To add onto this, here's the full-color spread of the straw hats for chapters 999-1000. There's an argument that this whitewashing is done to be more accurate to the manga, and I would like to propose that this too is bullshit.
First of all, Oda appears to use the same technique whenever he colors skintones, something easily seen if you compare Zoro, Franky, and Sanji here.
They all have a white highlight, a few layers of skintone foe shading, and then a shadow layer and some purple for realism. Comparing colors won't do us any good here, because this shading style doesn't have a distinct midtone like the anime does, and depending on how closely you pick your colors the texturing of the markers leaves some spots darker than others.
The biggest differences in skintone come from how many layers of skintone color oda applies. Robin, Luffy, and Ussop all have fewer highlights than Zoro, Franky, and Sanji, while Nami has fewer shadows than anyone in the crew.
Yes, all the straw hats are pale, but you know who isn't?
Blackbeard. It doesn't take a genius to see that he has a MUCH darker skintone than anyone else in the show. And in Oda's official art?
Same skin tone as everyone else. Now if Toei actually cared about manga accuracy, why make everyone pale except blackbeard? For that matter, why make Robin one of the palest straw hats when, if we look at the *miniscule* differences in coloring, she's supposed to look like Ussop or Luffy?
One piece has two problems when it comes to depicting characters of different races (three if you count the poor design decisions for Ussop and Blackbeard). The first is that Oda either cannot or refuses to draw more than one skin tone. The second is that Toei saw this, decided to take their own artistic liberties in the beginning, then backtracked (for some reason) during the timeskip and has continued backtracking ever since.
Oda can ABSOLUTELY be better than this. One Piece can be better than this. It HAS been better than this. The limited skintones we had in the early days of the show aren't great, but they're loads better than what we have now. I love One Piece. I will still watch the show and read the manga. But as a fellow artist, if Oda and Toei are trying to depict a world where men can be made of rubber and reindeers can talk and fish-people swim in the sea then it is their failure as storytellers and artists if they refuse to depict different colors of humans, and we as a fandom need to acknowledge it as such instead of sweeping it under the rug like we so often do.
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