There are now many, many other examples over the years of course, randomly changing both historical and fictional white characters into black ones.
Are the left ready to admit their radical fringe side that's trying to rewrite history?
Yet they freak out and go ballistic if black characters are changed to white.
shareWasn't Cleopatra kind of fairly easily outfoxed and defeated by a bunch of white people?
Or are Romans black too now?
Is that really the kind of thing for which to go the extent of putting in all this effort to make her black?
She lost her kingdom (after giving up that ass for a white dude) and purportedly killed herself to avoid being publicly displayed and humiliated in a Triumph by a bunch of white people.
Why claim someone who was essentially a failure?
Good point. You might be interested in this article:
https://newlinesmag.com/argument/was-cleopatra-a-black-african-queen/
Especially this part:
"This historical reality is what makes Egypt’s nationalist anger over the Black Cleopatra TV series so intriguing. Cleopatra governed Egypt, yet she was not Egyptian; rather, she was the last descendant of Greek colonizers. So, historical accuracy and accusations of racism/colorism aside, Egyptian nationalists’ protectiveness over the representation of a Greek conquering tyrant is somewhat ironic.
At the risk of sounding reductive, Cleopatra was a foreign occupier who cared only about maintaining her hold on power. She (allegedly) had sex with a brother whom she later killed, brought in Roman forces to secure her throne, murdered her sister for opposing the invasion and had her dead body paraded all over Rome. Furthermore, her claim to historical infamy was partially based on seducing two Roman generals, causing one to be murdered and the other to kill himself. What is there to be proud of here?"
Are Black women and Egyptians so desperate for a hero, that they'll not only appropriate a historical Greek woman as their own, but one who wasn't even much of a 'hero'?
I don't think the Egptians are really appropriating Cleopatra as "their own". Egyptian historian Zahi Awass called her a Greek woman. The thing is that she's an important part of Egypt's cultural history. And Cleopatra and her family are basically the ones who appropriated ancient Egyptian culture.
Whether it's ironic is really beside the point. It's just a historical fact.
The article I linked seemed to indict the Egyptians for fighting over a non-Egyptian figure like Cleopatra, but personally, I think the writer's point applies more to the makers of this documentary. Whatever Cleopatra's significance to modern Egyptians, the point is, she wasn't Black but a Greek woman, and onewho was extremely flawed, to say the least.
To use a somewhat hyperbolic analogy, it would almost be akin to Germans and Jews fighting over Hitler's identity when he was, by most accounts, an Austrian of white gentile ancestry.