What is the source of this? I was under the impression that Cleopatra’s mom was Cleopatra V (ALSO very closely related to her dad).
In short, the whole family to be rather amazingly inbred - worse than Hapsburgs. 
One of the big problems with Afrocentricism is the attempt to lump as many people as possible under the umbrella of “black”. I’ve heard some argue that anything that isn’t northern European should be considered black. But in actuality, there is far more diversity within Africa than outside of it, such that if one were to divide humanity into a dozen or so “races” based on actual genetic differences, eleven of them would be in Africa, and one would cover all the other continents. So the problem with saying “Cleopatra was black”, or the like, is that it implies that she’s relatively close, genetically, to Michael Jordan or Oprah Winfrey (what most Americans think of when they hear “black”), when actually she’s not.
Very few people are white or close to it, (and very few are close to black either). Most people have a skin some shade of brown, tinged with pink for northern Europeans or with yellow for East Asians.
Cleopatra probably had a medium to light brown skin, and it would have been lighter than people of similar genetic makeup because female members of ruling royal families tend to stay out of the sun. So, her skin colour, as others have said, would have been within the normal range for people living anywhere around the Mediterranean today.
Are you seriously saying if you saw this guy walking down the street in your hometown, and were asked to describe his race you wouldn’t use the term “black” ?
She would have been red. Fellahin are ruddy. Not black, not white. She might have been on the white side, being of Greek descent on her father’s side.
Or mother’s side. If the only evidence of “African” ancestry is her skeleton, & the official genealogy is purely Macedonian, then assume the inconsistency is in a male ancestor.
No. I would use the term “Arab” or “Middle Eastern”.
Your link to a picture of Anwar Sadat isn’t working, but I think he looks more “Middle Eastern” than “Black”.
Hey man, your link doesn’t seem to work; however in staying slightly on topic, when surfing youtube I happened upon a stylized documentry about Cairo. In case anyone doesn’t know Cairo is Egypt’s capital and is located in northren Egypt close the the mediterranian sea. The film has many pictures of the citizens of the city.
I think the biggest problem with Afrocentricism is something very similar but slightly different to this. It’s the homogenization of “Africans” that annoys me the most. I find the term a false paradigm it’s too simple and mentally numbing to the true complexities of Africa.
Africans should not be homogenized/lumped together as is commonly done. Any such grouping would be based solely on the racial concepts of westerners, because it is clearly not based on any shared political, linguistical, cultural, historical, or religious continuation/cohesiveness of (those who we constantly group together as) Africans.
Oh and yes, here is a link to the film.
She was neither white nor black, since such racial distinctions weren’t made back then. Essentially however she was of Macedonian Greek decent, which probably means she had basic Greek stock with perhaps some Persian’s in the wood pile. She could have had some native Egyptian in her ancestry as well…but they weren’t exactly ‘black’ either (just as her Macedonian Green ancestry wasn’t really ‘white’).
It’s basically a silly question revolving along those folks who insist on an Afro-centric view point for obscure reasons (IMHO). Gods know why it’s some important to some to ‘prove’ that she was ‘black’…as if this will ‘prove’ some obscure point about whether blacks are worthy or something. Almost a validation…and to be honest it’s nearly as insulting to blacks as the folks who insist that the pyramids HAD to be built by space aliens, or that American Indian’s couldn’t have possibly built the monumental architecture in North, Central and South America.
-XT
I know it’s a typo, but I love the image: Cleopatra wasn’t Black or White: she was Green!
lol…well, it’s not easy being Green…
-XT
Chloropatra…
I agree, I would most likely call him middle eastern. Heck, I have seen sicillians darker than Sadat, though if I recall that sort of got snuck in when the moors took the island for a while.
So … would Omar Sharif [technically egyptian but actually lebanese/syrian] be black to you? There was a fair amount of intermarrying going on between about 700 ad and current as trade routes moved people around, and military actions moved populations around. I consider him to be classical middle eastern, pretty much halfway between black and caucasian. <devilishly handsome, but that is besides the point …>
Though to be really honest, there is a great difference between the indigenous population north of the southern edge of the sahara, and those traditionally south of the sahara … you do get intermingling, but those north are closer to caucasian than those south mainly because of the movement out of the caucasas mountains in all directions.
Gonzomax’s post didn’t say anything at all about “black,” he said African. So, yes, by that logic, Charlize Theron is African. I don’t think he meant Africa=Black.
Are we talking about who she was ethnically (i.e., genetically) speaking? If so, then I don’t see how we can argue very strongly on what her/her family’s remains seem to indicate. Whether or not those remains are actually authentic is an entirely different topic.
Are the terms “black” and “white” primarily American terminology?
Why use the term ‘African’ then exactly, if not to imply that she was ‘black’? While I agree that she was certainly FROM Africa, I do believe that people attempting to imply that Cleo was ‘African’ don’t mean it in the context of the region she is from…they mean that she has ‘African’ (i.e. ‘black’) ancestry. Otherwise I don’t see the point…I doubt any is going to argue that she was born in Egypt, or that Egypt wasn’t part of Africa.
Yes, I believe that most people making this obscure argument ARE referring to her possible ethnic origins.
I agree…it’s a fairly silly argument that seems to crop up periodically just when you think it’s finally died the death it deserves.
They are certainly used in the US frequently, but I don’t think that the US is the only place this is used.
-XT
I thought Arsinoe was only Cleo’s half-sister. Different mothers. Right?
Take a look at this man and tell me whether he’s black or white.
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=37
What is the picture supposed to prove? FWIW, he looks Eastern European to me, but it’s hard to tell in a black and white (heh) photograph.
-XT