In this blockbuster, Elizabeth Taylor plays Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt. It did not matter to the filmmakers that Cleopatra actually looked much more like Cicely Tyson. To cast an Egyptian pharaoh as anything but a White person would have been out of step with the racist fantasies the filmmakers desired to capitalize on. Whitewashing glorious non-Whites in history has been one of Hollywood’s favorite pastimes. As quite possibly the most acclaimed and popular movie on ancient Egypt, “Cleopatra” Whitewashed Black Egypt in the American mind probably more than any other film.
Egyptians would be pretty pissed off at being referred to as black if we’re honest about it, that’s something they use to describe the others further south. And Cleopatra wasn’t ethnically Egyptian anyway. Of Greek, Macedonian, descent.
True, not as pale white as Liz Taylor but most certainly not “black” in the meaning either of the time or today.
“The Passion of the Christ” did much more than tragically reinforce the myth that evil Jews killed Jesus—a myth that has inflamed anti-Semitic sentiment for centuries. If “Cleopatra” is the most notable cinematic Whitewashing of ancient Egyptians honored by the Oscars, then “The Passion of the Christ” is the most notable cinematic Whitewashing of Jesus honored by the Oscars. Jim Caviezel starred as Jesus Christ, satisfying the racist theological imagination that can only envision the son of God as a White man. To racist logic, just as the ancient Egyptian fashioners of human civilization must be White, God and his perfect god-son—the creators and saviors of humanity—must be White. Maybe the lightning that struck Caviezel during the filming of “The Passion of the Christ”—scourging him badly—was also meant to strike at this universal perception of Jesus as White.
Are Semites white? They’re certainly Caucasian….
This animated film produced by Walter Disney contained eight segments set to classical music. In “The Pastoral Symphony” segment, Disney presents an ancient Greco-Roman world of centaurs—heads of humans, bodies of horses—where Black female centaurs shine the hooves and groom the tails of the prettier White female centaurs. Critics immediately hailed “Fantasia” as a masterwork of animation, neglecting to mention it animated the racist ideas of Walt Disney for gullible American children.
Pretty weak really. American society really was pretty racist at that time. US Army was still fully segregated for example.
Black people had long been likened to apes in racist mythology. And so, it is hardly a stretch to say the film’s apes—who enslave the White astronauts after their long space journey—signify Black people in this movie.
Anyone noted that the Africa apes at least, chimps, bonobos, gorillas, are in fact black of face?
In the “Song of the South,” Walt Disney celebrated the docile, contented slave character of Uncle Remus, created and popularized by Joel Chandler Harris in the late 19th century. James Baskett starred as Uncle Remus and Disney cast Hattie McDaniel in her customary role as the happy Mammy.
Blimey, as best we know the Uncle Remus stories are the filtration through the slave experience of original West African stories. This is true oral history with a vengeance.
Ibram X. Kendi is an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida
Another place to add to our little list of universities not to get educated at.
““The Passion of the Christ” is the most notable cinematic Whitewashing of Jesus honored by the Oscars”
I didn’t think it got any.
But… but… isn’t race a social construct?
Also, Uncle Remus isn’t a slave, and is an overwhelmingly positive portrayal of a black character. I saw the movie as a child on its re-release, and saw a kind, wise and lovable old man. Is this not how black people should be portrayed?
According to Wikipedia (and I can’t be bothered to look any further), it didn’t win any Oscars. And the only ones it was nominated for were the technical ones that have nothing to do with the story (make-up, music, cinematography).
But, amusingly given these claims that it was racist, it apparently won a couple of the top awards from the Ethnic Multicultural Media Academy, whatever that is.
Richard, The Passion of The Christ was nominated in the Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Achievement in Make Up categories. It didn’t win any of them.
Richard, I see you have also looked it up in imdb
Salon is a room with padded walls.
It makes the Guardian look like the Daily Telegraph, c. 1986.
If Ibram hates whites so much, why does he still call himself after Abraham?
