Was Cleopatra Black | Newark, NJ Patch – Patch.com

Hotep (An Ancient Afrikan / Kemetic / EgyptIan word for Peace)!!!

Take notes!!!!!!!!

This current controversy over Cleopatra being portrayed by a White woman is an old argument. In an upcoming movie titled, ‘Queen of the Nile’ Israeli actress Gal Gadot will play Cleopatra-an Afrikan queen. Gadot is known for playing Wonder Woman. However, in 1963 Hollywood used the talents of legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor to portray Cleopatra. Gadot’s movie on Cleopatra has again ignited a reoccurring argument over whether or not Cleopatra was Black. But there is a deeper argument at bay. Cleopatra is an extension of a larger debate: WERE THE ANCIENT KEMITS (EGYPTIANS) REALLY BLACK.

For centuries, White supremacy and the system of racism have been working hard to Europeanized and Arabized many aspects of Afrkan History and culture, especially ancient Kemet (Egypt).

Although Almost all scientists and historians agree that Afrika is the birthplace of humanity. However many mainstream historians and Egyptologists consistently give ambiguous arguments about Afrika’s role as the mother of the world’s civilizations and religions. Many historians and Egyptologists that do give credit to Afrika as being the mother of the world’s civilizations and religions are considered “radical.”

The battle wages onward over to this day about Afrika’s central role in world as the developer of the world’s civilizations and religions, especially about Kemetic (Egyptian) civilization being authored by Black people.

(Many historians and Egyptologists say the original name of Egypt is Kemet. The name Kemet means the land of the blacks or the black land.)

However, white supremacy and the system of racism is committed to discrediting Black people as the originators of Western civilization and framers for all Abrahamic faith traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam). Historians and Egyptologists that present a racist narrative to the world about Black people are still trying to justify to the world the reasoning behind the enslavement, segregation, and colonialization of Afrikan people. They have white washed Kemet. And at all costs, Kemet must be presented to the world as a civilization with European and Arab origins.

For example, Dr. James Breasted is the founder of America’s school of Egyptology at the University of Chicago in Illinois. The school of Egyptology is presently one of the world’s most premier programs on the study and science of Kemetic (Egyptian) history, religion and culture of today. His work on the history of Kemet (Egypt) is great and credible. It is worth reading and studying.

In his research, Dr. Breasted acknowledges that Kemet (Egypt) is the world’s first major civilization. He shows that Kemet (Egypt) is the author of the world’s civilizations and western religions (i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam). Dr. Breasted has documented that Kemet (Egypt) led the world in science, mathematics, agriculture, government, law, theology, philosophy, ethics, a written language, monotheism, the idea of the aseity of God, medicine, architecture, the invention of paper, the invention of 365 day calendar, the belief in the afterlife, the belief in a soul, the belief in the judgement of a the soul, the belief in spirituality, and the resurrection story thousands of years before there was such a thing called Europe, Mesopotamia, Western Asia (the Middle East), China, Greece, Rome, Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam in the known world.

However, his beliefs in white supremacist notions about Afrika and Black people would not allow him to go on record to say that before the invasions of the Assyrians (676 B.C.E), the Persians (525 B.C.E.) the Greeks( 332 B.C.E.), the Romans (30 B.C.E.) and the Arabs (646 A.D.) in history; Kemet was an indigenous all Black civilization from 10,000 B.C.E to the foreign invading forces from Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. After these invaders and conquerers came to Afrika, Kemet (Egypt) became a mixture of different cultures from the Black, White, and West Asians (Middle eastern) worlds. However, Dr. Breasted argued that Kemetic (Egyptians) people were White people from the beginning to the end of Kemetic (Egyptian) dominance on the earth. We know this to be untrue.

His scholarship on the civilizations of antiquity are extremely biased towards Afrikan history and culture.

Dr. Breasted’s book called ‘Ancient Times’ is steeped in white supremacy. In fact, the scholarship in this book has contributed greatly to the ideology of white supremacy and the system of racism in America and in the world; particularly in the field of Egyptology. Dr. Breasted writes on page 12, “in North Africa these people were dark-skinned, but nevertheless physically they belong to the Great White Race.” On the very next page is a map of North Afrika, the Mediterranean, Europe, Asia, and West Asia (the Middle East). Right on that page in highlighted black ink it reads the following: THE GREAT WHITE RACE.

