Leave it to the Boston Police Department to drop the ball on a Black History Month tribute. Or maybe it was the BDP’s way of dissing black folks and reminding us that any gain we make in politics, sports or society as a whole is attributed to a white person allowing us to succeed.
Of all of the accomplished African-Americans that they could have honored, someone in the department felt that honoring Red Auerbach, the legendary Celtics coach would do the job.
Unfortunately, Stevie Wonder could have seen the Twitter backlash that was to come and the way it obviously offended people of color. Add in Boston’s lengthy racist history, including the sickening, racist, verbal attack against Baltimore Orioles African-American outfielder Adam Jones at Fenway Park last season, and someone in that department with a pulse should have known that honoring a white man for the accomplishments of Blacks wasn’t going to go over well.
Astead on Twitter
How kind of the Boston Police Department to mark Black History Month by honoring a white man
The Twittersphere went crazy and in response, the Boston Police Department apologized.
Boston Police Dept. on Twitter
BPD realizes that an earlier tweet may have offended some and we apologize for that. Our intentions were never to offend. It has been taken down.
It also changed the Black History tribute to honor Celtics great, culture-changer and civil rights activist Bill Russell.
The Boston Globe on Twitter
The Boston Police Department is facing an online backlash after tweeting a #BlackHistoryMonth tribute to Red Auerbach, who was white. The department has since deleted the tweet. https://t.co/2ymjsnRvAK
Nice effort to correct an obviously bad choice, but a terrible job in showing the concern and effort to get the date right. Unfortunately the new tweet got the month wrong in which Russell was named the first African-American coach in NBA history. They have November 15, 1966, but the actual date was April 16th.
Total fail for the Boston Police Department, a notoriously racist and oppressive police system, which did nothing to change the national sentiment concerning its questionable police practices against people of color.
