Netflix drama angers Egyptians by casting Cleopatra using black actress - "A new Netflix series has sparked a backlash in Egypt by portraying Cleopatra as black. A trailer for the new historical series shows the first century ruler of Egypt as a woman of black African descent, after producer Jada Pinkett Smith - the wife of actor Will Smith - cited the importance of telling “stories about black queens” The decision to cast a black actress in the role of the queen has caused anger in Egypt, where experts have argued that the queen was of European descent and not black. It has been pointed out that the ruler was descended from Ptolemy, a general of Alexander the Great, making the queen of “light-skinned” Macedonian Greek heritage. Leading Egyptian archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass has released a statement online saying that “Cleopatra was not black”. He added: “The film that is coming on Netflix is not accurate and gives wrong information on ancient Egypt. Cleopatra was Greek and she was similar to the queens and princesses of Macedonia.” Dr Hawass cited the appearance of the queen in statuary and depictions of her father and brother as further evidence that she was not of black African descent. According to reports in the country, Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud Al-Semari submitted a request to the Attorney General to have Netflix blocked to prevent the controversial Cleopatra series being broadcast. The decision to cast a non-white Cleopatra, played by mixed-race actress Adele James, came from the desire of producers to represent black people on screen... The notion that Cleopatra was black has been proposed by a number of Afrocentist scholars, although the theory has been largely dismissed in academia. Some have suggested that while Cleopatra, the last ruler of pre-Roman Egypt, was directly descended from an unbroken male Greek line, the wives of these Ptolemaic rulers may have had more mixed ancestry. This would not entail that it was black African ancestry."
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar - "To my Egyptian friends: The Depiction of Cleopatra as Black by Netflix is NOT about you. Let me explain: There is a faction (a loud one) within the American and cultural scene that views the world from the simplistic lens of "White = bad" and "Not white = good" and they think that everything is about themselves because as you know the world never existed before America. Knowing #Netflix and interacting with one of their former employees, I can tell you that at best, these employees had one luxury trip to Egypt after #Coachella staying at the four seasons in Giza and taking pictures with their iPhone Max by the pyramids with the hashtag #Inspired. These are the "cultured" ones, most likely they don't know anything about Cleopatra or the long and complex history of Egypt. They just know that "White = bad" and decided on a darker-skinned woman because, in their thinking, that's a representation of an "oppressed minority". It's a "documentary", it's not meant to be a representation of reality. I am actually surprised, they didn't pick a gender-queer lesbian Somali pirate to represent the Pharaoh."
Meme - "Apart from being hilarious, I struggle to see how the skin color of a historical character from literally thousands of years ago is a win."
Bishop Talbert Swan @TalbertSwan" "Cleopatra was Black The pharaohs were Black Nefertiti was Black Moses was Black St Nicholas was Black Abraham was Black Moses was Black Mary was Black Jesus was Black Deal with it."
Change.org Removes Petition To Stop Netflix's Queen Cleopatra - "Over 85 thousand people from all over the world in less than 2 days signed this petition but for some unknown reason the petition has been removed from the change.org platform. The petition to cancel the new documentary was started by Maha Shehata and Aikk Yasser for “falsifying history”. According to the petition’s founders, it was created by Egyptians who felt that Egyptian history was being misrepresented. “Afrocentrism is a pseudoscience that is pushing a group’s agenda to claim Egypt’s history and rob the actual Egyptians of it. By using false articles and zero evidence, they are still attempting to falsify history,” read the petition’s opening description."
