After Racist ‘Plantation’ Text, Mother and Son Navigate a Divided World

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On an otherwise ordinary day in November 2024, my son Hudson received a racist text from an unknown telephone number, as did several of his college friends. The text read as follows:

“Congratulations! You have been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation. Bring all your stuff, and be there on time.”

Similar text messages were also received by Black children and students across the country. For me – an education analyst and school leader – and for my son – a freshman at a historically Black university – the jarring incident not only infuriated us. It also prompted important questions about how best we should respond in this fraught time in our history.

Hudson’s natural reaction was to reach out to his family. Here’s how he recalls the episode:

On Nov. 6, I was sitting at my desk doing work, when I saw a text come in from one of my group chats. There are about 12 of us on that chat—all of us friends, most of us are in college, some of us go to the same school. In the text, one friend asked the group, “Have you all seen the plantation text?” At the time, most of us hadn’t yet gotten the text on our own phones (that would happen over the next few days), so she shared a screen grab.

None of us knew how to respond. The language was obviously racist, but it was phrased in such a friendly manner that it was more confusing than inflammatory. It was only after I read it a few more times that the words sunk in. I was shocked.

At the time we didn’t know how many people had received the text, or if it had been sent to people in other areas. But all of us began to grow very upset. And angry. Racism in any form upsets me. That’s why I decided to tell my family in our group chat. I was raised to believe that when bad things happen, you need to check in immediately with people you trust, and family is the first place you go for that trust. 

—

When Hudson’s missive reached our family chat, I was among the first to read it. Our family chat is typically a boisterous free-for-all, filled with comments about upcoming plans, family jokes and dog photos. But now we all fell silent. One by one, my parents, my uncle and our cousins began to weigh in about the mysterious nature of Hudson’s text. Who sent it? How did they get the students’ phone numbers? And most important, what can we do to support my son, a freshman, who had just left the nest?

My chest constricted, and a familiar, unpleasant feeling began to set in. I felt the same sense of disorientation two years earlier when someone called my daughter the n-word at school. I wrote about it in 2022, saying: “I’ve worked in schools in New York City for more than 10 years and received my doctorate in educational leadership, yet I felt ill-equipped at first to handle this situation because this was my daughter.”

This time it was my son.

Somehow this felt even more invasive. Only a few months ago, I was basking in the joy of my son attending an HBCU, building his independence, beginning adulthood. Yet now, racist hatred had reached Hudson in a way that was faceless and intangible. How do I tell him that this is the world we live in? And how can I, a researcher who studies hope, provide some glimmer of optimism at such a dark moment?

Given my background in education, I knew that, legally, there were resources and systems my child could turn to for help and assistance. But more immediately, I needed to know how to provide comfort to him when he is many states away at a college.

How we respond to our children at this moment in our history — particularly as they navigate a national mental health crisis — is crucial. And so my advice to parents is to channel the fierce anger into something positive and constructive.

Here’s what we did:

Report it.

We began making calls. According to Jessica Rosenworcel, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, law enforcement bureaus are investigating the texts, which were apparently sent to Black people across the country, targeting various HBCU students. This first step of reporting an incident to the authorities is essential, so that they can properly document the scale of the problem.

Hold space for your child and validate their feelings.

When my son first shared the text to our family chat, I called him privately and offered to drive to his school and pick him up. The mother bear in me kicked in: I wanted to bring him home and protect him, and I was determined not to let him get hurt again. I know from my studies, as well as my own personal experience, that the unknown is scary; and that having an anonymous threat targeted at you makes that dreadful feeling overwhelming. But, no surprise, I couldn’t tear Hudson away from the friends, community and independence that he’d rightfully earned at his school and was obviously enjoying.

So instead, I validated his feelings over the phone, confirming to him that it is painful to read a text like that, and that it was okay to feel the anger he was feeling. But I also encouraged him to understand that this was the precise mission of the racist actors who’d sent the text: to disrupt and disorient him. What he did with those feelings, I told him, was up to him.

Monitor your child’s mental health.

It is no secret that, since the pandemic, mental health challenges with teenagers and college students have soared to an all-time high. Indeed, in 2023, the National Educational Association found that most college students today meet the criteria for having at least one mental health issue.

Today, we, as parents, are on the front lines of this problem, and we are being called on every day to bear witness to the vulnerability of our children’s mental health and well-being. So what do we need to do? 

Speak to professionals about what resources are available for situations like this; reach out to other parents to share ideas about supporting our children.

Additionally, have a conversation with yourself about your expectations. In our household, for example, we want our children to do well, but they are not required to have perfect grades or attendance. Mental health always takes priority, so if that means taking a day off from school, so be it. 

We will all face many challenges as we continue to navigate this divided world, but care, empathy and support are paramount for our children. I had to put aside my own fierce anger and make room for my son to share what was going on inside him. It is our duty as parents to navigate these challenges with micro-doses of hope and solidarity.

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