Now Dr. Breasted made these white supremacist statements despite the fact that radical scholarship revealed that Kemet (Egypt) was a Black civilization and that Afrika is the mother of humanity.

For example, Count C.F. Volney went to Kemet (Egypt) with Napoleon Bonaparte’s team of European scholarly professionals in 1798. At this this time Napoleon was the Emperor of France, but he had an interest in the ancient world. They discovered that Kemet was a great Black civilization in Afrika and that she influenced the world. But Volney’s research already lead him to see that Kemet (Egypt) was a Black civilizations years before his trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Napoleon. In 1787, Volney writes in his book, Voyages on Syrie Et En Egypt on pages 74-77, about Kemet (Egypt) being a Black civilization. He writes, “all have a bloated face, puffed up eyes, flat nose, thick lips; in word, the true face of the mulatto. I was tempted to attributed it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key the riddle. On seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remember the remarkable passages where Herodotus says: “as for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians because, like them, they are Black with wooly hair……” In other words, the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Romans and Greeks must have lost the intensity of its original colour, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mould. We can even state as a general principle that the face is a kind monument able, in many cases, to attest or shed light on historical evidence on the origins of peoples…..But returning to Egypt, the lesson she teaches history contains many reflections for philosophy. What a subject for meditation, to see the present barbarism and ignorance of the Copts, descendants of the alliance between the profound genius of the Egyptians and the brilliant minds of Greeks! Just think that the race of Black men, today our slaves and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech. Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of peoples who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery and questions whether Blackmen have the same kind of intelligence as Whites!”

Again these are arguments about whether or not Afrika is the mother of civilizations, and Kemet being of Black origins are old.

Seeing this new article on Cleopatra being protrayed by a White woman inspired me to go to my library.

I had to dig deep in my library crates to pull old articles in Newsweek magazine from the early 1990s on the national debates about whether or not Kemet was a Black civilization. Thank god Newsweek has digitized some of these old issues. I also found them on the internet.

I found one about cleopatra and Kemet being Black. Afrocentricity brought on these debates about the blackness of Cleopatra and Kemet to the national stage in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The movement of Afrocentricity of the late 1980s and 1990s was a major movement in America and in the world. Afrocentricity is an Afrikan centered intellectual movement challenging White supremacist and racist notions about Black people, Afrika, Afrikan History, Afrikan culture, Afrikan spirituality, World History, Caribbean History, western religions, and American History. Some of Its leaders consists of the following scholars: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, Dr. John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Professor Jacob Carruthers, Professor Ashra Kwesi, Dr. Tony Browder, Professor Dr. Runoko Rashidi, Professor James Smalls, Dr. Naim Akbar, Dr. Lenard Jeffries, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Dr. Marimba Ani, Dr. Charshee McIntyre, Dr. Amos Wilson, Dr. Maulana Karenga, and Dr. Molefe Kete Asante. Their commitment to Afrikan centered scholarship has led to the re-awaking of the Black mind in America and in the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Afrocentricity inspired Black people to acquire the knowledge of self and Hip Hop to become conscious. Afrocentricity was the movement in the streets.

Dr. Molefe Kete Asante, Professor of African American Studies at Temple University, and the author of book called Afrocentricity, says, “African people will be the subject of history, not objects.”

Through the lens of Afrocentricity, Black people were challenging White and Arab scholars to rewrite Kemet as belonging to Afrikan history and culture on a world stage.

One of the foundational intellectual pillars of Afrocentricity was the late Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop. He live from December 29, 1923 to February 7, 1986. Dr. Diop was a world renowned scientist and political theorist from Senegal, Afrika. He had the intellectual temerity to say to the world that Kemet and her people were autochthonous to Afrika. Dr. Diop was known for his famous carbon testing on mummified Kemetic people. His results proved that the Kemetic people were in fact Black people.

Dr. Diop wrote many books, but one of his most important texts is The African Origins of Civilizations: Myth or Reality, Published in 1976, Dr. Diop documents with sound data, evidence, and research on Afrika’s contributions to the world’s civilizations and religions. But he begins his arguments on Afrika’s role in the development of the world’s civilizations and religions starting with Kemet. In Kemet, the world found its pathway to civilization and religiosity.