Netflix's Upcoming 'Queen Cleopatra' Docuseries To Race-Swap Historical Egyptian Ruler: "Cleopatra Is A Queen Who Many Know About, But Not In Her Truth" - "No longer content with overwriting the source material of various comic books, video games, novels, and anime Netflix has now turned its identity politics attentions towards real world history, as the streaming service has announced that their upcoming docuseries Queen Cleopatra will not only race-swap the eponymous ruler, but also argue that her having black skin is historically accurate... Per the series’ above trailer, it seems this ‘re-assessment’ – read: re-write – of history will be based less on objective, factual historical records and more on the personal intuitions and feelings of its supposed subject matter experts. “It’s possible that she was an Egyptian,” says one woman, summarizing the crux of the documentary’s argument. She is then followed by a man from the North African region (as his identity is not specified in the docuseries’ promotional material, it is currently unknown exactly which country he hails from) who professes, “I imagine her to have curly hair like me and similar skin color.” Finally, the trailer rounds out its teasing of its guests with the declaration from an older black woman that, “I remember my grandmother saying to me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black’.” Notably, all the quotes highlighted by Netflix in service of promoting the idea that Cleopatra was black do not point to any specific archeological evidence, but are all rather based on appealing to the emotions of those obsessed with the misguided concept of ‘representation’... while very few accurate depictions of Cleopatra have survived the test of time, a posthumous portrait of the Queen found in the ruins of the ancient Roman city Herculaneum depicts her with fair skin and red hair. “Over the brow a large tuft of hair is painted, rather like the nodus found on portraits of women of the later 1st century BC, and perhaps originally on the marble portraits of Cleopatra from Berlin…and the Vatican…” Susan Walker and Peter Higgs argued in favor of the portrait’s accuracy in their book Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth. “The large eye (a late Ptolemaic feature), long nose, and full lips are also comparable to the features of Cleopatra as seen on her marble portraits and some of her coins,” they asserted. “The effect is somewhat more idealized than, for instance, the Antioch coin portraits, but there are similarities.”"
Inside Africa - "After rating of Netflix on playstore dropped to 1 star, heavy loss in stock value and subscriptions in the past week as well as Netflix closing comments on the YouTube trailer after a heavy social media campaign against the documentary. Description of the series "Queen Cleopatra" has been changed to "Fictionalized story about Queen Cleopatra of Egypt of the Ptolemaic lineage from Macedonia, Greece""
Netflix’s ‘Queen Cleopatra’ Appears To Have The Worst Audience Score In TV History - "the show has done something I didn’t think was even possible. It has not just the lowest audience score in Netflix history, it has essentially the lowest audience score possible on Rotten Tomatoes, a 1%. Not a 10%, a 1%... I’ve never seen anything like this. Not with bad shows. Not with politically controversial shows prone to review bombing. Never this bad, not in Netflix history. Honesty, I think not even in TV history, at least with this many reviews in (over a thousand)... The last time I broached this topic was when Netflix’s now-cancelled Resident Evil adaptation scored a 22% with fans, one of the lowest I’d ever seen on the service... Fans usually rate things higher than critics, even bad shows, and the point being, a 1% audience score seems borderline mathematically impossible, even with the controversy the film has attracted. The issue is the conceptualization of what purports to be a historical documentary saying that Cleopatra was a black “African queen”... The creator of the series, Tina Gharvi, has defended the casting choice: “Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white? Her proximity to whiteness seems to give her value, and for some Egyptians it seems to really matter. After much hand-wringing and countless auditions, we found in Adele James an actor who could convey not only Cleopatra’s beauty, but also her strength. What the historians can confirm is that it is more likely that Cleopatra looked like Adele than Elizabeth Taylor ever did.”"
