The Ongoing Problem of Race in YA.

Coe Booth (and others) at The Atlantic:

"As a little black girl growing up in the Bronx, I had no connection to books about sharecroppers or those books that took place in the ‘50s. I discovered Judy Blume. In those books, the perspective was always from the white character; the black character was the 'other.' In the '70s and '80s, the blackness of the person was the story."

It's worth a read—it gives a good, broad picture with looks at a lot of angles and issues. (And, yes, whitewashing comes up, but there's no mention of the most recent example.)