By: V4 Agency
Messages such as “Go back to Africa. With your tribe” and “Kill yourself,” were just some examples of posts the black high school girl sent to fellow black classmates on Instagram. This case is not the first occurrence of “hate hoax” in the US.
In the US state of Minnesota, police conducted an investigation into an Instagram account from which black students received several racist messages. Investigators found that the account was established by a black female student, who sent – with few exceptions – most of the threatening racist messages to fellow black female students at her school from her home IP address, The Post Millennial reported.
The messages contained such phrases as, “Die, ni**er”, “go back to Africa with your tribe”, “WE’LL CATCH YOU. YOU’LL DIE. KILL YOURSELF,” among other hate speech.
The investigation into the messages was launched in April, after it emerged that almost all black students of the White Bear Lake High School had been targeted.
The identity of the girl who set up the Instagram account has not been revealed because she is a minor, but she is a member of the Black Excellence Club. She did not explain why she was harassing her fellow students.
The girl has not been charged, and the school has to date not decided on her case.
However, this is not the first “hate hoax” case to come to light.
“Die niggers please”, “KKK White Power” – such racist slurs, targeting blacks, appeared last month in the dorm of Albion College, in Michigan. Anti-Semitic graffiti was also found on the walls.
The student community in the Mighigan case was immediately outraged, and the perpetrator was automatically assumed to be a white youth. Hundreds of students and staff protested in early April over the incident and called for a boycott of the institution. Some of the protesters called the perpetrator a coward and said he had no place in the institution. The angry students also threatened the college management with a discriminationation lawsuit.
The perpetrator in Michigan was eventually found and it turned out that he was young black man. The 21-year-old confessed to police that he had created most of the graffiti, which is backed up by video evidence.
The young man was suspended, but his motivation for spraying such graffiti on the walls was never revealed.
In another instance, an Oregon politician also attempted to draw attention to himself and to racism with a fake letter containing racist overtones. Although the police had initially set out investigating a case of intimidation, now the politician can expect to be investigated for false reporting and election fraud.
At the time, politician Jonathan Lopez made public the letter received in his mailbox by posting it on social media The anonymous letter was consided extremely racist and exclusionary, as Lopez is of Mexican origin.
It contained phrases stating Lopez is not welcome in the country and he would never amount to anything. It also read that in Umatilla, people like him were killed and their bodies were thrown in the river.
When it turned out that he had written the letter himself, he defended himself by saying that he did not intend to mislead the public, and that the whole situation was a mere misunderstanding. In fact, he merely wanted to draw the Hermiston police chief’s attention to the racism prevalent in the county, he said.