So much for "accurate history"
Let’s Just Call The Outrage Around ‘Queen Cleopatra’ What It Is: Racism - "The questions of historical inaccuracy and cultural appropriation – peppered with a predictable dose of racism – have made international headlines... While concerns about historical accuracy and erasure are valid, particularly when depicting stories as nuanced as Cleopatra’s, even the use of the phrase “Afrocentric thinking” in such a context is damaging. For starters, it’s emboldened white supremacists, who’ve crawled out of the darkest corners of the internet to spew hate and racial slurs at the cast and creators of the show... “Cleopatra ruled in Egypt long before the Arab settlement in North Africa,” said Dr Sally Ann Ashton, a research scientist and author of Cleopatra and Egypt, who appears in the documentary. “If the maternal side of her family were indigenous women, they would’ve been African, and this should be reflected in contemporary representations of Cleopatra.”... Unsurprisingly, past depictions of Cleopatra featuring white women have been critically and publicly acclaimed, with Vivien Leigh, Claudette Colbert and Elizabeth Taylor all appearing as the Egyptian queen over the course of the 20th century. Not one of these women is Macedonian, Greek or Egyptian, meaning their casting was no more “authentic” than James’s, and yet it never incited scandal... Perhaps the real question we should be asking ourselves is why ancient scholars placed so little importance on Cleopatra’s race, yet the modern world remains fixated on it almost two millennia after her death? When you strip away the academic posturing, so much of the backlash we’ve seen around Queen Cleopatra is simply racism masquerading as a heroic quest for factual accuracy. If there’s one thing that the reaction to James’s Queen Cleopatra has highlighted, it’s that, despite how progressive we may think we now are, the world still isn’t ready to accept the idea of people of colour thriving in a historical context"
How reliable of a scholar is Egyptologist Sally-Ann Ashton (a.k.a Kemet Expert)? - Quora - "She’s not. She did a PhD on Ptolemaic (Greek period) sculpture then switched to studying psychology and now works as a psychologist with black criminals in prisons. She sees afrocentric make-believe stories as a way to increase black self esteem, which she thinks will reduce black dysfunction and criminality. Whilst she was still pretending to be an Egyptologist she organised an exhibition in which she claimed that Egyptian combs (which are no different to bronze age combs from places like Scandinavia) were actually ‘afro combs’ because according to her the ancient Egyptians had afros. This completely ignored all of the scientific evidence which shows that ancient Egyptians had caucasoid hair. Science was of course never mentioned at any point in any of the texts associated with her ridiculous exhibition."
The cope is strong. If you criticise what someone who is black does, it's racist
Hate and racial slurs are only acceptable when they come from liberals (e.g. at Clarence Thomas)
We must of course reject the evidence of Egyptian tomb paintings and DNA studies
Apparently we're drawing distinctions between different types of white people now. Does that work for black people too?
Of course we can't question the makers of Cleopatra - only those who question their casting
Queen Cleopatra actress Adele James says claims of 'blackwashing' are 'fundamentally racist' - "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... Adele was appearing in the show with her co-star John Partridge, best known for his time in EastEnders. He added: 'The controversy is about Cleopatra being black, I don't hear anybody saying that Julius Caesar is a homosexual from Manchester. 'We're just actors at the end of the day, and sometimes our morality gets called into play, we're jobbing actors.'... Cairo's former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass condemned the documentary as 'completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning she was light-skinned, not black.' Hawass said the only rulers of Egypt known to have been black were the Kushite kings of the 25th Dynasty (747-656 BC). 'Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilization is black,' he added and called on his countrymen to take a stand against the streaming giant... lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary... alleged the show featured content that violated Egypt's media laws and accused Netflix of trying to 'promote the Afrocentric thinking ... which includes slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity.'... The fury at Netflix's right-on programming comes after it appeared to have ditched the woke messaging last year."
So denouncing whitewashing is racist too?
I like how ignoring Egyptian voices is the right thing to do. So much for empowering minorities
Meme - The Daily Show: "Egypt is concerned about the "historical accuracy" of casting a Black Cleopatra? I didn't hear you complaining when all them Mummy movies came out."
Dispropaganda @Dispropoganda: "That's because he Mummy" wasn't described as a "documentary"."
The Daily Show has really gone downhill
Netflix's 'Cleopatra' Prompts Egyptian Broadcaster To Make Its Own Series With Light-Skinned Star - "A government-owned Egyptian broadcaster has responded to the casting of a Black actress playing Cleopatra in the Netflix docudrama series 'African Queens' which streams from May 10, by announcing the production of its own big-budget Cleopatra doc... Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the government entity in charge of heritage, has complained on Twitter that: Statues of Queen Cleopatra confirm that she had Hellenistic (Greek) features, distinguished by light skin, a drawn-out nose and thin lips."
