whiteout

plural whiteouts · alternative white-out

1. countableuncountableA heavy snowstorm; a blizzard.
2. countableuncountableAny weather condition in which visibility and contrast are severely reduced by snow or sand causing the horizon and physical features of the terrain to disappear.

   A whiteout can best be described as a paradoxical combination of being partially blind, but also being able to see illusions of things. It is like floundering in a sea of cotton; everything looks blurred and white.

   1979, Finn Ronne, Antarctica, My Destiny, Hastings House, →ISBN, page 136

3. countableuncountableCorrection fluid (from the brand name Wite-Out).
4. countableslanguncountablehobbiesA sporting event where all in attendance are urged to wear white apparel.
5. countableuncountablecomputingThe simulated erasure of a file, etc. on a read-only volume.
6. countableuncountableThe suppression of a story by the media, analogously to deleting information with correction fluid.

   The slightest reference to national security is accepted as excuse enough for a news whiteout.

   1992, Mid-American Review - Volume 13, page 97

   3 more examples

   Despite the media whiteout, we believe our weapon flashing had communicated the important political message that the nuclear mentality and the masculine mentality are intimately connected.

   1986, Atlantis - Volume 12, page 174

   What, for example, have the protagonists of the First Amendment to say about the media whiteout in the United States on the work of such a distinguished radical as Noam Chomsky?

   1998, Ian Loveland, Importing the First Amendment

   "Who Put the Black Face on Poverty," the show asked. Well, the mainstream media "whiteout" of the story provides a clue.

   1998, Extra!: The Newsletter of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)., page 8

7. countableuncountableThe silencing of voices and perspectives other than those of white people.

   Closer to home, I thought about how that same “whiteout” existed in U.S. scholarship on television production and viewership and their cultural flows.

   2013, Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   While it represented a symbolic break from the “whiteout” on the US presidency, it was also, obviously, the most racialized campaign in American history.

   2012, H. Samy Alim, Geneva Smitherman, Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S., →ISBN

   We must return to a time where whiteout will no longer exist in our thinking process, and remember, black is not just a color but a totally different way of being.

   2015, Niinana Kweku, Whiteout, →ISBN