#whitewashing

I’m going to preface this with I’m giving both @insertdisc5 and the company yetee the benefit of the doubt because I am doubtful that this is with intentional malice, but it is a growing concern because this is a pattern that has been repeated multiple times across different products offered. Given how the (largely white) fandom space that’s curated online tends to ignore (at best) or perpetuate it directly at worst these harmful instances of characters getting their features erased … the last thing I expected was it happening in a official setting that was in *theory* looked over by the dev directly and approved. Given how the game writing makes the effort to represent the different characters and their culture in a way that felt respectful it felt, hurtful to say the least.

Many people in the fandom including myself have made posts directly commentating on this issue (that happens in fanart very commonly but now also in official merch), as well as emailed yetee and were essentially given the default (sorry, we can’t help at this time) regarding the products coming out lighter. In contrast the poster ( which is on the very same post as the whitewashed keychains and released at the exact same time as a bundle) the timing of it getting fixed for anatomical errors with the hands was handled the next day. When looking at the post I could see that there were plenty of tags, rbs and comments talking of the merch drop that happened on February 9-10 were people expressing their feelings regarding not wanting the characters to be whitewashed. Zero response.

Assuming a non-human character HAS to be white is due to whiteness being framed as the default. This tends to lead many to believe that they can depict any character as a white person uncritically. The truth of the matter is that even if the character isn’t human, you can still potentially be whitewashing them. Hollywood (storytellers in general) have had a long history of only ever including poc by depicting them as something inhuman, so it’s not like it’s impossible to pick up these intentions

Often when someone is pointed out to have whitewashed these characters, they become extremely defensive and double down into the mindset of how these characters don’t have a canon real race assigned to them, therefore they have the “right” to depict them however they please

Which, sorry, the writers had some faith in y'all to use critical thinking to naturally come to (what should be) obvious conclusions. Seriously, I’ve seen y'all depict Kung Fu Panda characters as white people, despite the fact that the story’s location takes place in Ancient China and is unapologetically Chinese (depicted by white people but nevertheless). And don’t even try to bring up how “they can be white if they traveled from a distant country,” because y'all shut that down immediately when Black people bring up that we also traveled. We are not doing this “rules for thee, not for me" type reasoning

Essentially, who you decide gets to be depicted as Black or not can potentially be rooted in racial or other bigoted biases. Again, rather than confront those biases, many get defensive without examining what has led them to hold onto these beliefs. And as we’ve also seen, those of us who do call out this behavior are framed as the aggressor for the crime of disturbing someone’s fun by making them feel bad. Believe it or not, antiblackness is not fun; at least for normal people.

This is frustratingly often denied by the fandom, with many people saying she is anything but Black, including even claiming she is a white woman with a tan. But canonically speaking, Isabela is Black and has always been Black.

David Gaider, first lead writer for Dragon Age, said the following in Comic-Con 2012 panel called Creating Spaces for Divers Characters and Representations: “Bioware’s had a great experience including gay characters and Black characters. Although the thing about the fanart, I mean, you can mod our video games, obviously, so one of the most popular downloaded mods for Dragon Age II, as I recall, was a mod to change our one Black female character, Isabela, into a blonde, blue eyed character.” (Transcript courtesy of sapphim.) The video recording of this panel from Alt.theatre Magazine is no longer available, but here is an article on the panel as the best preserved proof.

Sheryl Chee, who created Isabela, said the following on a forum post in 2011: “No, Isabela is not "white" in the original game. I'm kind of tired of people saying that she was always "meant to be white" or  was "clearly a red-head" so I'm going to set the record straight. Isabela was always, always conceived as a dark-skinned, Rivaini woman.” Because Dragon Age: Origin’s in-game lighting was so bad in certain areas – one of those areas being where Isabela shows up – it’s sad that Chee had to go online and set the record straight this way.

Chee further added, “I gave her the second darkest skintone we had available.” This can be confirmed by looking at Isabela’s headmorph game files in the official Dragon Age toolkit and seeing she uses the skin tint “005” out of six available skin tints. Isabela also has other features that mark her racial background… but this is where the problems begin, because her nose and lips were the first to be taken away from her.

