The messages could have come from abroad, but it is still unknown whether Russia is involved.
In the United States, African Americans in several states at once received racist text messages: they said that the recipients should “go to the plantations and collect cotton.”
Reuters and the BBC are reporting on this.
The messages have been received in many states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. African-Americans are being called upon to show up on plantations to pick cotton, an offensive reference to the past enslavement of black people in the United States.
It is unclear who is behind the notifications and how many people have received them.
Americans began receiving racist messages the day after the presidential election, which was won by Republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump's team denies any involvement in the scandal.
What the recipients of the messages say
A 42-year-old American woman from the state of Indiana forwarded a similar message to BBC journalists, sent to her daughter, a high school student. It said that her daughter was “listed among those to be enslaved on a nearby plantation” and would be “put in a white van” and “thoroughly searched upon arrival at her destination.”
“It's related to American history, but it happened the day after the election. It must have been done on purpose,” the woman suggested.
Another American, Haley Welch, told the University of Alabama Crimson White that several students at the university had also received the letter.
“At first I thought it was a joke, but everyone was getting them. People were forwarding them to each other, posting on social media and telling each other that they had received them. I started to worry, I just got scared because I didn't “understood what was going on,” she said.
The wording in the messages varied, but the common theme was an order to go to the plantation or wait for a van to come for them.
Messages could have come from abroad
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said local law enforcement officials found that some of the messages were sent using a VPN service registered in Poland.
According to Murrill, investigators have not found the original source, meaning any country in the world hostile to the United States could have been involved. It has not yet been reported whether Russia is involved in this.
Recall that in 2020, the United States was rocked by large-scale protests due to the police killing of a black man George Floyd.
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