The Boston Police Department recognized Black History Month by honoring a white basketball coach in a tweet that was deleted after it drew widespread criticism on Saturday evening.
The post paid tribute to former Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who became the first NBA coach to draft an African-American player in 1950, an all African-American starting five in 1964 and to hire the league's first African-American head coach in 1966, according to Fox News.
The tweet was deleted less than an hour later and replaced with a post honoring Bill Russell, the first African-American head coach in the NBA, according to CBS News, but the faux pass did not go unnoticed.
Twitter uses were quick to jump onto the police department, calling the original post tone deaf, ignorant and lacking in knowledge about black history involving black people.
"What an ironic display of institutional white privilege," one Twitter user noted.
Others pointed out that removing the post was not going to change the situation.
"The point is not that you didn't acknowledge black athletes like chuck cooper and bill Russell, it's that you paid tribute to a white man at all," one Twitter user said, noting that the month was about the "struggle and the accomplishments of black men and women, not the white people who hired them."
The police department later issued an apology through its Twitter account, acknowledging that its earlier post may have been offensive to some.
"Our intentions were never to offend," the post said.
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