Isabela has been whitewashed more than any other Dragon Age character.

In Dragon Age: Origins, the game that Isabela first appears in, she has dark skin, a wide, soft nose, and full lips. When Isabela next appears in Dragon Age II, her skin is approximately the same, but her nose is much narrower, and her lips are much thinner.

The term whitewashing is most often used to describe making a non-white character, whiter. The term is also used to describe the lack of nonwhite people altogether in a setting where they should be; for example, if a movie takes place somewhere that many people of different races live, but only white people are on screen, that is also whitewashing. But when we are talking about an individual character like Isabela for example, we are referring to stripping away her visual characteristics that mark her as being Black. That is not just about skin, but also her facial features altogether.

As king in Dragon Age II, Alistair says to Isabela, “you look… different,” and she responds with “don’t we all” in a playful tone. BioWare knew exactly what they were doing when they changed her appearance. It was not an accident; it was taking a Black character, and giving her a new design with less afro-centric features the minute she had a main story role.

Isabela next appears as a multiplayer character in Dragon Age: Inquisition. In this game, her skin is noticeably lighter than in both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II.

Her in-game tarot card for Dragon Age: Inquisition is also extremely whitewashed - if they could colour the hat, why not her skin?

Then most recently in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, instead of correcting any of these mistakes, she remains heavily whitewashed.

Isabela has been made into one of the recurring faces of the Dragon Age franchise, much like Morrigan – she has appeared in every game, and many extra materials as well. But the face BioWare has chosen to use is very rarely actually Isabela’s face. Instead, that face has been heavily whitewashed to hell and back over and over and over.

In the cinematic trailer and official wallpapers used for advertising Dragon Age II, Isabela appears looking nearly as white as the iconic Hawke protagonist.

In Dragon Age: The World of Thedas vol. 1 she appears on a fresco art page, drastically paler.

She has a major role in the Dragon Age comics, "The Silent Grove", "Those Who Speak", and "Until we Sleep" where the colouring is very inconsistent. The worst is her cover for The Silent Grove #5.

ok, listen. i say this with all the love in my heart, because i know it comes from a place of compassion, but i gotta level with you all:

please stop using akhi in your batfamily fanworks.

genuinely.

i don’t know who will actually see this or even care and i'm not even the first person to bring this up, but akhi is not a familial term of endearment.

full disclosure, i myself am nowhere near an expert in all Arabic dialects and while i do not have an extensive knowledge of all the dialectical terms for “brother” that serve the purpose you're looking for, i do know there are some out there.

however, akhi is not one of them. it’s not even an nickname. so please, please stop using it like it is.

fair warning, this will be a long post because there are a lot of layers to this issue and to understand why it's even an issue at all, you have to understand all of those layers. so stick around, i guess, if you have questions and feel like being interrupted in your daily tumblr scroll by a very specific rant (though i did try to break it up into sections so it's at least somewhat navigable).

otherwise, if you’ve gotten this far, you’ve already read my main request and hopefully taken it to heart which is what i really care about, so feel free to continue on with your day if you so please.

It is especially inexcusable when multiple people have called it out on your official merchandise, and when a black fan attempts to contextualize and address the issue, they are blocked and ignored.

Adrienne Insertdisc5. What are you doing?

Alienating your fans of color, only addressing issues in vague, nebulous terms, and most importantly, spending years actively ignoring these problems, is downright embarrassing. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Whitewashing, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

"to alter (something) in a way that favors, features, or caters to white people: such as a) to portray (the past) in a way that increases the prominence, relevance, or impact of white people and minimizes or misrepresents that of nonwhite people and B) to alter (an original story) by casting a white performer in a role based on a nonwhite person or fictional character"

In fandom context, we know it to include:

Making someone’s skin lighter

Making someone’s hair a thinner texture

Changing someone’s nose to be thinner

Shrinking their lips

Changing the character in their entirety to be someone else

The Normalization of Whitewashing

Remember how I mentioned last lesson that despite the nature of poorly drawn Black characters, most audiences are not turned off enough to discourage the action in professional works? Similar idea with whitewashing. Not the same- unlike the Ambiguously Brown Character, which claims to have plausible deniability, overt whitewashing is usually enough to make fans speak up! But that’s the key word here- overt! It has to be “bad enough” to make enough people speak up, but as we’ve seen many a time, “bad enough” seems to have a much higher threshold for nonblack viewership (sometimes the limit doesn’t exist!)

