this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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Whitewashing has two meanings:
Most commonly, it means depicting something as "good" that is evil, like making excuses for crimes.
But the term "___washing," derived from the above, is used to talk about various ways of misrepresenting things. For example, "pinkwashing" or "rainbow washing" is when someone uses queer identity as a way of laundering their reputation, like talking about how progressive it is that the drone program has lesbian pilots. I suppose it's possible that portrayals of Jesus or Ancient Rome could be called "whitewashing" in the sense that they are misrepresented as being white, but that's an abnormal use of the term.