whitewashed

verb

1. participle, past simple past and past participle of whitewash

adjective more whitewashed · most whitewashed

1. Painted with the temporary paint whitewash.
2. Having had any controversy or potential for scandal removed, ignored or downplayed. Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser and still-influential MAGA voice, posed the question others were already repeating: "How does an anti–deep state administration put out something this whitewashed? This is not what people voted for."
3. Having been subjected to racial whitewashing: made to be or seem more white (Caucasian); for example, having been made to appear whiter via makeup, or by being illustrated in pictures or portrayed in films as white (despite originally or properly being nonwhite). Hiro's a Japanese guy, Kim's an Indian guy. The transition for the three of us, goin' from a very mixed Chicago area to the very whitewashed Northwest, was kinda weird. It took me years to kinda deal with, Is this a real city? Where are the other people?
4. broadly, derogatory A person of color perceived as having assimilated at the expense of their own racial or cultural identity. She tries to portray that she is the Japanese American woman. That she is very cultured in a Japanese way but she is not! She is very whitewashed.

Opposite: blackwashed