Talk:whitewashed

Can this also mean "having a lot of white people"? That's the sense I used with a student today, but I wasn't sure if that's a standard sense of the word. ---> Tooironic 13:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

As an extremely belated response, after this word came up at RFV : I've seen that usage, too, and just added one citation that uses the word that way. I think this is technically now covered by the definition we had at whitewash, which I've now added over here. But if there are a lot of examples, it might be better to split it off as its own sense or subsense. - -sche (discuss) 10:20, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2021

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whitewashed

Never heard of this sense. —Svārtava ^{[t•c•u•r]} 09:14, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Ok, for one, explain this:

Image 1 (original from the 1651 publication date of "Leviathan"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)#/media/File:Leviathan_by_Thomas_Hobbes.jpg

Image 2 (altered): https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51tHst5jIqL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg (you can also go to the following website for a bigger image of the altered depiction — https://monthlyreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Detail-from-the-cover-of-Leviathan-by-Thomas-Hobbes.jpg)

You see what I mean now...So, let the edit stand. PyotrA (talk) 09:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

PyotrA How does that prove the existence of that sense of whitewashed? —Svārtava ^{[t•c•u•r]} 09:25, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

On one hand, I can find cites of google books:"whitewashed skin", e.g. "actress Kerry Washington's seemingly whitewashed skin on the cover of the February 2015 InStyle Magazine" (though many of the other hits are chaff referring to a skin of paint on a fence, etc). OTOH, I think the sense should be broader; our entry needs improvement. The basic sense that underlies the last three senses (this one, "Portrayed by...", and "Looking Caucasian, but is actually African...", which is ungrammatical because the verbs don't agree in tense) is along the lines of "having been made to appear or be white (Caucasian), or whiter", whether by having the person be played by a white actor in the movie, or by lightening the person's skin for a magazine cover or Leviathan cover, or, e.g. if you whitewash the history of the invention of something, by downplaying the contributions of people of colour and playing up white people. It's not just "of skin". So some senses need to be broadened, maybe combined. - -sche (discuss) 10:00, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I see whitewash covers this better, and it seems like the place that much of this content should perhaps be moved to, or at least from which we might borrow wording. For any of the current senses of whitewashed#Adjective, the reason the thing has become whitewashed is that someone decided to whitewash#Verb it, so the meanings should line up between the two entries. - -sche (discuss) 10:11, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for changing the entry in the middle of the RFV, but I've boldly folded the three senses into one general sense like we already had at whitewash and whitewashing (the latter of which I've now also updated just to better sync the wordings). I added citations that refer to a person being whitewashed, skin being whitewashed, a body being whitewashed (portrayed in a movie as white), as well as places and education. Does this resolve this? - -sche (discuss) 10:23, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes; closing this as resolved. —Svārtava ^{[t•c•u•r]} 07:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)