In the preface of the book on pages XIV-XV, Dr. Diop writes, “The ancient Egyptians were Negroes. The moral fruit of their civilization is to be counted among the assets of the Black world. Instead of presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor, that Black world is the very initiator of the “western” civilization flaunted before our eyes today. Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science. One need only to mediate on Osiris, the redeemer-god, who sacrifices himself, dies, and is resurrected to save mankind, a figure essentially identifiable with Christ. A visitor to Thebes in the Valley of the Kings can view the Moslem inferno in detail (in the tomb of Seti I, of the Nineteenth Dynasty), 1700 years before the Koran. Osiris at the tribunal of the dead is indeed the “lord” of revealed religions, sitting enthroned on Judgement Day, and we know that certain biblical passages are practically copies of Egyptian moral text.”

Profound research coming from Dr. Diop.

He once said, “the ancestors of the Blacks, who today live mainly in Black Africa, were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, sciences in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organisation, medicine, writing, technique, architecture”

At the height of the Afrocentric movement, I was a undergraduate history student at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ. (I graduated with honors in 1993.) I remember the movement of Afrocentricity making national news all the time.

In another old Newsweek article titled, “Out of Africa, Greece” dated on September 22, 1991, the writer named SHARON BEGLEY explores the Afrocentric challenge to European and Arab domination. She writes, “For years many African scholars have argued that the answer is as plain as the Sphinx’s face: Egypt was a black civilization. By inference, say some Afrocentrists, Euclid, Homer, Socrates and Egyptian royals from Tut to Cleopatra were African blacks” (https://www.newsweek.com/out-e… ).

In 1992, Journalists Lynn Duke wrote an article titled, “AFRICAN-CENTERED CURRICULA: RECLAIMING HISTORY OR REWRITING IT?” She writes, “as public schools struggle with how to present the histories of diverse cultures, the movement called Afrocentrism has sparked a cultural war among scholars over whose interpretation of history is valid” (https://www.washingtonpost.com… ).

The movement was reshaping the lessons in World and American history. It began to make Black lives matter. As a consequence, Afrocentricity threatened the establishments of the world. The world order struck back by sending the late Dr. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

He was one of the academy’s prominent history scholars in America. Dr. Schlesinger published a book called the “Disuniting of America.” He viciously attacked Afrocentricity in his scholarship. Dr. Schlesinger called Afrocentricity a, “cult of ethnicity.” in which history is to be rewritten so that Africa can appear great.”

Another establishment scholar was summoned to attack Afrocentricity, a scholar named Dr. Mary Lefkowitz. She wrote a book called, “Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became An Excuse to Teach Myth As History.” It was published in 1996. Not Out of Africa was produced in response to the popular and massive Afrocentric movement taking place amongst Black people in America and in the world in the late 1980s to mid 1990s. She argues in her book, “Kemet (Egypt) did not play any role in the development of Greek culture and civilization.”

Professor Lefkowitz is very anti-Black. The late Dr. Martin Bernal once said, “Not Out of Africa is an extremely provocative book.”

Dr. Bernal, who was White, and a former Cornell University professor, wrote a review of the book Not Out of Africa, in the London Review of Books dated on December 12, 1996 titled, “Whose Greece.” He wrote, “Mary Lefkowitz’s concern, or obsession, with Afrocentrism emerged suddenly in 1991, when she wrote a review of my book Black Athena for the New Republic. As a professor of classics, she was appalled to discover that people were writing books and teaching that Greek civilisation had derived – or even been ‘stolen’ – from Egypt, and claiming that the Ancient Egyptians were black, as were Socrates and Cleopatra. The Afrocentrists maintained that Greece had been invaded from Africa in the middle of the second millennium, that Greek religion and the mysteries were based on Egyptian prototypes, and that what was called ‘Greek’ philosophy was in fact the secret wisdom of Egyptian Masonry.”

