Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s publicly hosted holiday party excluding white elected officials is questionable optics and judgment for someone who is supposed to be uniting the city.

As the Herald first reported, Wu hosted the party for an “electeds of color” group only on Wednesday night at the city-owned Parkman House despite criticism from some councilors who got disinvited.

Wu’s director of City Council relations, Denise DosSantos, mistakenly sent an invite to the party to all city councilors, seven of whom are white.

Fifteen minutes later she sent another email apologizing for sending the invite to everyone.

“I did send that to everyone by accident, and I apologize if my email may have offended or came across as so. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused,” she wrote.

Wu spokesman Ricardo Patrón told the Herald the city was not paying for the party, though it was using city resources — the Parkman House.

The disclosure of the party quickly spread nationally on the Internet – yet another controversy Wu has stepped in.

The mayor tried to defuse the situation outside the Parkman House just before the party.

“I think we’ve all been in a position at one point where an email went out and there was mistaken recipients so there was truly just an honest mistake,” she told reporters.

Asked whether hosting a party excluding white elected officials was appropriate, Wu responded that there are a number of parties where everyone is invited including white councilors.

“There are multiple ways that we celebrate with everyone. There are several holiday parties that the entire city council and all of our elected colleagues have been invited to,” she said.

At least one white council member, Frank Baker, called the party “divisive.”

“But what are you going to do about it, I’m on my way out,” said Baker, who did not seek re-election this year. Other white councilors declined to comment to the Herald.

But other councilors of color defended the party, saying the group “electeds of color” has been around for several years and has held other events.

“It’s not at all divisive, it’s creating spaces for people and communities and identities where shared spaces come together,” Councilor-at-Large Ruthzee Louijeune, who claims to have enough votes next year to become council president, told 7News.

Wu’s party excluding white elected officials appears to violate at least the spirit of the Massachusetts Public Accommodations law, which strictly prohibits discrimination based on race or color in places of public accommodation like restaurants, hotels, sports stadiums or public buildings like the Parkman House.

But just as important, the party creates division in a city council already rife with racial divisiveness and tension.

“I find it unfortunate that with the temperature the way it is, that we would further that division,” Baker told the Herald on Tuesday.

When Wu won two years ago as the first non-white male elected mayor, she was given a chance to unite a city that is still divided racially along some lines.

She constantly talks about inclusivity and has the most people of color in her administration than any other mayor in the city’s history.

But her administration bungled the party.

Mayor Michelle Wu approaches the door to the Parkman House on Beacon Street Wednesday night.(Chris Christo/Boston Herald)