Colleges Targeted with Racist Zoom Bombings As White Supremacy Spikes
When Zoë Washington logged on to a video call for her finance class at American University, everything seemed normal.
But a few minutes into the lecture, someone with their camera off joined the call and started yelling racial slurs.
"I don't even remember how long it lasted because I was just kind of frozen in shock, but they just unmuted themselves and just started spewing the N-word over and over and over again," Washington said. "And everybody in the class, we were all frozen."
The professor frantically kicked the perpetrator off the call, apologized and continued teaching to about 30 people, including two other Black students.
A number of colleges and universities have recently been targeted by racist Zoom bombings, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which has tracked instances of hate for decades. White supremacists have crashed online classes and events, and targeted students of color.
White supremacist propaganda distribution spiked in 2020, the ADL reported last month. Reports of incidents on college campuses dropped as many campuses were closed during the pandemic. But some victims of racist attacks suggest hate may have just moved online as classes did.