User:Ksaavedr/sandbox

Whitewashing can also occur by casting white characters into historical or source roles that are originally for people of color. The earliest example of whitewashing with blackface appears in DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915), where white actors painted their faces to play prominent black characters. This decision to have white actors play Black characters remains important to the timeline of whitewashing, as this film is now revered by white supremacists for its portrayal of the Klu Klux Klan against the black community. Because of the lack of actors of color in the film industry, the only representation for non-white communities would be through white actors.

Latino communities also faced whitewashing well into the late 1950s and 1960s, with West Side Story (1961) casting Natalie Wood as the lead Latina character. In 1958, Charlton Heston played a Mexican police officer in Touch of Evil (1958), where his physical appearance was altered to have curly hair and a darker complexion.

The main reason that whitewashing occurred - and still occurs today - is that “whiteness” appears as a norm in cinema, where narratives do not recognize white characters as part of the race structure, but heavily emphasize non-white characters’ races in order to label them. A contemporary example of heightening other races, in contrast to white characters, is seen during the production for The Ridiculous Six (2015), where Native American actors had features darkened by makeup to “solidify” their race. This also happened in Three Godfathers (1948), where actor Pedro Armendáriz spoke in a Mexican accent, as well as hyperbolic gestures, to convey his Mexican race on screen. Rather than allowing the actors of color to depict their own cultures, films resort to reinforcing negative stereotypes of non-white races to further divide the two communities.