School districts in L.A. County are responding to the first real test wrought by the incoming Trump administration. 

Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ people across the country have been subject to racist and threatening text messages in the weeks following Donald Trump’s election victory. The text messages appear to have been coordinated by unknown actors and sent en masse, prompting communities to mobilize against hate actions and speech.

The texts have largely been sent to children and young adults here in L.A. County – students in middle school, high school, and college. 

It began in the days immediately following the election. Black Americans across the country received racist texts saying they had been selected to be enslaved. The wording of the texts varied, but they all instructed the recipients to go to a location at a specific date and time. From there, the texts said the recipients would be transported to a plantation. 

Black children and Black college students were noticeably targeted in this mass text scheme. The Associated Press reported that the focus on Black students was likely intentional.

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson responded shortly after: “These messages represent an alarming increase in vile and abhorrent rhetoric from racist groups across the country, who now feel emboldened to spread hate and stoke the flames of fear that many of us are feeling after Tuesday’s election results.” 

“The threat — and the mention of slavery in 2024 — is not only deeply disturbing, but perpetuates a legacy of evil that dates back to before the Jim Crow era, and now seeks to prevent Black Americans from enjoying the same freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness,” Johnson added.  

In the weeks following the election, Latino and LGBTQ+ people across the country have also been targeted by similar campaigns. Latino adults and children received texts saying they would be deported; LGBTQ+ adults and children were told they would be sent to “re-education camps.”

Students in at least 32 states across the country have been targeted by these texts. The texts were sent to students in L.A. County, prompting swift reactions from districts and elected officials.

Dozens of Black students at Santa Monica-Malibu Unified were subject to the first round of anti-Black text messages. Superintendent Antonio Shelton responded, saying he was “extremely disheartened that our local and national youth are experiencing this unconscionable act of hate and racism.”

Shelton hoped the responsible parties would be identified and “prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” 

The superintendent also responded to parent speculation that a data breach at the district had allowed students’ cell phone numbers and demographic information to fall into the wrong hands.

“This is not possible,” he said. “We do not gather or retain any student personal cell phone numbers in our databases.”

Superintendent Shelton signed onto a joint statement condemning the racist messages alongside West L.A. officials in local government and school districts. Shelton was joined by County Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath, Westside City Councilmembers Traci Park and Katy Yaroslavsky, and Westside LAUSD School District Board Member Nick Melvoin, among others.

L.A. Unified Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said L.A. Unified was aware of the “racist and incendiary texts” and encouraged students to report the texts to the district.

“We unequivocally condemn this hateful and threatening rhetoric,” Carvalho said.

Last week, Carvalho announced the district had created a rapid-response task force to respond to acts of hate.

“This cannot be the new normal,” he said. 

Carvalho also affirmed the district’s status as a sanctuary district. LAUSD does not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate within district grounds. It also prohibits district employees from cooperating with immigration enforcement agencies, including sharing information about the immigration status of students and families.

Today, the district unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming its sanctuary status for families threatened by ICE. The resolution, penned by Board President Jackie Goldberg, cites Trump’s “brutal policy of immigrant family separation” and his intention to “deport millions of immigrants currently living in the United States” during his upcoming term.

Former Board Member Mónica García wrote the district’s first sanctuary policy in 2017. The Trump administration’s xenophobic policies resulted in ICE conducting raids that targeted families of LAUSD students. One student’s father was detained by ICE agents as he was dropping her off at school. 

Teachers and parents gave public comments in support of the resolution, saying students had been overwhelmed and frightened since the election. Students worried about what would happen to them if one of their parents were deported.

Last week, Goldberg announced her intention to put the resolution forward. “We learned in 1938 that fascism takes hold when we don’t fight back immediately,” she said. “If we’re going to survive this as a district, we have got to be ahead.”

Goldberg also authored a resolution to “Update the District’s Policy ‘To Enforce the Respectful Treatment of All Persons’ to Include Gender Identity and Gender Expression,” in response to Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. 

The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission are currently investigating the targeted text messages. The identity or identities of the authors of the texts are still unknown. 

The people responsible for the texts used mass-marketing platforms to send the messages, likely drawing from large databases of personal information collected and sold by data brokers, an industry that has little oversight. Information that Americans voluntarily disclose on websites or mobile apps is added to these databases, but so is information stolen through data breaches.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that preceding and following Trump’s first election in 2016, hate incidents and bullying rose acutely at K-12 schools, with 90 percent of educators saying school environments had worsened. Of the incidents that took place between November 2016 and Trump’s inauguration, the majority occurred at universities and K-12 schools.

This time around, Trump has announced plans to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE) entirely. The DOE provides funding to public schools and universities across the country. The department also plays a critical role in protecting civil rights in schools – they investigate and sometimes withhold funding from districts that run afoul of anti-discrimination laws.

While Trump is unlikely to immediately demolish the DOE, he will use it in the meantime to advance his goals. Using the DOE, he has threatened to withhold federal funds from schools that don’t subscribe to his vision of conservatism. Schools that provide lessons on systemic racism and gender identity in the classroom, or have taken steps to include and protect transgender students, are his stated targets for reprisal.

Conservatives have attempted to use the DOE as a cudgel with some success. In LAUSD, the Black Student Achievement Plan was recently overhauled by the district after a right-wing parent group filed a complaint with the DOE.

Photo by Eli Duke, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons