content: I know I'm 9 days late, but I think you're on to something. Most of the photos for couples are from stock photo sites, and they tag fucking everything in their photos.  This unfortunately also includes:  the 'white' in "white background" (as in backdrop) the 'american' in "African American" the 'white couple' in the phrase "black and white couple" the 'american couple' in the phrase "African American couple"   Not to mention that some of the search results are actually self-referential examples from sites like reddit and 4chan talking about this very phenomenon. None of this explains why 'european people art/history' searches coming up black though. But being more specific, with "german history art" or "french history art", still comes up white. For now.