@ dearieme
Because he believes that Abraham, and the prophet Joshua of Nazareth (“Jesus” in Grecian texts) were, like the Macedonian princess Cleopatra, black
One of the astronauts was black.
The Rocky one is hilarious. Any black character is an anti-racist force therefore any opposing white character must be racist. Or perhaps it is just boxing. Is this a spoof article?
Is this not how black people should be portrayed?
Nope. Not A-A males, at least. They should be either thugs – a la Shug Knight – or self-absorbed whiners like Ta-Nehisi Coates… Or rich entertainers who hate whitey – such as, well, there are too many to mention.
Black men like Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and Ben Carson are to be loathed and ridiculed. Jim Brown once stated there was no way to describe an A-A male positively without offending someone, and he was right.
Ibram is an Islamic name is it not?
So he clearly has no problem with the vast number of slaves taken by islamics.
Most of whom died before they even got to the Islamic zone.
The idiot spews shite.
Re: Song of the South.
It’s a movie aimed at innocent little tots, hence the kindly old man and the funny cartoon rabbit.
Anybody who finds that objectionable should be sold as a slave.
http://blog.oup.com/2010/12/cleopatra-2/
The “X-American studies” is a bizarre field full of crazies and the useless.
@ Dennis
How does one portray Martin Luther King? Or Colin Powell? Or *all* of LBJ’s servants? Or Jesse Owens? or …..
“Fantasia” – In all the times I’ve watched it, the racism has never registered. Come to think of it, the lesbian overtones have passed me by as well.
Ibram is an Islamic name is it not?
No, it’s the name given to Kendi by his Christian parents.
I used to have a golliwog (in fact it may still be in the attic of my parents house somewhere). I note they seem to have been phased out, mainly to be replaced by white anthropomorphic dolls.
Should I write to this gentleman to ask whether I should be looking for that golliwog to give to some young child today in the interests of race equality?
Confused of North of the Border
@ BraveFart
I always associated golliwogs with marmalade. Now that I am grown up, I realise that using Seville Oranges is racist and we must accept the protest about golliwogs from Orange County.
john77,
But on no account should your marmalade use Jaffa oranges. That’s supporting the Zionist imperialists, or something.
The idiot spews shite.
Well, quite so, Ecksy. That said, your frequently scatological and coprophobic abuse makes me wonder whether your toilet training was in some way deeply traumatic….
I’ve always thought of arabs as Western Oriental Gentlemens; but on reflection perhaps they are caucasoid, rather than Caucasian. Or do the wogs start at Calais?
Theo–as a supporter of the Conservative Party your experience and acquaintance with ordure by far exceeds mine.
SJW–He may not be an islamist but he is a vicious cunt who spews out mountains of white-hate. And ignores Islamic antics to boot.
Sample shite–“We must no longer ignore the racism of Woodrow Wilson”.
Indeed– because the actions of a man who died in 1924 are of obvious vital importance.
If he was churning this vile offal on his own dollar –or had found enough idiots to buy his garbage–well free speech would cover that tho’ scum he be. But American taxpayers are paying for a nice living for this hate-monger.
It seems the Yanks need a Uni-purge too.
@ Andrew M
+1 to you
“We must no longer ignore the racism of Woodrow Wilson”
Yes, so racist to insist that self-identified peoples should have self-determination.
Wilson was actually pretty racist. He introduced segregation to government departments in Washington. Not something the Proggies are too keen to dwell on, him being an arch progressive and all.
Which is perhaps a good reason that we should.
How does one portray Martin Luther King? Or Colin Powell? Or *all* of LBJ’s servants? Or Jesse Owens? or …..
Well, John, if you’d been paying attention you’d have noticed that they have become unpersons to the Salon crowd (white leftists and establishment blacks). Since you haven’t noticed it, I’ll explain it for you:
The likes of Colin Powell and Condi Rice are unpersons because they are race traitors. They A-A of achievement and/or distinction who either where Republicans or they worked for Republican administrations. Powell also committed the unforgivable sin of winning a war in the Middle East. The reason they are not openly vilified these days is largely because they have retired from public life. Were they to re-enter the public arena, they would get the full Clarence Thomas treatement (as they did back in the ’90s).
