Cleopatra Was Not Black

Monello

Monello

Smarter than the average bear
PREMO Member
This 1 was.

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SamSpade

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
Kyle said:
If Blacks had spent as much time developing cultures and civilizations of their own, as they spend trying to claim those that don't belong to them, they'd have a history to look back on.

For now, they can watch Wakanda Forever, over and over, and pretend.
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In truth - Africa also went through their version of the Dark Ages - the Aksum Empire, which ran from Egypt down the Horn of Africa and included part of the Arabian Peninsula, was a competitor with Rome and Persia - but collapsed not long after the rise of Islam. Ghana and Songhai were also powerful, but fell to other powers for different reasons - Ghana fell largely for the same reasons Rome did - sacked by barbarians. Songhai was simply technologically inferior to the invading Moroccans.

Africa was not just some big jungle continent filled with primitives. It's just that their history isn't as well known, just as we don't learn much about the native cultures of the Americas - well, beyond Aztec or Mayan.
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Queen Cleopatra actress Adele James says claims of 'blackwashing' are 'fundamentally racist' after she was cast as the Macedonian-Greek ruler in Netflix series​



The star of Netflix's much-talked about 'Queen Cleopatra' docudrama says the furore over her casting as the Egyptian ruler is 'fundamentally racist'.

English actress Adele James, 27, takes on the role of the beguiling queen who became the most famous monarch from the land of the Pharaohs.

The trailer features claims that Cleopatra VII was black with 'curly hair'. One historian asserts in the preview: 'I remember my grandmother saying to me: I don't care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.'

Egyptians reacted with dismay at the apparent rejection of records which show Cleopatra was Macedonian-Greek. An Egyptian lawyer has filed a case with the country's public prosecutor demanding that Netflix be shut down.

Appearing yesterday on Channel 4's Steph's Packed Lunch, Adele addressed the high-profile criticism around being a black actress playing Cleopatra, saying: 'It would be naïve of me to say that I didn't expect anything at all, but I didn't expect the scale of it.

'And I think it's distressing for anybody to receive any level of abuse, let alone the scale and the nature of what I've received, which is fundamentally racist, all of it.'


 
SamSpade

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
PREMO Member
This has been going on for a long time. Nearly all of the most well known figures from the continent of Africa in ancient times are from the northern half. Somehow, this translates to “all persons who are from Africa look like the black persons we typically call African”.

Hence somehow all of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia - the whole region - is treated as somehow “black” even though none of them are black today and all evidence shows they weren’t.

And of course, they’re not. Hannibal was Carthaginian - a nation founded by displaced Phoenicians. Cleopatra and the Ptolemies were Macedonian - they were descendants of Alexander the Great, a Greek described as being golden or auburn haired. Augustine of Hippo was Berber - who looked like most modern Arabs. And of course, Jesus, a Jew. From the possible evidence left by the Shroud - and others - obviously not blue eyed and blond but certainly looking more like the Middle Easterners of today.

Just - accept history. Not all Europeans look like Swedes or Italians or Irish, just as not all sub-Saharan Africans are the same.

But the response was so? It’s just acting. Well just as it was ridiculous to cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan or Mickey Rooney playing a Chinese person - it’s ridiculous to potray Julius Caesar as Chinese or Catherine the Great as Native American. It’s just stupid.
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
SamSpade said:
Hence somehow all of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia - the whole region - is treated as somehow “black” even though none of them are black today and all evidence shows they weren’t.
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I have been yelled at by 2 different online friends one from Morocco and the other Algeria for referring to them as being ' Middle Eastern '

Both were [ what westerners refer to as ] of Berber, [ one was a tribal descendant speaking Tamazight I do not recall the other beyond I am NOT Arab ] decent and very off put by Arabs, Spanish, French and Portuguese as their countries had been over run multiple times during various conquest periods .... like Islam sweeping west across North Africa to Span, then the resulting push back of the Spanish to drive out the Moors

They really hated the Arabs .... both were multi lingual

One from Morocco - French being a dominate language especially in Governmental Offices , Arabic - which has been pushed since the end of colonial rule, her tribal Tamazight, some Spanish Influence as well and English ...

