About

Coal Miner Blackface Controversy refers to an online backlash toward an article published on the USA Today Network news site AZCentral, which argued that a photograph of soot-covered coal miners standing in a bar could be viewed as offensive for resembling the practice of wearing blackface.

Background

On January 28th, 2019, AZCentral^[1] published an article titled "Phoenix restaurant says this is a photo of coal miners. But I see offensive blackface" by opinion contributor Rashaad Thomas, which discussed different interpretations of a photograph^[2] of a group of coal miners drinking beer in a pub while covered in soot (shown below).

Developments

That same day, The New York Times^[5] published an article titled "Mary Poppins,' and a Nanny's Shameful Flirting With Blackface." On January 29th, a collection of tweets reacting to the article was published on Twitchy.^[6]
On January 30th, Twitter user Andrew Doyle posted a tweet noting similarities between tweets published by the satirical accounts @GodfreyElfwick and @TitaniaMcGrath and the two articles (shown below).

Also on January 30th, posts mocking the article were submitted to the /r/The_Donald^[3][4] subreddit. The same day, The Stranger writer Katie Herzog tweeted a link to the article

Search Interest

External References