[ SECRET POST #3134 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3134 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 045 secrets from Secret Submission Post #448.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. http://i.imgur.com/3kXucmZ.png

[(Anonymous)]

Lmao, someone pointed this out on a Tumblr post about examples of whitewashing, and all the OP had to say for themselves was "um so fuck off and made your own post about it." It was great.

SA

[(Anonymous)]

"made your own post" should be "make your own post"

*grabs popcorn*

[(Anonymous)]

[(Anonymous)]

huh really? I thought Cleo VII was African.

[kallanda_lee]

No, she wasn't. To add insult to injury to those who would cr over her whitewashing, she was technically part of an invading, oppressing white dynasty ruling the proud poc.

[(Anonymous)]

While whitewashing is obviously a real and a problematic thing, I think it's also pretty clear that it is used as a sociopolitical rhetorical tool in a way that's divorced from truth.

[(Anonymous)]

...esp. considering that when Shakespeare was writing about it, and it was first being performed, it was white folks all the way down...

[kallanda_lee]

I'd wager because tumblr is talking out of its ass again?

[kamino_neko]

Tumblr wasn't a twinkle David Karp's eye when the talk about Cleopatra being whitewashed was at its peak...David Karp wasn't even a twinkle in his parents' eyes. This is 70s wank that never actually went away.

[(Anonymous)]

Some great trolling potential on this one but I'm not going to be the one to pull the trigger

[(Anonymous)]

If I recall correctly, Cleopatra does have a chance of being mixed especially part Persian, but she is definitely mostly or all Macedonian.

Of all the legitimate whitewashing that goes on, it is ridiculous that SJWs latch on to Cleopatra. I think there was an article a couple years ago that made the rounds and made this a headline issue. I don't mind legitimate scholarly analysis of Cleopatra's race, but I can't stand when people approach history with an agenda that's invariably going to skew their interpretations.

[(Anonymous)]

"Oh look I found an allegedly historical reason to stick it to the SJWs!"

[(Anonymous)]

Listen, if they're wrong, they're wrong

It doesn't prove them right or wrong about anything else, and OP seems pretty sincere in not being a dickbag about it

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I actually made the secret because I was listening to Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic during a long car trip and he mentioned it there - and I remembered people used Cleopatra as an example of whitewashing and I couldn't help but think...why?

I mean, from what Dan said, her family was MAJOR into incest -- she was married to her brother for example. So it seems like a really terrible example of whitewashing.

Just don't see what all the fuss is about.

Granted, Elizabeth Taylor isn't Slavic, but it's not The Last Airbender or anything.

[(Anonymous)]

Lol

[(Anonymous)]

I remember reading some book about Cleopatra as a kid, and the cover showed her as dark-skinned with black hair, but in the book she described herself as blonde and light eyed...

Someone didn't read the book when they did the cover.

[(Anonymous)]

Huh. In every history documentary I've seen where they use actors to act out scenes in history, I've always seen Cleo played as Egyptian or middle eastern.
Was her race a thing that was only recently discovered, or has this been known for a while now?

Anyways, no matter what actress Hollywood would of hired, it still wouldn't be accurate. Because apparently Cleopatra was supposed to look kinda ugly and not nearly as pretty and flawless as everyone imagines her to be.

This confuses me...

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, I am not Western European, but it was my understanding that in Western Europe, an area that includes Greece and Macedon where Cleopatra's family originally came from, Slavic peoples are not considered "truly" white and are discriminated against? If that is in fact true and if we are applying the logic of "minority characters should be played be actors of that minority", then can it not still be considered whitewashing of a sort? I don't know anything about Elizabeth Taylor's ancestry, but I do know she is English, and I am assuming (perhaps wrongly) that she is not Slavic.

[(Anonymous)]

Ancient Macedonians weren't Slavic. Not that it matters wrt her race since they were still white, but if you're going to talk about historical accuracy ... (I'm surprised no one's started up Greece/Macedonia wank yet lol but I guess it's too late for most Europeans.)

[erinptah]

Because the pop culture image of Cleopatra is as a POC. People hear "queen of Egypt" and think "oh, she was African, she must've been black" without knowing anything else about her.

And it's a fair mistake to make -- she's the only historical person I can think of where lots of people don't realize that she's white. It's the other way around that happens all the time. If you see someone going on a social-justice tear about it, just assume they've got the common misconception, and maybe nicely correct them.

[raspberryrain]

This is so true. The Ptolemy line was incredibly inbred, and apparently a bit on the fair side.

Not that Egyptians (like Arabians and other MENA populations) don't range from really quite dark to really quite fair anyway.

(I'll let the description of Macedonians as "Slavs" slide. I don't think Slavs as such [technically a linguistic identity, not primarily a phenotypical one] were dominant in Macedonia until much later. But yes, the Ptolemy clan was pretty "European.")

[(Anonymous)]

>Ancient Macedonian
>Slavic

...Slavic tribes arrived in the region hundreds of years later

[(Anonymous)]

The problem with Cleo is that there is no prof either way. There are hints suggesting she was african and mixed (because her mom maybe was a native and her siblings looked mixed) and hints she was macedonian only. But guess what? The doubts about her race are used to portray her as white by default. There is no famous portrayal of her that picks a mixed woman or a lighted skinned egyptian. This can be part of the whitewashing culture in that caucasian people (or specific caucasian people like american and english people) are considered the default. When in doubt, someone must be white and represented by americans or north europeans.


That said, in either case representing her with caucasian people of british or american ethinicity isn't accurate.
Even if she were Macedonian only, people seem to forget that ancient Macedonians as well as the Romans (the latins) didn't look like nowadays white people and surely didn't look like anericans or british people.
You could say they looked, for nowadays standards, a bit mixed.
Even nowadays europe is a bit like that. Italians from Sicily for example look more dark skinned than north europeans.
South-european people are still considered white but with north africa being so close to south europe and some places used to being part of the same empire, it's possible that south europeans always had some african ancestry.
The whole concept of race might have been different when Cleopatra lived.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm black btw, but this was always my understanding of the matter as well. Didn't they basically just "keep it in the family" for several generations anyway? Even if some pigment was introduced into the family line at some point they would have been mostly white.