Within two days the American presidential electionsome African-American residents reported receiving anonymous text messages of a sexual nature. racist. According to the NAACP, a leading African-American advocacy organization, black residents in North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Pennsylvania have received messages asking them to “show up at a plantation to pick cotton.”.

A reference to slavery past which the organization strongly condemned. “The sad reality of having elected a president who has historically embraced, and sometimes encouraged, (hate speech) is materializing before our eyes.”said Derrick Johnson, head of the NAACP.

The sender of these messages is not known, but the FBI (federal police) said they were “aware” about this “racist text messageswithout specifying whether he had opened an investigation. The American press also reported on Thursday about racist text messages sent to African-American students in several states, some of which were signed by “a Trump supporter”.

“You have been selected to be a house slave”

“You have been selected to be a house slave at Abingdon Plantation”reads a screenshot of one of these messages relayed on social networks. “These people are growing wings to say out loud what they’ve always thought down low.”wrote Joshua Martin, the Internet user who posted this screenshot.

“The message sent to young African Americans, including students at the University of Alabama, is a public display of hatred and racism that mocks our civil rights past.”condemned Margaret Huang, head of the civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center. Donald Trump campaigned using increasingly authoritarian rhetoric, especially towards migrants. This hasn’t stopped him from gaining a few points with African-American voters.

In 2023, 11,447 hate crimes were recorded in the United States, according to the FBI, more than half of them motivated by ethnicity. Since 2020, at least 30% of these crimes have targeted African-Americans. Between 1525 and 1866, more than 12.5 million Africans were forced to cross the Atlantic as part of the slave trade, notably to work on cotton plantations in the United States.