ML King, Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson are also unpersons, but for slightly different reasons. This is the era of re-segregation by choice… lead by the 21st century house negro, Ta-Nehishi Coates, and cheered on the white plantation owners (the White Left) and other house negroes (the black Democratic establishment and intelligentsia). At a time when the house negroes are selling the idea that the USA can never be successfully be integrated, the last thing they want is to celebrate those A-A who sacrificed mightily to bring integration about.
Hope that cleared things up for you.
> “Are Semites white? They’re certainly Caucasian….”
You’re opening a can of worms there Tim.
“Black people had long been likened to apes in racist mythology. And so, it is hardly a stretch to say the film’s apes—who enslave the White astronauts after their long space journey—signify Black people in this movie”
Er, I really think you’ve missed the point of the film. I mean REALLY missed it; not just failed to pick up on the odd sub – theme.
Or do the wogs start at Calais?
Calais? You must be joking.
If you are travelling East from Ohio, the wogs start at New York City and don’t stop until you leave Los Angeles. If travelling West from Ohio, they start at San Francisco and end when you leave New York City.
I’d have to rewatch “Song of the South” to be sure my memoirs aren’t completely biased but as I recall Uncle Remus would actually make a good role model. My take was that he was the kindly old man that gave good advice. At this rate Red in “Shawshank Redemption” will be on the list before long as well.
Wilson’s race attitudes are those of the Shenandoah Valley rednecks I went to high school with. Simply keep the blacks in their own little area and as long as they don’t get uppity life is fine. The only reason I didn’t end up with the same prejudices was I made the mistake of recognizing that black people are actually human beings.
@ Dennis the Peasant
I chose Jesse Owens instead of Floyd Patterson lest FP be deemed an “Uncle Tom” for demonstrating that African-Americans could succeed through ability without denouncing the whites. It has been reported that the Germans treated Jesse Owens better than his fellow-Americans did.
No, I haven’t been paying that much attentionto the Salon crowd because I wish to retain my sanity and not to punch out innumerable computer screens.
@ LY
The first black kid I met was at Public School, the son of a Nigerian chief. We also had a very few other Africans (mostly white with a permanent tan), some Moslem Indians, Pakistanis, French, Swiss, British ex-patriates and a lot of Jews (allegedly the governors had a policy of restricting the number of Jews to 10% since the whole purpose of the school was to educate Non-conformist Christians). It never occurred to us that black people were not human beings because there were so few that we had to view them as individuals.
FYI In the book Red was Irish – probably referring to his hair – but I liked Morgan Freeman in the film
On a similar vein the first foreigner I met was a Pole who had flown for the RAF after Poland fell, having fought for Poland before that.
I am grateful for the explanation that Salon types may assume that Ur of the Chaldees was populated by subSaharan Africans.
Makes you wonder why we call them subSaharan, really.
Yes, I know the OT is wrong about Abraham and Ur of the Chaldees; that’s because it was largely made up long after the events – if events there were.
@ dearieme
You *know*? Like Richard Dakins claimed to know that God did not exist until someone pointed out that his claim amounted to proclaiming himself omniscient and, hence, God.
‘Egyptians would be pretty pissed off at being referred to as black if we’re honest about it, that’s something they use to describe the others further south’.
Yes, indeed. Sudanese refugees fleeing the delights of Darfur etc have found that Egypt has offered them a less than hospitable welcome. Not that Prof Kendi will be aware of something like that.
‘And so, it is hardly a stretch to say the film’s apes—who enslave the White astronauts after their long space journey—signify Black people in this movie’.
To describe that as an accurate interpretation of the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie (not to mention its sequels) would be more than a bit of a stretch. It would be a fucking massive exaggeration.
sackcloth and ashes – “To describe that as an accurate interpretation of the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie (not to mention its sequels) would be more than a bit of a stretch. It would be a fucking massive exaggeration.”