Meme - "Sir Lancelot. Julius Caesar. Heimdall. Orpheus.
Sir Bedivere. Achilles. Joan of Arc. Oenomaus. Margaret of Anjou. Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. Hannibal Barca. King Solomon. Friar Tuck. Zeus. Guinevere. Robert de Beaumont"
"The "we need to quit whitewashing history / white people have no culture starter pack.""
Bridgerton spin-off actress never watched period dramas ‘because everyone was white’ - "The star of Bridgerton’s new spin-off TV show has admitted she never watched period dramas growing up because they only featured white people. Mixed-race British actress India Amarteifio is set to play George III’s wife Queen Charlotte in a new Netflix series, a prequel to the international hit Bridgerton which will portray the royal consort as a woman of African descent... “I’m half black and white. My family looks like lots of different people."... There is no historical evidence that the wife of George III was of African descent, and claims for this descent based on descriptions of her physical appearance have been widely dismissed. British-Guyanese actress Golda Rosheuvel, who plays an older Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton’s new spin-off, which flashes back and forward throughout the queen's life, has previously stated that the ahistorical approach to casting the rules was “so empowering for an actress”. Ahead of taking on the role of consort in the new spin-off, which is set in the same fictional universe as Bridgerton, Amarteifio has now suggested that historical facts are not important for the series... “She’s a historical figure, but this isn’t a documentary, it’s a fantasy world in which real people exist.” The series has become known for its diverse casting, including a love interest known as Katherine Sheffield in the novels becoming Kathani Sharma, a woman of Indian descent, in the Netflix series. The characters of Lady Danbury, played by Adjoa Andoh, and the Duke of Hastings, played by Regé-Jean Page, were also non-white in a reimagined Regency in which racial toleration was premised on the fact that George III married a black woman"
I'm sure the lack of empathy will serve her in good stead in her acting
Apparently if you're half-white and half-black, you can't relate to white people. The one drop theory strikes again. White supremacists will be overjoyed
Meme - House of Tom Bombadil: "Called this last year. The star of the show about the legendary Helm Hammerhand is "unnamed daughter".
Edit- they called him HammerHEAD?!?
"'THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM' is led by a young woman named Hera, Helm Hammerhead's daughter."
Meme - "In Middle Earth, Must All Hobbits Be White? The film's casting director gets canned for seeking actors with "light skin tones""
Hobbit 1: "The Shire is modelled on rural England"
Hobbit 2: "That explains why we look like English farmers"
Liberal: "Nooo why don't they look like Somalians?"
'The Lord Of The Rings Online' Character Creator Adds Facial Hair Option For Women: "We Want To Make As Many Players Feel Represented In The Game As Possible" - "The idea of being fat and having epic adventures unimpeded was one of the changes Del Arroz, also noting that the image of the 16th celebrations with an abnormally diverse cast of characters for middle-earth was ridiculous."
Representation is just narcissism
True Inclusion Requires Viewpoint Diversity - The Atlantic - "many educational institutions that purport to value diversity and inclusion fail to treat viewpoint diversity—which she defines as “the recognition that nobody’s worldview is complete, and that no one marker of identity actually defines the way we see the world around us”—as a vital part of civic education. Her mission: to persuade educational institutions to put viewpoint diversity at the center of their cultures and curricula.
