WASHINGTON: A civil rights group and the White House condemned racist text messages referencing slavery that were sent anonymously to black Americans this week as a contentious election drew to a close in the United States.

The messages urged recipients in multiple states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia, to report to a plantation to pick cotton, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) said on Thursday.

The message is an offensive reference to past enslavement of black people in the United States.

High school and college students were among the recipients. Some school districts warned students about the racist messages and urged them to report any such texts received to school staff or local authorities.

Federal and state authorities were investigating, the White House said on Friday. The FBI said it was in touch with the US Justice Department and other federal authorities about the offensive, racist messages.

“These actions are not normal. And we refuse to let them be normalised,” NAACP chief Derrick Johnson said in a statement from the organisation, which advocates for racial justice and rights for black Americans.

Johnson said the messages were a reflection of Republican Donald Trump’s presidential election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, which sent shockwaves through black American communities.

Many black Americans say they anticipate a rollback of civil rights after Trump pledged to end federal diversity and inclusion programmes.

A spokesperson for the president-elect did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday and Friday. Donald Trump denies he is racist and has said his economic agenda will benefit all Americans.

An exit poll conducted by Edison Research on election day showed Kamala Harris winning 85 per cent of the black vote nationwide while Trump won 13 per cent, up one percentage point from an exit poll in 2020 when he lost 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 President Joe Biden, said in a statement on Friday.

“Racism has no place in our country. Period.”

The run-up to Tuesday’s election included the biggest rise in political violence since the 1970s, including some racist attacks on kamala Harris’s supporters.

Kamala, the first woman of colour at the top of a major party ticket, also faced personal attacks, including by Trump, over her race and gender.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024