Netflix’s Black Cleopatra ‘documentary’:Egyptian comedian on Jada Pinkett, 'This b****!!'

Lol @ “we came from a single ancestor”

you realize that claimingnsuch means that we are all at different stages of evolving / evolved differently.

I feel like the people spewing nonsense here don’t bother to even do a little research first

 

Our modern concept of race didn’t exist in Cleopatra’s time but if it is primarily based on skin color then yes she could’ve been dark enough to be considered black.

Again it seems like the resistance to this idea about Cleopatra’a skin color seems driven by modern ideology as much as the idea that she could be black.

 

She could’ve been that too. If she was born fairer skinned she probably got sunburned in Egypt.

 

I suggest you do some reading, those that have PhDs and devoted their life to this topic for a specific reason don’t leave it up in the air.


Henry VII looked Indian

Moses was black

Harriet Tubman was white with black face but nobody could prove it

it’s fine holding diffeeent views but you’re set on countering logical/scientific reasoning to fight some SJW battle even when it’s to uphold lies and innacuracies

 

We didn’t come from a single individual ancestor but genetic studies does show that modern humans did come from a likely small group of original humans. There are genetic markers that most of humanity shares. With divergences from different groups as humanity as spread out.

The group with the most in common with all of the branches of humanity appear to be sub Saharan Bushmen. That would indicate that they either are or are closely related to the first humans.

there has been a lot of research conducted on this since gene sequencing became widely available.
https://www.genome.gov/dna-day/15-ways/human-origins-ancestry

What’s even more interesting is that many modern humans also have traces of Neanderthal genes and other extinct hominid species.

 

I’ve provided evidence and as an art history nerd who’s been to Egypt specifically to visit ancient sites I’ve studied this too.

And many PHDs do also say that we don’t know for certain what cleopatra looked like.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/what-did-cleopatra-look-like
(@Nook the article linked addresses some of the issues you being up about her likeness as depicted on coins. There might’ve been a political reason for her appearing more Roman. Also there were differing images of her from the time depending on who as making them)

That you’re arguing using terms like “SJW” shows that you’re resistance to the possibility is based on ideology.

 

The issue people have with it is that there is literally no evidence that Cleopatra was black African. None at all, and what has in the past been put forward as evidence has been disproven.

We know that her dynasty was largely separated from Egyptians. We know they couldn’t even speak Egyptian before Cleopatra. We have depictions of her approved by her in her own lifetime and she is depicted as having Greek feature - which isn’t at all surprising. We also know she dressed in a Greek style. The earliest depictions of her are olive skinned.

You look at the totality of the evidence that is known and it does not support her being black African. I used black African because people in that part of the world have long not viewed themselves as African or European. My wife is Assyrian, those in that part of the world view themselves as brown and distinctly different and long have. We know that she was a small part Iranian - so should we depict her as an Arab and say she was an Arab? Of course not.

If the standard for a documentary now is that anything possible goes, then we are going to have issues.

People can want Cleopatra to be black, or Jesus to be white - or Julius Cesar to be homosexual —- but it doesn’t make it accurate, and history in 2023 should be beyond this point. There is a reason that Egyptian historians are up in arms over it. It is factually highly unlikely.

This reminds me of the Pro-Jeffersonians claiming that Thomas Jefferson did not have sex with Sally H, even with DNA evidence he did and all the circumstantial evidence - as their new claim was that Jefferson’s brother was the father of Sally H’s kids.

I have no issue with someone making a movie with someone black or white or Asian playing Cleopatra… just don’t pass it off as fact in a documentary.

Also FWIW, some of the push back is from people that are not African or European but often times are pushed into one category or the other by either white people or black people - especially people in the USA.

 

Exactly as Nook said. It's the fact it's being peddled as fact that's the issue. If a black woman played her in a run of the mill dramatization, I don't think people would care. I know I wouldn't. I barely care now, other than to say you are all wrong if you think she was black lol.

 

This is some real **** and yeah, I think a lot of racism and historical racism is based on those ideas. A lot of history HAS been whitewashed, we do have actual accounts of white historians literally finding things in Africa and going "Couldn't be black people, nope, no way..." and theorizing about how some group of European settlers must have traveled way into the depths of Africa to create some civilization.

With this said...I blame black hollywood. Between Tyler Perry, Kevin Hart, etc...they all could be doing more to represent actual African history.

Like there were Ancient Egyptians that you could cast black people as, royalty too, but it simply wasn't Cleo. Why blackwash Cleo when you could have just went further back into Egypt and no one would have cared? Historians would have even agreed with it. There's a whole slew of conflicts between the Nubians and Egyptians...and then there are the Nubians themselves who barely get a mention but definitely should.

There's tons of African history that doesn't get touched on and while at some point it was fair to blame hollywood that point has past. Black people have a lot of power in hollywood now, more than most other groups in America that are not white.

If Coogler wanted to make some epic Mansa Musa flick I am sure he'd get a bag of money to do so...that movie is way overdue now.

And you know my stance on this, i'm very left wing but African-Americans have the power to tell the history of Africa now literally no one is stopping them but themselves...we'll probably get another slave-focused movie which honestly we've had enough of for now.

 

I don't know about that. I mean we've had a large group of people crying about black mermaids and black elves and way back when black vulcans.

People would care.

 

Think you missed the point of my post since you are one of the main ones here whining about black mermaids and black elves.

 

Ahh okay, so only Elves can't be black...makes complete sense to me...

 

We would all be better off if we could be much less focused on race. It's what's underneath the skin that counts.

 

I suggest you read the link I posted. cleopatra’s mothers parentage isn’t known and given there is factual evidence of Egyptians, as posted here, we’re of varying skin tones that does show the possibility that she could be much darker than commonly perceived.

That piece also addresses the images of Cleopatra. Many of the coins minted her showing her with Roman features also featured Mark Anthony and has such possibly were meant to reinforce her ties to the Roman Mark Anthony. I've been to the Dendera Temple of Hathor mentioned in the piece and seen myself the image of Cleopatra there where she doesn't have Roman looking features. The image there is clearly meant to reinforce her Epytianess. Which one is closer to what she actually is is uncertain.

Again the use of the term "black" problematic because it is loaded up with modern concepts of race that didn't exist in Cleopatra's time. There were then and are still now Egyptians that have darker skin than many we consider black now. So if "black" is based on skin color then I don't see how it we couldn't rule out that Cleopatra could have skin dark enough to be considered "black".

Her ethnicity I would agree would obviously not be African American nor pan African. It would be Egyptian. That is a different argument though than skin tone.

Except that we are seeing the resistance to this is mostly on ideological grounds pertaining to moder views of race. Even your response above you are framing it in terms of current US ideological debates around race. In other words the opposition to even exploring the possiblity that Cleopatra didn't look like what we've come to expect from depictions like Elizabeth Taylor's is being shut down

 

You can’t make this claim. We have almost nothing to look to. The only things we have that we know are from her time and labeled as her are relief carvings and Roman coins. There are works people have suggested could be her but that is conjecture. There are portraits labeled as her but all date to after her death and depictions if her often contradict each other. But here is the thing - in late antiquity people didn’t care about accurate representations. People didn’t even care about accurate histories as we know them today. You simply can’t point to any historical visual record for her. Yes, she was probably olive skinned. But that is just the best educated guess.