Twitter cries 'racism' over innocuous photo of students. Then girl's mother fires back with truth.

One Santa Fe, Texas, mother was forced to defend her daughter on social media this month after an internet mob cried "racism" over a picture of her daughter and classmates.

What’s the background?

Prior to the start of Game 5 in the NBA’s Western Conference finals between the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors, the NBA invited Santa Fe High School seniors and first responders to the game, according to KHOU-TV.

The senior students gathered on court together to sing the national anthem and hold a moment of silence for the 10 lives lost at their school on May 18 in a shooting massacre.

Afterward, the NBA posted a picture of the girls to its Twitter account, where it garnered a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons.

The picture shows six white girls holding hands while a black girl, Nicole Janice, appears to be standing alone. Immediately, social media users charged that racism was the reason the young black woman was excluded.

One tweet that passive aggressively questioned why the black girl's hands weren't held garnered nearly 40,000 retweets and more than 100,000 "likes."

What's the truth?

The black girl's mother, Lynda, was there to set the record straight.

The "black girl" is my daughter. It's people like you that keep the race crap stirred up. You just look for ways to make things about race. These girls are her friends. You have no idea what you are talking about so you just need to shut up.

— Lyndarjan (@Lyndarjan1) May 26, 2018

Despite the definitive tweet, people still questioned why her daughter's hands were not held. So Lynda answered them:

my daughter didn't want to cry before she had to sing and holding hands would have caused her to start crying that's the story nothing about race.

— Lyndarjan (@Lyndarjan1) May 27, 2018

Then it got worse because someone questioned if Lynda really is Nicole's mother, since Lynda is white and Nicole is black:

I have a birth certificate which you will not be seeing. This is us at senior parent night for band. pic.twitter.com/LQA4D83nxq

— Lyndarjan (@Lyndarjan1) May 27, 2018

And of course, one final person had the gumption to ask Lynda how she explains racism to her daughter "in all your privilege." Lynda fired back with an epic response:

I let her read these post. Y'all are doing a damn good job.

— Lyndarjan (@Lyndarjan1) May 27, 2018

Did the photo capture every student?

Lynda told KHOU the image the NBA posted to Twitter did not capture every student on the court, which is important because the students not in the image also were not holding hands.

"When Nicole came out of her room Saturday morning, she was upset that they had turned this into a race thing, because she knew what was real. To make something so simple into a race issue was just absolutely ludicrous," Lynda said.

"It’s very disappointing that people are going to take a race issue out of a picture with nine grieving girls in it. I grieve in my own different way. I don’t like to be touched. When we had that moment of silence, I didn’t want to grab anyone’s hands because I didn’t want to break down before we sang [the national anthem]," Nicole added.