Teaching kids what to think instead of how to think is dangerous. Advocacy-based teaching deprives them of the skills [they need] to reach their own conclusions. Instead they learn to parrot what they know they’re supposed to say to get a good grade. Kids are really good at that, but it doesn’t translate to actually believing what they are saying or knowing why it’s supposed to be important. When you present students with different viewpoints, they develop critical skills, learn how others think, and understand why they came to a given belief... It takes teachers who are willing to step away from advocacy, regardless of how passionately they feel about a subject, and let the kids get there on their own. The first objective is for a school to become self-aware enough to know its strengths, its biases, and its relationship to the American political spectrum. A school that improves its overall self-awareness can better help students understand their own viewpoints and the viewpoints of others. The second objective is to cultivate intellectual humility so that students recognize that their worldview is incomplete and biased, and that other people have much to teach them. No matter how smart or moral we are, our worldviews aren’t complete. It’s easy to judge, but it’s better to be curious, because we don’t have all the answers. The third objective is related: to develop actively open-minded thinking skills, so that students can learn from and debate those whose viewpoints differ... One question I ask to get them thinking is, “Was Hitler a success?” And I let them grapple with it. He could be described as successful. He was a Time Magazine Man of the Year [once].* He succeeded, sadly, in his objectives for a long time before his defeat. And grappling with that nuance can help them learn. No one ever defends Hitler, by the way. The example works because everyone agrees he’s bad, but also successful by some definitions. I would hate to think that I wouldn’t be able to have that conversation in my classroom... I know that I’m taking a risk as an educator. People get offended easily, and the waters are growing much, much murkier on what is unacceptable, with teachers watching what they’re saying because they’re afraid of being canceled. But we have to be able to have difficult conversations where people disagree and everyone gets their say without feeling pressure to voice a particular opinion. The goal isn’t building consensus for the correct way of thinking; it’s increasing understanding amid different ways of thinking, because consensus doesn’t actually exist... There are people who worry that viewpoint diversity opens the doors for racism. The thing is, pretending racism isn’t there doesn’t make it disappear. Neither do diversity-training sessions where you get very specific messages about what people are supposed to think and feel. The studies on diversity training lacking efficacy are relevant—they don’t actually achieve their intended outcome... Sadly, I think many initiatives meant to make us more inclusive are actually making us more shut down, leading to more exclusion. So we all nod as if to agree—I'll say what you want me to say. But as soon as I’m with people I really trust, I talk differently, and wind up reinforced in what I already think... It’s useful to feel guilty when we understand that we violated a value that we believe in and should uphold, but it’s useless and ineffective to shame a person even when they don’t understand what they’ve done wrong. What you can do that is much more effective is to find out what a person does believe in and then appeal to that value"
Director Paul Schrader Says 'Oscars Mean Less Each Year,' Cites Academy's 'Scramble to Be Woke'
Richard Dreyfuss: Jaws Star Blasts New Oscars Diversity Rules - "Hollywood star Richard Dreyfuss, an Academy Award–winning actor best known for his role in the Jaws, said in an interview that the new diversity rules imposed by the Oscars for films to be eligible for the “Best Picture” award “make me vomit.”... “This is an art form. No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is.” New policies enacted by the Oscars in 2024 will see film award eligibility dependent upon meeting two of four stipulated diversity benchmarks. One, for instance, mandates a third of a movie cast must be comprised of “an underrepresented group.”... During the conversation, Dreyfuss praised Laurence Olivier’s performance of “Othello” performed in blackface in 1965. “Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a Black man?” Dreyfuss asked rhetorically. “Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?”... The actor also discussed his decades-long commitment to improving civics education. In 2006, the star created the Dreyfuss Civics Initiative aimed at revitalizing national awareness of government and politics. “I think we’re in the endgame right now,” he told PBS. “We could let slip the greatest idea for governance ever devised, and we won’t even know that it happened.” “I still can’t really wrap my head around the fact that people confuse being exposed to an opposing view on any subject with being a traitor or with being a subversive.” His comments come on the heels of scores for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a standardized test referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card” released on Wednesday, showing a worrying drop in civics knowledge for the average eighth-grader to the lowest point since they were first administered in 1998."
