A USA Today opinion contributor writing for Arizona Central has expressed great offense at an old photograph of dirty, soot-covered coal miners.

Why?

Rashaad Thomas said the white men appear to be in “blackface.”

They’re not — they’re covered in soot — but that’s irrelevant to Thomas.

Thomas explained that he was at a restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, when he saw the photo on one of the walls in the establishment.

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The old sepia-toned framed photograph shows nine individuals, seven of whom appear to be soot-covered coal miners drinking beer in the pub after a day of labor in the dirty mines — hence their faces are blackened by dirt and soot from the coal dust.

Rashaad Thomas ought to know that under those coalminers ‘black faces’ they were developing Black Lung and an early death. No mention of the dirty, dangerous, deadly work they endured or contribution to the labor movement. https://t.co/A2oa8a4q9L via @azcentral — Identifies Denisovan (@WorryBig) January 30, 2019

Thomas, however, said it was an offensive photo of white men in blackface, and despite his friends, other customers, a waitress and even the restaurant owner himself all assuring him it was just a picture of dirty coal miners, he would not be dissuaded from being offended by the photo.

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“I asked the waitress to speak with a manager. Instead, I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive. Evidently, someone else had made a similar comment about the photograph before,” Thomas wrote.

“Yet, the photograph remained on the wall. He said he would talk to the other owners and get back to me. While leaving, I asked him had he spoke with the other owners. He had not spoken with them, but mentioned Google (and) said it’s coal miners after work,” he continued.

Thomas asked, “Who determines what’s offensive?” and proceeded to answer his own rhetorical question by relating the photo to an explicitly racist old movie — 1915’s “Birth of a Nation,” which praised the Ku Klux Klan and featured white men in blackface.

Thomas then wrote what was arguably the most absurd and illogical sentence of his entire piece: “Fact: The photograph shows coal miners’ faces covered in soot. The context of the photograph is not the issue.”

With that one line, Thomas undermined the entirety of his article. He admitted that the photo was nothing more than soot-covered coal miners, but he insisted to ignore that “fact” and “context” so as to be offended by something that wasn’t even there.

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After some nonsense about the subjectivity of “art,” as well as a mention of his own experiences with perceived racism in the past, Thomas maintained that he viewed the old photo as a “threat” to himself and people like him.

“At the downtown Phoenix restaurant, my concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were ignored,” he wrote.

“A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, ‘Whites Only.’ It says people like me are not welcome.”

He closed his piece by noting that the photo should be taken down.

Thomas’ refusal to acknowledge the context of the photo and insistence on being offended by something entirely inoffensive is as frightening as it is ridiculous.

We can laugh at the absurdity of it all, but in truth, it should be a cause for concern that the perpetually offended are now willing to utterly ignore the context of the things they deem offensive, which means that virtually anything can end up being deemed racist or offensive in some form or fashion, if only the grievance mongers look hard enough.

Furthermore, this petty complaint of offense is not an isolated occurrence, but is indicative of a growing trend among the perpetually offended who find racism where none exists, as was recently evidenced in the attack on the Covington Catholic school boys, as well as an Op-Ed from The New York Times which criticized Disney’s “Mary Poppins” character — whose face ended up covered in soot from the chimney — as being “racist” and “minstrelsy.”

There are aspects of our nation’s history and even current society that are truly racist and offensive, but old photos of working-class coal miners covered in soot while enjoying a beer after a long day underground is not one of those racist and offensive things.

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