Some visual examples

This is a link to my personal thread on a Netflix show I was watching- Worst Ex Ever. Now, while the show itself was quite enlightening, there was something I could not get over. I thought I was going crazy. And that was that no matter how dark the person of color would be in real life, the animated portions would draw this light pinkish-brown. Every. Single. Time. It's like they couldn't fathom scrolling down the color wheel. And this is a Netflix original! Netflix has plenty of money for someone to have caught this in creation. But... it was produced. And put out. And they're making more of it.

I asked all of the Dragon Age fans about the series, and uh… I didn’t know things were this bad, guys! Apparently this is a man of color, but it doesn't seem like the creators want you to know that 🤣. Jokes aside, as I’ve discussed before, the noticeable whitewashing- and that was one of many racist things I was told- was not enough to prevent sales... so why would they stop? I can only hope this new game, with all the updates, is enough to turn the tide. But the series has gone on for a while now, that if they’d chosen to do ye same olde… there clearly would not be a lack of financial support to prevent it.

Colorism as a Tool

Even when actors of color are cast, colorism often plays a role in normalizing whitewashing to audiences, even to Black audiences! People think “oh well at least they’re Black!” as if that is the only important part. It is not.

While Aaron Pierre, the actor cast for John Stewart of Green Lantern fame, is a GORGEOUS, STUNNING man, he is not the dark-skinned man that John Stewart is supposed to be and should not have been cast! To me, this is overt colorism, but clearly for many people this is not “enough” to warrant concern or even prevent the casting itself- including the studio behind the movie! Black fans have plead for years for the character of Storm to be played by a dark-skinned, preferably African, woman, and it has never happened.

It naturally happens in fan spaces as well, which is another indicator that colorism as a tool for whitewashing is quite effective for audiences. If I see one more Zendaya fan cast for Kida from Atlantis, I will scream. It’s been happening for years, and I don’t think any of the people who just want to see her and Tom on screen either understand or care that Kida is a dark-skinned character. Zendaya doesn’t look anything like Kida- it doesn’t matter if she’s Black too! Just because someone is Black does not mean they can play every single Black character! I’ve even seen people fancast Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame, to which… I don’t have the words. I can’t fathom what would cause these decisions other than racism.

The Common Excuses

I must be honest. I don’t really feel like re-iterating how certain things are not okay and how to fix them, because I’ve already discussed these things in massive detail. So I’m just going to direct the excuses I regularly hear to my lessons, where you can read up on them.

“Their hair/eyes are like that because they’re biracial so-”

Relevant Lessons: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 8, 9, 10

There is nothing wrong with having biracial characters with a range of features. I am not saying that! Because yeah, genetics do happen!

But I mentioned this in my last lesson, and I will re-emphasize here, that using biracial identity as a way to whitewash is a sinister form of racism. The intention here- the real intention- is the issue here! The idea that somehow this character can only look the way you want them to look by "diluting" their Blackness… I don’t know how you can explain yourselves out of that one.

You don’t get to use us as an excuse for diversity while still trying to maintain your preference for Eurocentric beauty standards. Black biracial people don’t always look light skinned, thin-haired and ambiguous, and even the ones that do don’t deserve to be treated as your fetish for pretend antiracism. If you just want to draw a white person with a tan, do that. But don’t change a character’s entire look just so you can work in some whiteness. If you want to claim that canon Black character’s mother was white, then I guess they inherited some of her personality because their features should not change.

