These examples of whitewashing show how our diversity is erased from history books, entertainment and our national narrative
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Whitewashing in Christianity
Religious art and films have been whitewashing the Bible for centuries. Although Jesus, Moses and other biblical heroes were all born in the Middle East, they’re usually depicted in paintings, movies and other media as being White, often with blue eyes. One of the most iconic works of art is Michelangelo’s David, and the white marble statue presents the Hebrew king as someone you might find at a Scandinavian bathhouse.
In essence, the Europeanization and Americanization of the Bible have made Christianity an all-White affair. This is especially visible in portrayals of Jesus—again, a man from the Middle East—as a White man in films and on TV. “Think about how many people express shock if they later see representations of [Jesus] with the phenotype and features [he] either definitely or most likely had,” Gómez says.
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Whitewashing in school
When most adult Americans think back on their education, they’re likely to remember mostly White teachers. Even today, the school system is dominated by White educators. Race doesn’t determine teaching skill, but White teachers may be likely to skew toward White-oriented curricula, which deprives all students of essential knowledge, particularly when it comes to non-White history.
There are many examples of whitewashing in this context—like school boards replacing words like “slavery” with terms like “involuntary relocation” or other “language that softens brutal truths and sanitizes history for comfort rather than accuracy,” Williams says. Or, for instance, teaching history in ways that minimize oppression, like glossing over slavery, colonization or Indigenous genocide in textbooks, she explains. “This creates generations who are misinformed and unprepared to understand systemic inequities,” she notes.
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Whitewashing in childhood
From the moment we’re born, we’re bombarded with examples of whitewashing. For decades, Barbie, an icon of girlhood and arguably the world’s most popular doll, was almost aggressively White—blonde, blue-eyed and sculpted to European-descended perfection. So was her companion, Ken. Although there are now Black Barbies and other dolls for non-White children (and for White children who want them), the hallowed status of White Barbie in our culture and, until recently, the overabundance of White protagonists in fairy tales and children’s stories created a whitewashed childhood world.
There are also examples of whitewashing in children’s and young adult books, Gómez says. “In the mid-2000s, there was a rash of YA book covers where characters were people of color yet the models in the photographs shot for the covers were white girls,” she explains.
This is problematic for a number of reasons. “First, the only thing readers hate as much as bad movie adaptations of their favorite books is bad covers that don’t represent the book inside,” Gómez says. “Second, this is misleading, and we all judge books by their covers when determining what we pick up and consider reading.” Finally, Gómez adds that it’s “extremely obvious that this is done to hide the fact that there is a character of color, even though there is already a huge dearth of characters of color in traditionally published books.”
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Whitewashing in advertising
Madison Avenue has gotten better at diversity in advertising in recent years, but print and television ads remain largely White-centric. Even when you have popular Black commercial characters, like Jake from State Farm, they end up being largely surrounded by White co-stars. Meanwhile, Asians remain mostly invisible in Western advertising unless they are being used in commercials for Asian products or ones associated with Asia via stereotypes.
Tone-deaf advertising pops up in a number of different ways that can be characterized as whitewashing. Sometimes it’s in an advertising hook; sometimes it’s right there in the name of a product. Several years ago, Nivea, which once used “White is purity” as a tagline, faced criticism for an ad targeted to Black women for a skin-lightening lotion called Natural Fairness Cream. “[In advertising], skin is lightened or features are ‘neutralized,’” says Irby. “The quiet message is that lighter or whiter is more marketable.”
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Whitewashing in history
For years, U.S. schools have taught a whitewashed version of history, one in which White cowboys are the heroes, Indians are the villains and slavery is a minor blemish rather than a massive permanent scar. It glosses over important Black figures who came before Martin Luther King Jr., such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, and holds up founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as icons of achievement and nobility—while failing to mention that both owned slaves.
These and other examples provide students with a distorted view of history. “When Black people are not taught about African history and the migrations within Africa—creating a disconnect between African heritage and African American present-day lived experiences—it is because of the whitewashing of world history, done by White people who control research and what gets published in academic journals or ends up in museums and archives,” Anderson-Douoning says.
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Whitewashing in movies and TV
Hollywood has a long and sordid history of whitewashing, dating back to the early days when, in movies like Birth of a Nation and Al Jolson vehicles, White actors used blackface to portray Black characters. Laurence Olivier plastered it on to play Othello in the 1965 adaptation of the Shakespeare play. Hollywood didn’t let Mickey Rooney’s and David Carradine’s Whiteness stop them from playing Asian characters in, respectively, the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the ’70s TV series Kung Fu.
