qh777
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Bear with me here, this is going to be a long post as I have been ruminating on this for awhile now. And when I mean awhile I don't mean a month. This has been something that has troubled me for a long time. I need to get this off of my chest. Not out of hate. Not even out of anger. But out of frustration and a deep desire for honesty when it comes to history, culture, and truth.
I grew up in a nearly all white town. But I wasn’t sheltered. I was constantly exposed to other races and cultures through the media I consumed. As a kid in the 90s and early 2000s, I watched shows like Kenan & Kel, All That, I loved Space Jam, and I thought Michael Jordan was one of the coolest people alive. I even wanted a Jordan action figure from the movie one Christmas. I wasn’t thinking in terms of race. I just thought black people looked interesting, cool, and stood out compared to what I was used to. I honestly found white people kind of boring in comparison.
My childhood doctor was southeast Asian. I recognized that he looked different than my family, but again, it wasn’t a big deal. I realized he was human. A person like me. He was just another adult in my world. Competent, kind, and normal.
Around the same time, I became fascinated with ancient history. And it's still deep passion of mine. I remember watching a documentary on ancient Egypt at my grandparents’ house. Even though the tomb art was stylized, I could still tell the figures weren’t meant to represent black people like the ones I saw on TV. Curious, I asked my grandpa what ancient Egyptians looked like. He said, “They looked like Arabs.” It stuck with me. He wasn’t quoting a book. It was just an honest, working class observation. And looking back now, with everything I’ve learned through ancient DNA studies and archaeology, I have to say he wasn’t far off. It was a plainspoken, Occam’s razor style take that, while not technically academic, turns out to be pretty close to what the evidence shows. That ancient Egyptians were a North African, west Eurasian people with deep roots in the Levant and Nile Valley.
By the time I was 12 or 13, I was playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for hundreds of hours. The main character, CJ, is black. I had zero issue playing as him. The setting, the character, the culture all made sense. I loved rolling around Los Santos, A fictionalized Los Angeles, In my low rider starting gang wars with the Ballas. I also played True Crime: New York City, another game with a black protagonist, Marcus Reed. Again, no problem. It all felt grounded and authentic.
I watched Hey Arnold! where Gerald, a black kid, was Arnold’s best friend. Totally normal to me. I didn't mind him because he was cool. Not because of or in spite of his race. There was another cartoon I watched as a kid on Nickelodeon called The Wild Thornberrys. The main character Eliza was gifted with the ability to talk to animals. Even though the show was centered more on animals and ecology, the places her family traveled to made them get in contact with unique cultures and people from around the world. In one episode I believe Eliza and her family are in Sub Saharan Africa. Eliza meets with a girl from the Maasai tribe. The episode delves into the culture of the Maasai like lion hunts. It seemed natural and not forced.
I was even into the LEGO Bionicle series, which was heavily inspired by Polynesian culture. Maybe even there were some west African tribal elements in there too. I loved the tribal masks and island aesthetic. One Christmas, I even received a carved wooden tribal mask from Cameroon which I still have to this day. I was genuinely drawn to other cultures. Not to show them off for virtue points. Not to politicize them. But because they were interesting and different from my everyday life.
I also played a lot of the PC game Age of Mythology in the early 2000s. A real-time strategy game based loosely on ancient civilizations and their mythologies. Even though the game is fantasy based and mixes gods, monsters, and time periods that didn’t historically overlap, I remember thinking it actually portrayed the Egyptians fairly well. They were shown with an olive or tanned appearance. Darker than the Greeks and Norse, but still visually distinct from Sub Saharan Africans.
One of the temporary military units you could recruit as Egyptians were “mercenaries.” Darker-skinned warriors with spears and zebra-hide shields, clearly meant to resemble Nubians or Sub Saharan Africans. And in the main campaign, the Egyptian leader is a black woman named Amanra. None of this bothered me. I already knew about Nubia, the 25th Dynasty, and the historical back-and-forth between Egypt and its southern neighbor. I understood that Egypt had ruled Nubia, and Nubia had once ruled Egypt. But that didn’t mean Egyptians were black.