“It’s my style/It’s the color-”

Relevant Lessons: 3, 4, 10

I hate all excuses for whitewashing, but I’ve grown to despise, hate, abhor and loathe this one the most as I’ve become an artist. I wish there were stronger words to describe just how much I hate the “style” and “color” excuse.

Are style and use of color oft intertwined? Absolutely. I’m not saying they aren’t. But out of everything, there are two things I want artists to understand:

1. Style does not cancel out racism! No style forces you to choose ashy greys and to change peoples’ features. That’s you! If you look at something, and it looks offensive, you change the style. You grow as an artist!

2. “Everyone who is brown will look ashy so I just-” if you recognize that your Black characters look strange in comparison to your nonblack characters, then it’s time to try something else! I don’t understand this sudden need for “realism” when it comes to color and lighting, but not when it comes to hair, for example. No one cares about realism when giving every and all Black characters wavy tresses they probably wouldn’t have, but suddenly milquetoast watercolor attempts at brown and off-putting lighting is “how it works”. That’s not fair.

The color picker is an available tool! I use it often!

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if someone gets the outfit color palette right via color picking, but the skin color is multiple shades lighter. That means they were looking at that character and chose not to proceed.

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if the white characters in the show are completely correct in their palettes. Again, that means they cared enough to look at everyone else… and not the Black characters.

If you use the color picker and the color picked is… disrespectful, you do not have to use that! You can simply choose a better color that is still similar to the brown that ought to be depicted!

“It’s the lighting-”

Relevant Lessons: 4, 5

If your white characters do not shine like snow in the sunlight because of your lighting, then your lighting does not make your Black characters suddenly light tan.

If your Black characters look bad in your lighting of choice- for example, putting a very dark-skinned character in electric white lighting can be ghastly- try changing the intensity or the color of the lighting. DON’T change your character’s skin color!

I'm going to show you some pictures of South Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech. Pay attention to the choices of light, color, and makeup.

Look how BEAUTIFUL she is! Look at the choices of intensity and color of light, and how they make her look different in each image.

Now look at this image in comparison:

In this image, whoever did her makeup and took this picture did not take into consideration her skin tone. She's also under this really intense lighting. This is an example of "increasing the lighting does NOT make an image "better"". She didn't need to have lighter skin or "more lighting" to look good. She needed BETTER lighting, lighting that worked with HER.

To see this as an example in drawn art, @dsm7 makes an excellent argument for proper lighting and color, why it is an issue to use it as an excuse, and how to solve that problem.

‼️DISCLAIMER FOR NEXT EXAMPLE‼️

Okay. I am about to show y’all a fan-created example from my personal experience. It is a TEACHING EXPERIENCE ONLY. I am not including the artist’s name in this image. It happened a couple years ago, and it’s over- they’ve chosen to be who they are despite me kindly confronting them about it. The only reason I’m including it at all is because I feel like it would be remiss to have such a clear-cut, multi-level example, and not teach with it. That said, no, I am not telling anyone to act out towards them. Again, that is not what I’m telling you to do. The last thing I need is a literal lynch mob of angry nonblack viewership for trying to teach you all, and y’all sitting there watching it happen to me. Every example of whitewashing is not going to be so obvious, but I hope you learn how to spot the examples in the art you see and share.

I'm obviously a Hades fan, particularly of Patroclus- despite my disdain for the lack of effort in his canon character design. So I've seen a lot of things. That said:

“Well it’s just MY design of them-”

Relevant Lessons: ALL

The sepia coloring did not do this. The lighting did not do this. The design is the exact same as the Hades version, even down to the shape of the hair curling in the back. The only thing that is different… is the man himself.

Y'all. Y'all! You CANNOT take a pre-existing Black character and say “oh well this is my design of them” …and the design is of a whole white person. Because if the rest of the fit is the same, and the only thing that changed is the Blackness… Racism. If you’re going to “make up your own design”, then do that!

“Blackwashing”

Speaking of: I’m sure someone edgy out there thinks they’re so smart as they retort to the screen: “but if that’s not okay, then why is Blackwashing okay?” To which I say- shut up. 😐

The “definition” by fandom: making a nonblack character Black, usually an anime character, but characters in general.