More recently, there has been ongoing criticism of the 2025 live-action version of Lilo & Stitch for casting a White-presenting actor for the role of Nani, which Irby says reflects colorism relative to the original animated film. And she adds that in the 2023 film Oppenheimer, women and people of color were practically erased from the Manhattan Project. Additionally, the 2024 Apple TV show Masters of Air, about World War II pilots, minimized the role of the Tuskegee Airmen—which Irby says was “a missed opportunity that leaves Black World War II aviators at the margins of the narrative.”
Meanwhile, movies starring Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Johnny Depp and Matt Damon have been criticized for featuring them in non-White roles, as have movies set in Africa and the Middle East starring White actors in all the central roles, like Noah and Gods of Egypt.
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Whitewashing in literature
The literary classics teachers require us to read in school are mostly written by White authors and populated by White characters, which is a kind of whitewashing where White talent and the fruits of their labor are more valued than non-White talent and the words they produce. And then there is Gone with the Wind, the 1936 Margaret Mitchell novel that actually romanticizes the slavery era.
Beyond that, Gómez says that books with non-White main characters are more likely to have covers that are illustrated, or feature silhouettes or all text, rather than photographs of real people. “This speaks to a desire to obscure the fact that a book stars a non-White character in some cases,” she explains. “The deliberate choice to obscure that from potential purchasers of a book is a tacit admission from the publisher that they don’t believe White people will buy books about non-White people, which white readers should find insulting, and that they don’t believe people of color buy books, which people of color should find insulting.”
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Whitewashing in the news
George Floyd’s murder by a White cop and the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests received widespread coverage, but the reporting wasn’t as thorough as it could have been because of editorial departments dominated by White reporters, editors and anchors. Many of them favored a whitewashed version of events that emphasized White protesters and law enforcers with little focus on the Black communities driving the story and most affected by it.
Whitewashing in the news is also evident in the underreporting of unarmed Black men injured and killed by White police, and in the way Breonna Taylor’s murder was swept under the proverbial rug until the Black Lives Matter protests finally made it trending news.
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Whitewashing in music
Rock ‘n’ roll has long been defined by White talent taking credit for Black art. The genre itself is based on blues music, a Black art form, yet it still took White artists like Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, the Rolling Stones and the Animals to popularize music that originated with Black performers. Whitewashing music for mass consumption has been a refrain that’s popped up frequently over the course of music history.
One of the most recognizable Black artists who struggled under this paradigm was Whitney Houston. Arista Records chief Clive Davis took her to the top of the pop heap by whitewashing her image to broaden her appeal. The 2017 documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me? explored how the pressure to succeed by not being herself may have led to the drug abuse that eventually killed her.
“Here was the first Black crossover artist who had to be presented in a certain way to a White audience to make her acceptable,” the documentary’s director, Nick Broomfield, told Vice in 2017. “That had some enormous repercussions in her life with her own feeling of who she was.” The times (the early ’80s) also played a role, Broomfield said, as did her sexuality and “her vulnerability as a young Black very talented artist who had to make enormous sacrifices to play this role that I think became increasingly hard for her to play.”
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Whitewashing in holiday celebrations
Independence Day commemorates July 4, 1776, the day the 13 original U.S. colonies declared independence from England—all while Black Americans remained enslaved, considered the property of White Americans. Thanksgiving Day is often portrayed as beginning with a friendly feast attended by American settlers and Indigenous people, ignoring the centuries of genocide, racism and discrimination that followed. On top of that, as Irby points out, stereotyped Indigenous outfits or sacred symbols are used as decor. “Living cultures are trivialized and spirituality is treated as a prop,” she says.
And Christmas—from the carols we sing (like “White Christmas”) to Santa Claus to White baby Jesus—might be the Whitest holiday of all. In recent years, it’s been mostly up to Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to add a splash of color to the proceedings as presented in most media.
For more on this important issue, see our guide to the Fight Against Racism.
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Sources:
- Rebecca Irby, race-equity practitioner and founding partner and board president of the PEAC Institute; email interviews, Aug. 12 and 13, 2025
- Nilisha Williams, licensed professional clinical counselor, community advocate and founder of ACE Wellness Ohio; email interview, Aug. 12, 2025
- Jolivette Anderson-Douoning, PhD, director of the Institute for Equity and Justice at St. Michael’s College; email interview, Aug. 12, 2025
- Hannah Gómez, PhD, senior editor and director of cultural accuracy and sensitivity editorial services at Kevin Anderson & Associates; email interview, Aug. 13, 2025
- Vice: “A Whitney Houston Documentary Highlights the Whitewashing of Black Singers”
