(Image via msn.com)
Business Manager: Brendan Flaherty
Email: bflaherty1@umassd.edu
It all started on November 7th, this year, when the FBI announced that they were looking into a series of racist text messages that were sent out to several Black Americans, including children.
These messages not only targeted Black Americans but also people of the LGBTQIA+ community and the Hispanic community, making hateful and racist remarks against the recipients of the messages.
Some messages go as far as telling the person that they have been “selected for deportation or to report to a re-education camp,” according to NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth.
So, where did this all start? Why have the messages just started coming up now, and what is being done about it?
Well, on November 6th, the election for the 47th president of the United States was conceded to Donald Trump. As reported by Newsweek, the messages were “sent shortly after the 2024 presidential election was called for Donald Trump.”
Although these events could be completely uncorrelated, the fact that they came out as soon as the former president was slated to become the next president remains unchanged.
There is also the glaring issue of the fact that the message, in some cases, ended by saying, “…Sincerely, Trump Administration”. Of course, there is no concrete evidence that the Trump Administration had sent out those messages, but the damage had already been done.
Regardless of how or why these messages came out, the FBI claimed to be investigating the very serious and threatening messages that many Americans received that day.
NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson believed this event transpired because of the election and that the results only “‘…emboldened’ these people to ‘spread hate and stoke the flames of fear,’” as noted by Newsweek.
Of course, the FBI issued a statement essentially advising people to inform their local police about anything that might be sent out.
Sadly, this was only the beginning of the hatred.
More recently, a woman on a United Airlines shuttle bus was removed after using racist remarks against a man and his children.
The whole event was videotaped from the man’s perspective, and the blatant and disgusting racism was on full display from the woman.
The man was identified as Pervez Taufiq. Taufiq was simply trying to ride the shuttle after just getting off the plane from a trip and encountered a woman who was asking his son where he is from in India.
The woman continued to hurl racist remarks at Taufiq and his family after trying to defend himself and his family. He is indeed from America, and the woman was blatantly wrong.
(image via msn.com)
Taufiq later posted about the entire event on his social media accounts, talking about the incident and how he was “…Blown away that these people exist,” according to his Instagram post.
However, other countries are not untouched when it comes to this rise in racist behaviors.
A football (soccer) teammate on the Colchester United team was attacked by racist remarks more than once during two separate games.
Danny Cowley, the head coach of the team, commented on the matter calling this a “damning indictment on society.”
Of course, there has been an investigation into this incident, but little has been done regarding the hateful spectator.
One can only wonder why this rise in hatred has occurred in this day and age. Many people who had to deal with this behavior continuously asked the same question at the end of the day: How are we dealing with this now in the 21st, even after we have all advanced as a society?
There are plenty of ideas as to what has possibly caused this spreading of hate. We can only hope now that people have the decency to stand up to others who are perpetuating this cycle of racism and bigotry.