Funny enough, the actual definition in the dictionary (or closest to) is “to defame”, in contrast with whitewash (as in whitewashing history). Maybe racist fans ARE using it correctly when they say you’re blackwashing their characters, when they mean you’re making them “less likable because they’re Black now”. 🤔

Anyway: Blackwashing is not real for the same reason reverse racism is not real.

Me painting these characters brown is not going to take away from the fact that there are far more of you in media than there is of me. Me saying that I ‘headcanon a character as Black with 4C hair’ is not going to make the studio go “oh! Well they must be Black with 4C hair now!” Me saying “oh I think I’d like this character better if they were Black” as a beta tester (less overtly, obviously, because I’m not racist!) will never make a studio change that character. Black viewers have minimal value in comparison to the power of the white viewer’s dollar. I could draw white characters Black every single day of every single game media… and they would still produce majority white characters. There has not been centuries- if not millennia, when we consider Jesus Christ himself, even- of purposeful “Blackwashing” with the intent of removing the original ethnicity- and thus importance- of white people. No one has ever been allowed to forget when someone is white. No one has ever been allowed to forget or not acknowledge white people.

How it could be "solved"

Personally, I love Black edits and I welcome them here. I find them creative and fun. But if you really, REALLY didn’t want us to make those edits, then naturally, we need more Black characters in all of our media!

I wouldn’t have to make edits if I saw more of me to begin with in the things I like to watch- but when we have those characters, racists act an ass about them. We’re not allowed to even be present! I’ve seen too many gamer bros mocking the existence of Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed, and he was a real ass man. But if we made a game about African peoples in African societies, how many of the gamer bros would actually play those games? Do you think there’d be as much support, when we hear so much about Black characters that are treated so abhorrently? How many games do we have where people would love their faves just as much if they were Black? I even learned that Solas was apparently supposed to be a man of color. IMAGINE how many people would not have liked that man, with the same exact plot and characterization.

Something I’ve noticed recently: apparently "Blackwashing" is not a thing when White fans “allow” it. Take this recent trend with Miku. International Miku was beloved! But if you draw any other character as Black on any other day, there will be people that are horrid about it. Ask any artist, Black artists and Black cosplayers especially, who’s ever done it what their comments are like. I’ve read entire missives akin to white supremacist drivel on how it’s somehow morally wrong to make characters Black. Meanwhile no amount of “hey maybe you shouldn’t do this” prevented the movie Gods of Egypt from being created, with a cast full of British White people.

Solutions to Avoiding Whitewashing!

1) Using References!!

Do I think you should know what Black people look like? Yes. We’re humans. It’s 2024. Everyone knows what we look like when it’s time to hate and discriminate against us, so you know what we look like when it’s time to love and depict us. If you’re on Tumblr, you have access to the Internet. ESPECIALLY if you’re in the U.S., as Black people are the source of damn near every piece of online pop culture. If you can find my dialect to make my jokes, you can find pictures of me.

Would I rather you use a reference every single time so that you can only strengthen your depiction of my people? ABSOLUTELY.

Anyone on the Internet telling you not to use a reference or that you shouldn’t need a reference? Unfollow them. You don’t need that negativity in your life. Why would you deprive yourself of a tool to create? The greatest portrait painters in history had to look at their subjects! You are not getting paid nearly as much to do this as Hans Holbein, and he had to stare at Henry VIII correct else lose his head- you can pull up multiple references. I’d far rather be judged for using hella references than be judged for being a racist!

Part of the issue is people draw what they’re used to, what they’re comfortable with (thus last lesson). But if what you’re used to is not what someone will look like… That’s not okay. Their features are not the issue, your skills are the issue. Learn! Practice! There is no rush. No one is rushing you to be perfect at drawing Black characters, and no one is rushing you to post them. You can just practice! If you’re not a professional, you can take as long as you need to draw! If you need to draw that piece of hair over and over until you feel like you have down the shape, you do that! If you need to use a tool that would draw the hair for you, you get that tool!