Actually I don’t think so. Granted the author and the article are way out there, but the PotA is one of many works around the time of the Civil Rights movement that imagined Whites getting what was coming to them through a role reversal – Whites were now the “sub-human” slaves. Now some of these works clearly took pleasure in that, some of them did not. Some of them were more open about identifying Black people as the new masters. But I think the author is right.
After all, Heston’s line “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” only really has shock value if said to a Black person.
The film is right of course. Future generations will look at the ruins of the Statue of Liberty and curse our ruling class.
sackcloth and ashes – “Yes, indeed. Sudanese refugees fleeing the delights of Darfur etc have found that Egypt has offered them a less than hospitable welcome. Not that Prof Kendi will be aware of something like that.”
On the other hand Sadat was partly Sudanese by descent. Maybe Egyptians wouldn’t have voted for him. It didn’t seem to have hurt his career. Or prevented him from working for the Nazis.
He was, by all accounts, very sensitive about it though and did not like people mentioning it. Or calling him Nasser’s pet Black poodle. Like all Mediterranean types, he seems to have used his rise to marry White. In his case, he dumped his peasant wife to marry a mid-teen half-English upper middle class girl.
So who is more ignorant? The Salon author or the Time author…
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/02/correction-of-the-day-evelyn-waugh-was-not-a-woman/
Pretty weak really. American society really was pretty racist at that time. US Army was still fully segregated for example.
Apart from the Cleopatra thing, I am not sure what is annoying about this. His tone certainly. Was America more racist back in the day? Sure. Inevitably that was reflected in films like Fantasia. So what? I think what annoys him is that we just don’t care. I am sure that the travails of being a Black man in America feature prominently in his life, but I doubt the rest of us give a damn. Hence his need to act out.
In fact if you assuming that most of what Black men do is a cry for help – acting out in order to attract White attention – then the world becomes so much more simple. As does the Middle East. How much would we ever hear about Blacks or Muslims if they weren’t committing acts of violence? To put it gently, it is not as if there are unsung heroes in the fight against cancer in these communities.
It must be hard to live surrounded by a much more advanced society without the slightest idea of how to copy it or even adapt to it very well. I would think that European Jews used to feel this way but made enough progress in science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that they don’t need to feel so bad about it any more – and besides, White people aren’t trying to kill them and Muslims are.
So with luck that is the route that Blacks will take. A few of them will achieve so much that other Blacks no longer feel utterly inferior and need to lie about White Europeans like Cleopatra. But certainly they will never be happy as long as the people they are obsessed with continue to regard them as utterly unimportant to their lives.
the PotA is one of many works around the time of the Civil Rights movement that imagined Whites getting what was coming to them through a role reversal – Whites were now the “sub-human” slaves.
Haha, yes. The allegory is not exactly subtle. When Hollywood does something metaphorical, they insist on banging you on the head with it.
“You *know*? Like Richard Dakins”: no, I know the OT is talking twaddle on Abraham and Ur of the Chaldees because the success of archaeology and cryptology mean that modern scholars know far more about Mesopotamian history than did the chaps who wrote the early books of the OT sometime around the Babylonian exile. Their ignorance also explains why they have load-bearing camels in their stories long before the camel had been domesticated.
There might be bits of history in some of the later parts of the OT but the early parts are largely or entirely junk. There was no Exodus, no conquest by Joshua, no Empire of Solomon, etc, etc. All baloney.
I’m a Biblical late-ist myself. I think most of the OT was written as Maccabeean propaganda, which helps explain why the Holy writ of this inconsequential tribe has such delusions of imperial grandeur.
Not just ignorant, also thick
And she wasn’t the last Pharoah either. She was succeeded by her son Caesarian for a very brief period
Ian, I think most biblical scholars accept that the major parts of the Pentateuch were written down in their current form sometime around 6-700 BC but evolved somewhat earlier. That’s just a wee bit early for the Maccabees, who are after all pretty well represented (two sides of them anyway) in the apocryphal books I and II Maccabees.
