Presidential Election // Current

Anti-Obama racial incidents reported in several cities

Not everyone is happy about Barack Obama's election last week as president. In several places across the country, reports have come in of racially motivated incidents since election day.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, four students spray-painted anti-Obama messages across campus, including one that used a racial slur and suggested assassinating the president-elect. The NAACP called for the students to be suspended and brought to justice, but the school says the students won't face charges because the writing wasn't a hate crime since it was written on a wall where free speech is encouraged.

At Baylor University in Texas, a noose was found hanging from a tree outside a campus building shortly after Obama won the election Nov. 4. Later that same night, black and white students "exchanged words" outside a dormitory but were reportedly dispersed by police before the incident turned physical, according to the Waco Tribune-Herald. Across campus, students reportedly burned Obama/Biden campaign signs, although school officials suggest the students were actually burning empty computer boxes, the paper reported.

And it's not just in the south.

On Long Island, New York, the Secret Service is investigating an incident in which more than two dozen vehicles were spray-painted with racist graffiti, including messages targeting Obama. One local resident says "kill Obama" was written on a vehicle, according to a news report.

At Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, racial slurs were reportedly directed to at least three black students in the week following Barack Obama's election.

"In separate incidents, two black students said they heard racial slurs yelled from cars," according to the Associated Press. "A third student reported being called an "ignorant black (expletive)" when she was talking to a friend about Obama's victory," according to AP.

Lehigh President Alice Gast sent a campus-wide e-mail saying she was "deeply saddened" by the reports. "Rather than celebrating a landmark event in American history, we are addressing hateful acts of racism and ignorance," she wrote. "This cannot be tolerated."

And in Torrance, California, vandals reportedly spray-painted swastikas and racial slurs on a house and several cars that displayed campaign signs or bumper stickers for Obama. At one house, the words "Go Back to Africa" were spray-painted across the wall, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Back in Long Island, one local resident offered advice for those trying to adjust to the news of the nation's first black president. "We have to unite together instead of putting hatred stuff on people's cars," said Hallock Nash, who was reportedly trying to remove the racist graffiti from his vintage cars. "It's not going to change anything," Nash told the local CBS News affiliate. "He's still going to be president."Not everyone is happy about Barack Obama's election last week as president. In several places across the country, reports... more