If you want to post, you can say you are practicing! If you make clear you are practicing, then be willing to accept that people may have feedback. I’d far rather deal with someone saying they’re unconfident and practicing, than someone posting a whitewashed caricature and closing their ears because “well at least I’m trying!”

2) Empathize! Care about actual Black people when you create a Black character!

Imagine, if you will, in the Twilight Zone: you went to an artist, and you asked for a white character (I typed in “regular looking white dude” on google). There’s hardly ever any white characters, you’re so super excited about this one! You paid good money, because you’ve seen just how amazing this artist creates! They’re so good at drawing characters of color! But no matter how many times you ask, they send you back an image of… Assad Zaman.

That man might be fine as hell! Gorgeous! Beautifully done! Chef’s kiss. Stunning! But… He’s not white. That’s not what you asked or paid for. You can’t even fathom how they mixed this up, they don’t even look alike! And when you confront them, they gaslight you, they call YOU the issue for not understanding how you can’t tell that this is a white man! They would never get this wrong! They have white friends, you’re the racist! But you’re not stupid, and you have functioning eyes- you can SEE what this drawing looks like! And… It’s not you.

It’s dehumanizing. It’s being told that there’s a “better way” to look like you, and that’s by… Not looking like you. You, as you exist, are what’s incorrect. Your identity is incorrect, not their drawing. It’s better to have thinner hair instead of an afro or locs, it’s better to have lighter skin, it’s better to have a straighter, thinner nose over a round one, and smaller lips.

And what makes it worse is knowing that people who don’t look like you? Probably won’t care. They won’t be willing to see- not unable, but unwilling- that playing with this caricature is harmful, that they’re propagating harm by not acknowledging it. They’re letting you know that your humanity means less to them than the clout received with a whitewashed or half-assed Black character, and that people will applaud them for that ‘attempt at inclusion’. And people will applaud! They will be entertained by the mere performance! And that hurts.

I’m going to say this, and it’s awkward and I try not to say it directly on here, but… Having Black friends and/or being around actual, real life Black people would help. I can tell from some of the questions I receive that Black characters and their traits- especially things like our hair and our cultures- are being treated as… alien concepts. But even if, for whatever reason, you legitimately don’t know any Black people, you do not need to know us individually to care about our humanity as a whole! Even if you do not know we’re there, we are, and we could possibly see your work!

By acknowledging Blackness and making room to understand what it means- and that includes how we can look- you are doing the bare minimum of acknowledging our personhood. If you cannot do even that, you don’t need to be drawing us.

Conclusion

Here’s the thing: if you want to draw a white man with tanned skin, do that. Just do it! You do NOT have to erase me to have more of you! There is not a single fandom where the majority of the white fans ever said “gee, not another white guy!” It simply doesn’t happen. God knows we wish it did sometimes. You will always have an audience for white characters. There’s no danger to any of you of “being erased”.

(Without putting on my political hat, I will say that a lot of white people who consider themselves to be far from white supremacist will express beliefs in line with great replacement theory if you push them hard enough. It is unfortunately not as uncommon an idea as you might think. I would do some self-evaluation.)

People are going to notice that you only ever draw white people, but… To be frank, that has never stopped anybody from being successful. Again, Jen Zee, at Supergiant with the terrible dark-skinned characters… Still has a job. at Supergiant. A professional studio. Dragon Age. Multiple games of consistent whitewashing and racist writing. Still going. If racism prevented creation and popularity, I wouldn’t have to have this blog. Alas, that is the society we currently live in.

But if you ACTUALLY want to depict Black characters, if you ACTUALLY want to do right and be respectful- not because you want the clout, but because it’s the right damn thing to do- then you need to commit! This means drawing them as they are meant to be! Accept that you’ll likely lose some fan base, who was there (whether they were aware of it or not) for the white and lighter skinned characters. Accept that this means that trying to appeal to those people by whitewashing characters is 1) wrong, 2) racist, which is 3) something you chose to do when you could simply have just… Drawn more white people.