Dr. Bernal went on to say, “For this reason, she has published a series of overlapping articles denouncing these Afrocentrist “myths.” Not Out of Africa is a compilation of these pieces, along with some added material and new arguments. The blurb on the back of the book proclaims it to be ‘a thoughtful inquiry’, ‘detailed, carefully researched and fully documented’. In fact, this is not an argument conducted with the Afrocentrists, but an attempt to finish them off” (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-pape… ).

All of these arguments about Afrikan history and culture took place in the 1980s and 1990s. But it has not stop. In contemporary times, the world order will still continue to discredit Afrikan history and culture.

As recent as 2019, a book called ‘Defining Legends: An Analysis of Afrocentric Writings Against Islam’ was published to attack Afrocentricity. The book is written by an English born western and Saudi Arabia educated Ghanaian named Dr. Abdul Haq al Ashanti. His book was published in 2019. In my naïveté, I thought Defining Legends was going to offer a balanced critique of Afrocentricity written by a Black scholar. Unfortunately, I was completely wrong. From start to finish, his “scholarship” clearly demonstrated that Dr. al Ashanti is a Arabized self hating Afrikan. (Arabized Afrikan is a term describing a Black person who firmly believes that the authenticity of the religion of Al-Islam is founded on Arab culture. Some Black Muslims do not follow this thinking. Not all Black Muslims in the Islamic world are Arabized Afrikans. Some Black Muslims are pro-Black. However, Arabized Afrikans do exist in the world. Arabized Afrikans are against Blackness and anything that promotes non Arabic culture. Arabism is a racist belief that Arab history, culture, and language are superior to all non-Arab civilizations.) Dr. al Ashanti has a deep religious problem with Afrocentricity. His writings are absolutely committed to helping to destroy Black people’s path to Black liberation using Afrocentricity.

When reading his book, it becomes clear on Dr. al Ashanti’s intentions. They are to undermine Black people’s struggle to look at the world from their own Afrikan-centered worldview. He believes in his mind that Afrocentricity is the threat to Al-Islam. Dr. al Ashanti does not see Afrocentricity as the proper and natural vehicle for Black people to liberated ourselves from centuries of world-wide White supremacy and the systematic institutionalized of racist oppression.

Dr. al Ashanti writes page 19 of his book, “since the 1960s there has been a rapid and phenomenal increase of people in the West embracing Islam and the majority of those in the West who are turning to Islam are people of African origin in the UK and the USA. At the same time, Afrocentric ideology has also spread in the West which has, since the 1970s, argued that Islam itself was a religion of Arab conquerers that plundered Africa to the detriment of the African people themselves and this (Kemet Afrocentricity, various Hebrew Israelite cults or ‘black Orientalism has emerged to counter this growth of people of African origin turning to Islam.” In other words, Dr al Ashanti believes Afrocentricity, not White supremacy, is a threat to the existence of Al-Islam and Muslims. He throws away his secular education methodology and scholarship to analyze Afrocentricity from a religious perspective. He uses biased religious lenses of his Saudi Arabian Islamic sectarian centered scholarship to distort and misrepresent Afrocentricity.

Unfortunately, his book comes in the same line of Dr. Mary Lefkowitz’s work ‘Not Out of Africa: How “Afrocentrism” Became An Excuse To Teach Myth As History.’ Dr. Lefkowitz uses White supremacy to create racist “scholarship” to attempt to debunk the validity of Afrocentricity.

In summary, we must understand that Afrikan history and culture are still under attack by White supremacy and the system of racism. The power structures of the world are committed to making Black lives not matter to justify Afrikan people at the lowest realms of society. We must continue the fight to rescue, reclaim, and restore Afrikan history and culture to return it to its proper place amongst the various respected cultures of humanity. If we as human beings do commit ourselves to the facts on Afrikan history and culture, then Cleopatra and Kemet will continue to be whitewashed in the annals of world history.

Hotep!!!

Bashir Muhammad Akinyele is a history and Afrikana Studies teacher. He is also a member of ASCAC’s (the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization) Study Group Chapter in Newark, NJ

Note: Spelling Afrika with a k is not a typo. Using the k in Afrika is the Kiswahili way of writing Africa. Kiswahili is a Pan -Afrikan language. It is spoken in many countries in Afrika. Kiswahili is the language used in Kwanzaa. The holiday of Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 to January 1.