That the early books are a synthesis of earlier myths is not under dispute, and there’s no doubt that a lot of the historical figures did exist even if not exactly as portrayed. But I don’t think there’s much evidence for a significant rewrite of the Old Testament as late as you think.
Cleopatra was a middle-aged Greek woman who had been pampered all her life. The logical person to play her would be Jennifer Aniston if she would stop dying her hair.
“there’s no doubt that a lot of the historical figures did exist even if not exactly as portrayed”: who do you have in mind?
“That the early books are a synthesis of earlier myths is not under dispute, and there’s no doubt that a lot of the historical figures did exist even if not exactly as portrayed. But I don’t think there’s much evidence for a significant rewrite of the Old Testament as late as you think.”
Many scholars believe that the stories of Moses and the Great Flood are based on Babylonian myths. If you read the story of Sargon, it bears a striking resemblance to the Moses story, which it predates by a couple of thousand years:
” Sargon, mighty King of Akkad, am I. My mother was of mixed blood; I never knew my father…My city is Azupiranu, on the banks of the Euphrates. My mother conceived and she secretly bore me. She put me into a basket of rushes, and sealed its lid with tar. She cast me into the river which did not drown me. The river swept me to Akiki, the drawer of water. Akiki, the drawer of water scooped me up in his pitcher. Akiki, the drawer of water raised me as his son.”
http://www.rejectionofpascalswager.net/moses.html
@ dearieme
The first referenceI get when trying to check you somewhat surprising assertion was
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2014/02/17/The-Date-of-Camel-Domestication-in-the-Ancient-Near-East.aspx#Article
which counters claims that “camels *cannot* have been domesticated because we don’t have proof that they were” (a lame and illogical argument) with evidence of domesticated camels that pre-dates any Biblical reference
A Christian apologetics site thinks camels were domesticated as load-carrying creatures early enough for them to make sense in the tale of Abraham. Fair enough: their discussion looks interesting. But the scholarly consensus (which may be wrong of course) says otherwise. From wiki: “Most scholars today agree that the dromedary was exploited as a pack animal sometime in the early Iron Age (not before the 12th century BCE)” and concludes that “Current data from copper smelting sites of the Aravah Valley enable us to pinpoint the introduction of domestic camels to the southern Levant more precisely based on stratigraphic contexts associated with an extensive suite of radiocarbon dates. The data indicate that this event occurred not earlier than the last third of the 10th century BCE and most probably during this time. The coincidence of this event with a major reorganization of the copper industry of the region—attributed to the results of the campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I—raises the possibility that the two were connected, and that camels were introduced as part of the efforts to improve efficiency by facilitating trade.”
I always hated Planet of the Apes, and its dismal sequels.
I like scifi for the big shiny spaceships, mysterious aliens, and homicidal robots.
Dirty, smelly monkeys do nothing for me. Even when played by the delightful Roddy McDowell.
@ dearieme
That was the first link I came to – I didn’t particularily select it but if it can produce photgraphs of artefacts dating back to the early second millennium and probably millennium showing domesticated camels then your scholarly consensus is clearly wrong. Science rejects theories when they are proved wrong.
Ed-
I did state that it’s my opinion, not the scholarly consensus. I don’t think there was anything much recognisable as Judaism until after the “exile” and into the Persian period, but that the recognisable form of the OT- edited, redacted and organised, was Maccabeean, with the Hasmonean Dynasty representing the triumph of a great plan by Yahweh. Hence the mythical Davidic/Solomonic Empire to justify their own by precedent.
Solomon for instance looks to me to be a pretty direct swipe from Shalmanesser, who also boasted about building (well, majorly restoring) his temple, cedars from Lebanon and all that, grafted on as a sequel to some old folk tales about a great chieftain called David (well, Dwd or Dvd or Dvt or something, there being no vowels and all that).