Meme - Moody | The Red Pilled Flipper @FlippingMoody: "I will never put "black-owned" or "woman-owned" on any of my work. If you are ONLY purchasing from me because of circumstances outside of my control- How will I ever know if my product is actually any good? No sympathy sales. Judge me on merit and nothing else."
1 in 6 hiring managers have been told to stop hiring white men, survey finds - "A recent survey of 1,000 hiring managers in the United States found that one in six, or about 16%, have been told to stop hiring white men. Additionally, 14% of hiring managers said they have also been told to deprioritize hiring white women. The survey, published by Resume Builder and Pollfish on Wednesday, found that 52% of hiring managers believe their company practices “reverse discrimination” – passing over members of racial and gender majorities in order to meet diversity benchmarks. In addition, the survey found that 48% of hiring managers have been asked to prioritize diversity over qualifications, and 53% believe their job will be in danger if they don’t hire enough diverse employees."
1 in 6 Hiring Managers Have Been Told to Stop Hiring White Men - ResumeBuilder.com - "The majority also ‘somewhat’ (35%) or ‘strongly’ (60%) believe that their company has been overall improved by having DEI initiatives"
This doesn't stop liberals from insisting that this isn't true, because white men have better outcomes and are still at the top. And when you point out that many people's lived experiences (including recruiters) testifies to this, they pretend that the testimonies aren't credible, since lived experience is only supposed to help liberal causes, not hurt them. I've seen liberals demand names of the witnesses to this discrimination, no doubt because they want to ruin these people by smearing them as racist.
Keywords: discriminate against hire straight white
New lawsuit says Google refused to hire white and Asian men - "A former YouTube employee has sued Google for allegedly pressuring recruiters to only look for female, black, and Hispanic or Latinx applicants. Arne Wilberg — who spent nine years working at Google — filed a discrimination suit... Wilberg’s lawsuit targets Google and 25 unnamed Google employees who allegedly enforced discriminatory hiring rules, quoting a number of emails and other documents. It claims that for several quarters, Google would only hire people from historically underrepresented groups for technical positions. In one hiring round, the team was allegedly instructed to cancel all software engineering interviews with non-diverse applicants below a certain experience level, and to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline.” California labor law prohibits refusing to hire employees based on characteristics like race or gender. Wilberg alleges that several employees complained to Google about the company’s hiring policies, but were either ignored, transferred, or demoted. The lawsuit says that some employees from marginalized groups were uncomfortable with a program called “Project Mirror,” where they would be specifically assigned to interview candidates of their own race or gender. One person allegedly “complained that managers were speaking about blacks like they were objects.”... the Journal cites anonymous sources that corroborate some of Wilberg’s claims."
Buckingham Palace balcony was ‘terribly white’, says Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh - "Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh called the Royal family’s balcony appearance during the Coronation “terribly white”... Contrasting the appearance of the family with the earlier events at Westminster Abbey, she said: “We’ve gone from the rich diversity of the Abbey to a terribly white balcony. I was very struck by that.” She added: “I am also looking at those younger generations and thinking, ‘What are the nuances that they will inhabit when they grow?’” It is understood a number of complaints have been made to media watchdog Ofcom regarding her comments, which have been branded “nonsense”. Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, the director of the racial tolerance campaign group Don’t Divide Us, said: “It’s telling that Adjoa Andoh feels so confident to use an official public platform to joke about whiteness, implying it’s somehow a lack or deficit, and diversity itself were a moral virtue. This is nonsense.” Andoh has spoken frequently on the issue of race and diversity in the theatre and TV industries. She starred as Richard III in a recent staging of Shakespeare’s work, and is known for playing Lady Danbury in the Netflix hit Bridgerton, and its spin-off Queen Charlotte, in which the wife of George III is depicted as mixed-race. Andoh has previously defended this depiction, stating in a panel decision that Queen Charlotte was in fact mixed-race and that this was evidenced by “contemporary documents”. However, historians have dismissed the supporting documentation."
Time to force them to marry black people to diversify the family
