# Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article
Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article refers to the January 2019 backlash against a Phoenix opinion column in which writer Rashaad Thomas argued that a photograph of soot-covered British coal miners in a bar could be read as blackface. The piece was ridiculed on Twitter, Twitchy, and Reddit, and picked up extra momentum because satire accounts had made the same joke months earlier.
## Overview
Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article refers to the online pile-on aimed at a January 2019 opinion piece by Phoenix essayist and poet Rashaad Thomas, who wrote that a black-and-white photograph of coal miners drinking beer at a pub, their faces streaked with soot, could be read as offensive blackface[1]. The image was hanging in an unnamed downtown Phoenix restaurant and showed British miners after a shift, but Thomas argued that a viewer's reading of the picture was not fixed by the photographer's intent[1].
Critics on Twitter latched onto the framing that a documentary photo of working-class laborers had been reinterpreted as racial imagery, and the column was mocked as an emblem of grievance culture overreach[2]. The backlash grew louder because it landed the same week The New York Times ran an essay arguing that a chimney-sweep scene in Mary Poppins was itself flirting with blackface[3].
## How It Spread
Screenshots of the column hit Twitter within hours, and on January 29, conservative aggregation site Twitchy compiled dozens of mocking replies under the headline "Essayist and poet looks at photo of coal miners after work, sees offensive blackface"[2]. Users joked about Mary Poppins chimney sweeps and posted photos of children with dirty faces to lampoon what they saw as an inability to distinguish soot from makeup[2].
On January 30, posts ridiculing the article surfaced on the /r/The_Donald subreddit, and writer Katie Herzog of The Stranger shared it to her own followers[3]. That same day, British comedian Andrew Doyle [4] pointed out that the satire accounts @GodfreyElfwick and @TitaniaMcGrath had posted nearly identical takes months earlier about miners and Mary Poppins, and asked whether the accounts were "satirists or prophets"[4]. The parallel fed a running "satire is dead" joke, sharpened by the fact that a New York Times essay titled "'Mary Poppins,' and a Nanny's Shameful Flirting With Blackface" had gone up the same day as Thomas's column[3].
## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article?
It is the January 2019 online backlash to an AZCentral opinion column by Rashaad Thomas, who argued that a photograph of soot-covered coal miners at a bar could be read as blackface[1].
### Where did Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article come from?
The piece was published by AZCentral, part of the USA Today Network, on January 28, 2019, and described a photograph Thomas saw at an unnamed downtown Phoenix restaurant[1].
### What does Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article mean?
Online, the article is used as shorthand for perceived grievance-culture overreach, cited whenever a mundane image gets reinterpreted as racially offensive[2].
### How do you use Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article?
It is typically referenced in Twitter and Reddit threads as a punchline, often paired with jokes about Mary Poppins chimney sweeps or with tweets from satire accounts like @TitaniaMcGrath[4].
### Is Coal Miner Blackface Azcentral Article still popular?
The controversy peaked over a few days in late January 2019 on Twitter, Twitchy, and Reddit, and has not seen sustained viral use since[3].
## References
1. [https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2019/01/28/downtown-phoenix-photo-men-soot-blackface/2683881002/]()
2. [https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2019/01/29/essayist-and-poet-looks-at-photo-of-coal-miners-after-work-sees-offensive-blackface/]()
3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/coal-miner-blackface-controversy]()
4. [https://x.com/i/status/1090592054349053952]()
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Source: https://meme.com/memes/coal-miner-blackface-azcentral-article
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