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What debates like this miss is that current notions of race are relatively recent inventions and do not necessarily speak to how people of Cleopatra’s day saw the world or themselves. Classicists tell us that although the Greeks and Romans did notice skin color, they did not regard it as the primary marker of racial difference. Other concepts — environment, geography, ancestral origin, language, religion, custom and culture — played bigger roles in delineating groups and identities. So regardless of the material a sculptor may have chosen to use to summon Cleopatra’s powerful visage, there is no meaningful sense in which she — or anyone else of her era — would have identified as white.

The question that follows is: How, then, can anyone, including a Netflix dramatization, claim that Cleopatra was Black?

Dr. Haley argues that Cleopatra’s experience was part of a history of oppression of Black women. Reclaiming Cleopatra as Black and choosing to portray her now as a Black woman highlights this history — and is consistent with contemporary Egyptians or Greeks identifying with Cleopatra on the grounds of their own shared culture. Unlike racial assignments based on physical characteristics, which seek to distill people into rigid and recognizable categories, shared cultural claims can easily coexist.

To recognize Cleopatra as culturally Black is not to pretend that skin color is meaningless now — in the manner of recent figures like Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug, who claimed a cultural identity that was not theirs. In our society, race and racism are deeply entwined with skin color and other inherited physical traits. We cannot understand modern forms of oppression without understanding how phenotypical difference contributes to them, and we cannot legitimately claim a racial history without having lived it.

Cleopatra lived it. And it’s that experience, not her physical attributes, that should determine how we imagine her life.

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NotDagothGares said:

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EDIT: I have no idea why the URL does not work.

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Galaad said:

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NotDagothGares said:

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EDIT: I have no idea why the URL does not work.

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"New" anti-spam measure against bots.
Btw, and FYI: Blizz lost access to his original account, which is why he gets a pass here. Even though this is funny, I assume you know the forum rules.

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NotDagothGares said:

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I do, I do not have access to my old account, nor do I have access to my old msn account. I think it is obvious I am not hiding my identity or making many accounts to spam.

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NotBlizzardBoy said:

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You could get a Spanish actress to play Cleopatra and nobody could tell, but a Japanese or Celtic ginger woman wouldn't work. It's not worth having a meltdown over, like some people in Cairo, but it is still pretty high on the dumb scale imo.

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