whiteout

Noun

whiteout (countable and uncountable, plural whiteouts)

1. A heavy snowstorm; a blizzard.
2. Any 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. Correction fluid (from the brand name Wite-Out).
4. (slang) A sporting event where all in attendance are urged to wear white apparel.
5. The simulated erasure of a file, etc. on a read-only volume.
6. The suppression of a story by the media, analogously to deleting information with correction fluid.
   • 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
   • The slightest reference to national security is accepted as excuse enough for a news whiteout.1992, Mid-American Review - Volume 13, page 97
7. The silencing of voices and perspectives other than those of white people.
   • 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
   • 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