UMass Amherst officials addressed the  racist letter sent to several Black-centered student groups on campus Sept. 17.  The email, according to WWLP, was sent from a non-student account signed “UMass coalition for a better society” suggesting Black students should “consider doing the human race a favor and getting sterilized.”

Screenshots of the email said “you simply did not get here on merit.”

The email is described as “vile, blatantly racist and violently offensive” in an statement by Nefertiti Walker, Ph.D., the university’s vice-chancellor and chief diversity officer.

The email reads, in part, “We look down upon you, we instantly know in all manners from your language which most of you still speak in some broken form of Ebonics or to ghetto-speak to where your from (third-world sewers in America bought and paid for by the u.s taxpayer) to how you live (like hoodrats) to how you appear (fro hair, big lips, black skin) you are different.”

Walker said that campus police are working with the UMass Information Technology Department to identify the individual who sent the email.

Subbaswamy also said they had “secured the services of Stroz Friedberg Digital Forensics, a leading national firm in cyber security, to assist us in our investigation of the source of the racist emails that were sent to members of Black student organizations.” The UMass Black Student Union released a statement in an Instagram post saying they were not surprised by the anti-Black racism.

Black organizations started receiving racist emails as early as the second week of September. It took the university almost a month from the initial anti-Black racist incidents, to acknowledge these instances. The university’s lengthy response time to racial incidents compared to their rapid response to non-racial incidents is not reflective of a university that claims to be “committed in policy, principle, and practice to maintaining an environment which prohibits discriminatory behavior and provides equal opportunity for all persons. 

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