Racist text messages invoking slavery anonymously sent to individuals across the country following the presidential election last week could be an insidious plot to smear President-elect Donald Trump and conservatives or are a certain way to invite such smears, depending on where they came from.
News stories have reported such messages were received in Tennessee last week as well as other states including Alabama, California, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, as well as the District of Columbia.
The FBI is reported to be in touch with the U.S. Justice Department concerning the messages, and the Federal Communications Commission has said it is investigating along with other federal and state agencies.
Wherever they come from, they can only widen the political – and racial – divide in the country, which is fresh off a bitter election that pitted a white man against a Black woman.
Were they from conservatives, gloating in the re-election of Trump, they will do the incoming president no favors. Although he won a popular vote majority and every swing state in last week’s election, and while it’s increasingly looking like he’ll have a Republican Senate and House, he’ll be opposed in everything does by a united Democratic Party, by legacy media, by academia and by the glitterati of Hollywood.