A tweet sent out from Home Depot's Twitter account on Thursday has created controversy online after hundreds of users deemed it racist.
The original offending tweet contained a "College Gameday" coverage photo depicting two black men playing the drums along with a white man dressed as a gorilla in between them, the caption reading, "Which drummer is not like the others?"
According to NBC New York, the hardware megastore deleted the offending tweet not long after it circulated online, though it didn't take long for users to screencap it and retweet it hundreds of times, even sending it to the NAACP's official Twitter account.
Home Depot has since fired the person responsible and has apologized the NAACP and anyone the tweet may have offended, announcing that they had ended relations with the firm that had previously managed their account. They later added on Twitter that they have "zero tolerance for anything so stupid and offensive."
"We're also closely reviewing our social media procedures to determine how this could have happened, and how to ensure it never happens again," the company told NBC News. For additional damage control, the Huffington Post reports that Home Depot has been copying and pasting the same apology message to everyone who has brought the offensiveness of the image to their attention.
"Yo @HomeDepot Im tweeting you on the behalf of Al Sharpton and all black ppl," comedian Roy Wood Jr. tweeted recently. "We would all like a free gallon of paint to make this right."
Here's a screenshot of the @HomeDepot tweet... pic.twitter.com/R1GmK5Iwv6
— Jonathan Wall (@imfromraleigh) November 7, 2013