By the way, Moses is a funny old name, Egyptian “-mose” means child of, like Ahmose, Thutmose etc. So it’s like the Scots having a hero who is just called “Mac”. Or indeed a Jewish fellow who is just called “Bar”. Very odd.
Christian scholars have been studying the Old Testament for nearly 2000 years but atheists think that one off-beat researcher trumps 1900 years of scholarly research. When Tim mentions a feminist trying that on, there are usually a dozen guys and gals shooting her/”they” down.
There is archaeological evidence of a great flood, so there is no need for Biblical stories of it to be based on Babylonian ones.
There is also archaeological evidence for the Tempole in Jerusalem – only a totally, and I do mean totally, bigoted individual could believe that reports of Solomon’s Temple are just a copy of a Babylonian one.
“Christian scholars have been studying the Old Testament for nearly 2000 years”: and until the 18th and 19th centuries they worked in a hopelessly uncritical way, to the extent that they weren’t scholars in a modern sense at all. The idea that Moses and co aren’t a load of baloney strikes me as exceedingly unlikely. I’ll grant you that, on the balance of evidence, I’m inclined to the notion that Jesus existed, a small-time preacher and magician from Galilee. But then the first of the Gospels was written, probably, within forty years of his death, and Paul’s letters were even earlier (though Paul doesn’t have much to say about the historical Jesus, if I remember correctly).
But Moses? Phooey!
There is no arguing with militant atheists who ignore any evidence that does not suit their case. Centuries of disputation with major schisms is dismissed as being hopelessly uncritical. There is more evidence of Jesus’ existence than of Gaius Caesar’s but there are no Cambridge professors waxing eloquent about Caesar being a myth.
Those of us who are old enough may remember a scholarly piece of research that concluded that The Iliad was written by Homer or *someone else with the same name*.
There is no archaeological evidence for the First (Solomon’s) Temple, nor for Solomon himself. David is arguably attested by the Tel Dan Stele, if it is genuine, and if Bitdwd does refer to a historical David. The first dynasty referred to by the Bible which is archaelogically supported is the Samarian Omride Dynasty.
Much of the Bible’s “histories” read as historical romances, and David’s exploits are an example. Stories like Esther are another example. Perhaps David is based on a real warrior chief, but then maybe so is King Arthur. But if the latter is the case, it does not follow that the romantic Arthurian tales, Camelot, the round table etc, are true.
So, it’s all guesswork, and it comes down to plausible scenarios. As I said, this is my personal opinion; to me it looks from Ezra/Nehemiah as if proto-Judaism comes together when a temple state (Yehud) is set up under Persian sponsorship, but the final recognisable form coalesces as an “imperial ideology” under the Hasmoneans to (a) present them as the rightful, divinely sponsored rulers of an ancient people who (b) once had an Empire and thus the greater Levant was given to them by Yahweh and (c) the lesson of history is that when the people disobey Yahweh, he visits His wrath upon them with subjection, natural disasters, etc. Hence the repeating theme of an Israel who “backslide” and suffer divine punishment, come again to Yahweh, then backslide…
“There is more evidence of Jesus’ existence than of Gaius Caesar’s but there are no Cambridge professors waxing eloquent about Caesar being a myth.”
It depends what Gaius Caesar you’re talking about, but there is plenty of evidence for several.
Which one did you mean?
Those of us who are old enough may remember a scholarly piece of research that concluded that The Iliad was written by Homer or *someone else with the same name*.
Only if you’re old enough to start remembering jokes as reality.
There was a scholarly suggestion that “the man who wrote the Odyssey was not the same man who wrote the Iliad, but another of the same name”. From which the joke.
No archaeological digs are permitted on the Temple Mount so Ian B adduces the lack of them as evidence that Solomon’s temple did not exist.
Pathetic!
@ SJW
I don’t remember the Shakespeare joke to which you link, just the piece of research which is referred to in your other link.
Why don’t you bother to read the links you find?
j77: you’d have to read several paragraphs into the link to get to the Homer version of the joke first made about Shakespeare. I dare say you were too tired, what with having to misremember every piece of scholarship since 1840.