Students report racist text messages following presidential election
Black students in schools and universities across Tennessee and the nation have reported a slew of racist text messages evoking slavery in the days following former President Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election this week.
According to multiple reports, several students at University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Fisk University and Metro Nashville Public Schools have received the texts, which direct Black students to report to a “plantation” to pick cotton. The texts have since sparked outrage and alarm online from students and educators.
Metro Nashville Public Schools’ Chief of Communications Sean Braisted told Tennessee Firefly that the district started hearing reports Wednesday about messages that are similar to those circulating online. He said the issue “appears to be a national trend, not isolated to any specific school or district.”
“The MNPD was notified, and they are working with other jurisdictions to identify the source of the messages. We would encourage anyone who receives a similar message to share that with authorities to support the investigation,” he said in a statement to Tennessee Firefly.
According to Metro Nashville Police Department spokesperson Brooke Reese, the spoof messages have originated from a third-party application. She said officials are currently investigating the matter to try to determine where exactly those messages came from.
“We are aware of the texts that went out nationwide through a third-party messaging app, some of which were received by some students locally. Our Specialized Investigations detectives are working with other jurisdictions to identify from where the texts originated,” the emailed statement read.
Administrators at Fisk University, a private historically Black university in Nashville, told students in a message Wednesday night that officials there have been monitoring the situation and do not believe the threats to be credible.
"These messages, which suggest threats of violence and intimidation, are deeply unsettling," Fisk University said the statement. "However, we want to assure you that these are likely the work of an automated bot or malicious actors with no real intentions or credibility."
According to a report from the Associated Press, similar text messages have been sent to students elsewhere across the country this week as well, mostly targeting Black men, women and students, and middle school students. The messages, sent anonymously, were reported in New York, Alabama, California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as well.
While officials at Fisk and elsewhere have urged students to remain calm, Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the SPLC Action Fund, said in a report from NPR that the text messages were unsettling due to the way in which Black students in particular were targeted.
"This is alarming, both because there's no indication who the text is from, but because all the people who received it were young African Americans," she said.
Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement this week that they have been made aware of the threatening spoof messages, and that they will assist in investigations regarding the text messages.
“The FBI 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,” the agency said in a public statement. “As always, we encourage members of the public to report threats of physical violence to local law enforcement authorities.”
