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2012
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Cleopatra: A Portrait of a Killer [28] airs Monday, March 23 on BBC One. And get this, archeologists are finally letting the tightly-curled hair and full lips out of the white-washed bag. That's right, the documentary plans to set the record straight: Cleopatra looked nothing like velvet-eyed, porcelain white Elizabeth Taylor. In fact, Cleopatra's mother was a black African. In fact, Cleopatra paraded among her Roman cronies and insisted [a la Halle Berry in her star-making moment in Queen] "I's Nigra, I's Nigra." You know, in case the Romans didn't know a sister when they saw one.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all non-racist archeological discovery and I applaud the Austrian Academy of Sciences [the folks who made the "black mother" finding] for having the scientific courage to debunk a horrible and racist myth, once and for all. But I could have saved them a lot of trouble. I knew Cleopatra was of African-descent. The brother on the corner of 125th and Malcolm X selling black soap and prints of a black Cleopatra knew she was of African descent. My paternal great-great grandmother who named her third child Cleopatra obviously knew something. John Henrik Clarke [29] and his scholarship meditated on Egypt and its blackness during the Roman rule. The question is, Who didn't know? [Besides the Austrian Academy of Sciences.] Well, there's Michael Jackson who cherised a painting of a porcelain Cleopatra, but I guess that's no surprise.
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