Cultural Assimilation? Yeah. Privilege? Not So Sure.

It is fun, though:

Privilege doesn't get much whiter than making a Roman-era Palestinian look like this. pic.twitter.com/i05NG7FlVm

— God (@TheTweetOfGod) June 3, 2020

I'm pretty sure that most artists in societies with significant Christian presences (especially the paganized Pauline variants) tend to make their own Jesuses look ... local.

Here's Russian artist Ivan Kramskoi's Christ in the Wilderness:

Here's a 9th century T'ang dynasty rendering:

And hey, look, here's a 15th century Ethiopian painting of Diptych with Mary and Her Son Flanked by Archangels, Apostles and a Saint:

I'm not so much surprised that the descendants of European colonizers in the Americas have tended to go with depictions of Jesus that make him look like a European colonizer, as I am that they've tended to stick with medieval/renaissance depictions rather than updating the character's appearance over time.

I would have expected American Catholic depictions of Jesus for the last 60 years or so to have looked something like this:

And the more general pop culture version of the last couple of decades, well ...