”
The Federal Communications Commission said on Friday its enforcement bureau is among those probing the incidents.
TextNow said one or more accounts on its messaging service sent offending messages and were shut down within an hour, adding that the texts were sent across multiple carriers nationwide in what it called “an attack,” vowing to work with law enforcement.
Local authorities are also investigating, with some state attorneys general urging recipients to report the messages to their civil rights divisions.
Some school districts issued warnings and urged students and parents to report any such texts received to school staff or local authorities.
The run-up to Tuesday’s election included the biggest rise in U.S. political violence since the 1970s, including some racist attacks on Harris supporters, according to cases identified by Reuters.
Harris, the first woman of color at the top of a major party ticket, also faced personal attacks, including by Trump, over her race and gender.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, David Shepardson, AJ Vincens, Brendan O’Boyle and Kat Stafford; Additional reporting by Steve Holland in West Palm Beach; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Howard Goller)