The other from Algeria French, English, Arabic and ' Algerian ' also a Tamazight dialect ..
 
SamSpade

SamSpade

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PREMO Member
GURPS said:
The other from Algeria French, English, Arabic and ' Algerian ' also a Tamazight dialect ..
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And you can BET they sure don't consider themselves African IN THE SENSE that we typically refer to as black - ethinically, from southern part of the continent.

Just because you hail from the continent of Africa does not mean that you're all the same, anymore than an Eskimo is Cherokee or K'Iche are the same as the French in Quebec. They're not the same. But most TV renderings I've seen of Cleopatra since the 90's have her as black - as we would call black.

If it's just artisitc license - then why not portray MLK Jr. as a teenaged white kid? It's just stupid. You wouldn't do it.
 
Kinnakeet

Kinnakeet

Well-Known Member
GURPS said:

Netflix Appropriates My Egyptian Heritage To Push Its Racial Narrative In ‘Queen Cleopatra’​




The idea that ancient Egyptians were black has been thoroughly debunked. Evidence from ancient Egyptian mummies shows they are genetically similar to modern-day Egyptians.

Contrary to Afrocentric pseudo-historians, ancient Egyptians “contain almost no DNA from sub-Saharan Africa,” while “some 15% to 20% of modern Egyptians’ mitochondrial DNA reflects sub-Saharan ancestry.” The introduction of sub-Saharan people into North African populations dates to “about 750 years ago into Egypt” and may reflect “the patterns of the trans-Saharan slave trade that occurred during this period.”

In fairness, today’s Egyptians — like our ancestors — come in nearly all shades. Skin hues in my family range from pale white to brown. I am regularly mistaken as Indian. A stroll through any museum’s Egyptian collection corroborates my microcosm of a family: Ancient Egypt was skin-tone diverse. Neither white nor black captures the essence of being an Egyptian.

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The discussion about the lead actress of “Queen Cleopatra” being black frankly distracts from two more significant problems with the series.

First: Where are the Egyptians in the show? The shamelessly leftist entertainment industry has effectively shut the door on female Egyptian immigrants. Not a single one could break into the industry in the one series that would most evidently need them. How many young Egyptian female actresses had their hopes crushed after learning they were passed up for a role for the likely reason that they did not fit the industry’s mental model of an African queen?

Truthfully, I would have felt indifferent to the casting of a black lead if it were not for the reveal that comes about a minute and 30 seconds into the trailer. It comes when one of the interviewees claims she does not “care what they told you in school. Cleopatra was black.”

Then it hit me. The Netflix series does not care to faithfully retell Egyptian history. It has ulterior motives. It is a Trojan horse to sneak in yet another commentary on a distinctly American social issue that has nothing to do with Egypt, ancient or modern.

Second: “Queen Cleopatra” will almost certainly mythologize parts of her story. It will probably start with some paradisical past state where the African queen peacefully rules her subjects in fairness and justice. Then, because of the devious plots of (white) Romans, conflict will ensue, and she will have to sacrifice her life to save her kingdom from being shorn by evil, invading Europeans. This storytelling appropriates Egyptian history to push a contrived narrative.

Bad writers torturously reinterpret history to legitimize the concerns of African Americans in the 21st century. They conflate the black American experience with that of a first-century B.C. Egyptian queen.

To the educated elites, the series might seem like a timely counter-narrative to the Eurocentric orientalism that has characterized modern Egyptology. But even if that were true, it would still miss an obvious fact: Egyptians were not racially conscious as we are today. Race as such did not affect Egyptian politics — and certainly not in the way it does in America today.

Like their sub-Saharan counterparts, Egyptians bought and sold enslaved people. Afrocentric historians ignore these facts to construct their own version of Eden: a glorious past that must be reclaimed from The White Man™. I suppose we all need some form of religion.
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Why are the Negros doing all this BS
 
GURPS

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Kinnakeet said:
Why are the Negros doing all this BS
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What do you mean ?

What greatness can Africans claim from History ?

I know George Washington Carver did amazing things with peanuts and the Doctor who pioneered open heart surgery could not get the surgery he developed because of 1950's prejudice ....

So their lie to themselves .... Jesus was black, not white Cleopatra was black #BecauseAfrica
 
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