The Republican National Committee intended to celebrate the anniversary of Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit in the back of the bus with a tweet. However, many were shocked to see the tweet credit Parks with singlehandedly ending racism, which caused the GOP to clarify the original message.
The original tweet, which still exists, includes a picture of the late Parks with the quote, “You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.” That sounds innocent enough, but it came with the caption, “Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism.”
That’s the sentence that many people were shocked to see, since racism is still an issue that the U.S. deals with. As The Washington Post notes, it equates the end of segregation by law as the end of racism. Even then, Parks played a key role in getting the process moving, which is what the GOP stated in a follow-up tweet.
“Previous tweet should have read ‘Today we remember Rosa Parks' bold stand and her role in fighting to end racism,’” the new tweet read. However, that message was sent hours after the original post, which for some reason is still up.
According to Politico, the tweet sparked the trending hashtag #RacismEndedWhen, which the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seized for its own message to Republicans.
#RacismEndedWhen a GOP pollster told Republicans last month to 'stop pandering' to racism http://t.co/eEB8JMGQpG
— DCCC (@dccc) December 1, 2013