Reflecting on it now, I sometimes wonder if Afrocentrists who played the same game misunderstood those elements. Maybe they saw a black female leader and a few dark-skinned soldiers and assumed, “See? Even this game shows the Egyptians were black!” without understanding the deeper context. That’s how subtle historical distortion starts. A small misinterpretation layered onto weak historical understanding, reinforced by modern cultural narratives.
I actually bought and replayed Age of Mythology again a few years ago. Looking at it with adult eyes, I think the Egyptian units could’ve had a bit more variation. Maybe slightly darker tones overall to reflect the range within North Africa. But even then, I’d still say it’s a more balanced and respectful portrayal than what we got in Netflix’s Cleopatra “documentary.” And that says something. That a stylized fantasy game from the early 2000s, made by people with no political agenda, treated ancient Egypt with more nuance than modern educational programming.
So no, I don’t have a problem with diversity. I never have.
What I have a problem with, and what deeply disturbs me now, is the intentional distortion of history and culture for political reasons.
It’s gotten much worse in the past 5–10 years, but if I’m being honest, the seeds of this were already planted earlier. I remember seeing a documentary sometime around 2012 about Hannibal and the Punic Wars. In the dramatized reenactments, they cast a black man to play Hannibal. Even back then, I knew that wasn’t historically accurate. The Carthaginians were Phoenician colonists mixed with native North Africans. Not Sub Saharan Africans. Hannibal was of Levantine Semitic origin. I didn’t raise a fuss about it at the time because I saw it as a one-off. Not part of a larger trend. And back then, Afrocentrists were still viewed like flat-earthers or ancient alien theorists. Radical outliers, not taken seriously by mainstream academics or the general public. But now? That fringe has bled into the mainstream, disguised as “diverse representation” or “rethinking history,” even though the evidence still doesn’t support the claims.
Today, this trend has only become more blatant (And yes, I had to google some of specifics because I have these shows in my memory but I can't remember the specifics like release dates actors etc.):
In Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra (2023), a black British actress, Adele James, was cast as Cleopatra VII. Even though Cleopatra was of Macedonian Greek descent, with no evidence of Sub-Saharan African ancestry.
In the BBC/Netflix series Troy: Fall of a City (2018), Achilles, the legendary Greek hero of the Trojan War, was portrayed by David Gyasi, a black actor. Despite the character being described in ancient texts as Greek and often associated with typical Mediterranean features.
In Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023), the historical Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III, is depicted as a mixed-race woman. A portrayal based on speculative and highly contested theories about her ancestry.
In Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla and similar medieval-era shows, black characters are portrayed as Viking Jarls or European nobles. Despite no historical basis for such demographics in that setting.
In Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (2025), one of the main protagonists is Yasuke. A black African samurai based loosely on a real historical figure who arrived in Japan in the 16th century. While Yasuke did exist, the game elevates him to a central heroic role. Far beyond what limited historical records actually support. Another modern reinterpretation shaped by identity politics rather than historical nuance.
And when people point out these historical inaccuracies, the response is often the same.
“It’s just entertainment.”
“We’re taking artistic license.”
“It’s a reimagining, not a documentary.”
That defense might hold water if these works were purely fantasy. But many of them are clearly framed as being inspired by real people and historical periods. The average viewer, especially younger audiences, often walks away thinking these portrayals are rooted in truth. And if anyone raises concerns about accuracy, they’re met with moral deflection. “Why does it matter? Are you threatened by diversity?”
It’s not about being threatened. It’s about telling the truth. Or at least making it clear when you’re not. When the only historical liberties being taken are ones that reinforce modern ideologies, that’s not creativity. That’s narrative control.
Artistic license shouldn’t be a shield against accountability. Especially when it’s used to reshape historical understanding in ways that are politically convenient.
But specifics matter. When someone says “multi-ethnic,” I want to know. What are the actual demographics? Are we talking 85% native population and 15% foreigners? 75/25? 60/40? Or an even 50/50? Because those numbers paint radically different pictures of a society. When you strip out that context, you create false impressions that eventually get absorbed as fact. If people hear the word “diverse,” they assume total equality of representation, even when the reality may have been a small minority presence in an overwhelmingly homogeneous civilization.
