paint black

1. Represent someone or something as evil or harmful. This idiom is most often used in a negative context, as in He's not so black as he's been painted. [Late 1500s]

Example Sentences

The accusations of being unclean and the “nappy wig” comment are real classics among those that white girls use to paint Black women as unattractive, undesirable wrecks.

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As reported in Smithsonian Magazine in 2020, all it takes is to paint black one-half of one blade.

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Gleaming under a fresh coat of white paint, black trim and mist-green highlights, it tugs on lines that creak from the marina’s gentle surge.

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The pro-life groups said they were given verbal permission by a city official to paint “Black Preborn Lives Matter” in front of the clinic, as long as they did so in washable tempera paint, yet six police cars greeted them when they turned up for the protest.

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Still, we don’t want to live in a world where only Black artists are commissioned to paint Black people and only white artists to paint white people, where men are to be rendered by men, women by women, and so on.

Read more on New York Times