And this is where I think the general public gets misled. When scholars say “diverse” or “multi-ethnic,” many people especially in the West subconsciously picture something like modern-day America, where people from vastly different racial and ethnic backgrounds coexist in significant numbers. But that’s almost never what ancient civilizations looked like. It’s a false equivalency, and one that should be treated with caution.
And that’s why I say. It just needs to be correct. Handled properly.
Diversity isn’t inherently bad. I’ve never been against showing people of different backgrounds. I grew up respecting other cultures and still do.
But diversity has to be contextual, accurate, and honest. Not injected as a political afterthought. Not used to erase or overwrite historical realities.
Diversity isn’t automatically good just because it’s there. And homogeneity isn’t automatically bad just because it’s not diverse.
Different civilizations existed in different ways. And that’s okay. Not every society was a melting pot. If you're going to tell a story set in the past, respect the setting. Respect the culture. And respect the audience by being honest about what you're doing.
To make matters worse, even academic institutions have become politicized. Universities today are filled with scholars and historians who seem more interested in virtue signaling than telling the truth. You’ll hear phrases like “Africa is in the Mediterranean too.” Which is geographically true, but it’s often used dishonestly to blur the lines between North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa. This kind of wordplay gets tossed around to imply that ancient Egyptians, and by extension all North Africans, were black in the modern Sub Saharan sense.
But that erases the entire reality of North Africa as a distinct region. One that is genetically, culturally, and historically tied to the Near East and Mediterranean world. Not to the heart of Sub Saharan Africa. By at least the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic periods (~10,000–7,000 BCE), North Africa had become genetically and culturally aligned with the West Eurasian sphere, primarily through population movements from the Levant and Anatolia that shaped its long term demographic structure. With its own indigenous populations, Berber traditions, and a deep prehistoric connection to the Levant and Europe. Reducing that to “just Africa” in order to score political points is not serious scholarship. It’s an attempt to feel like a good person, rather than be a good historian.
What really frustrates me is that the scholars who do know better won’t speak up. They dodge these topics. Talk around them. Or bury their heads in academic jargon to avoid controversy. No one wants to be labeled racist, so they let the lies spread. Even if it means sacrificing the historical record. I understand that academics have careers to protect, and that speaking plainly about sensitive historical issues can risk reputations. But this also exposes a deeper issue in Western academia today. One where avoiding offense is often prioritized over preserving the historical record. The only figure I’ve seen speak up with real conviction is Zahi Hawass. And while I agree with much of what he says, he’s not a perfect messenger. He’s been accused of corruption and self-interest. And those accusations make it easy for critics to dismiss him, even when he’s right.
It seems to me that Afrocentrism and historical revisionism have gained momentum from a breakdown in trust. Some people start questioning everything. And instead of seeking better evidence, they replace institutions with ideology. Even if the ideology is built on bad history, cherry-picked facts, or racial romanticism. That vacuum of authority becomes a breeding ground for conspiracy thinking. Not just about Egypt, but about the past in general.
I didn’t need ancient Egyptians to be black in order to respect black people. I already did.
I didn’t need Cleopatra to be black to find African history fascinating.
What I can’t accept is the deliberate distortion of civilizations. The flattening of truth for emotional comfort. And the cowardice of people who know better but refuse to speak up.
That’s all. Thank you for taking time to read this.
I grew up in a nearly all white town. But I wasn’t sheltered. I was constantly exposed to other races and cultures through the media I consumed. As a kid in the 90s and early 2000s, I watched shows like Kenan & Kel, All That, I loved Space Jam, and I thought Michael Jordan was one of the coolest people alive. I even wanted a Jordan action figure from the movie one Christmas. I wasn’t thinking in terms of race. I just thought black people looked interesting, cool, and stood out compared to what I was used to. I honestly found white people kind of boring in comparison.
My childhood doctor was southeast Asian. I recognized that he looked different than my family, but again, it wasn’t a big deal. I realized he was human. A person like me. He was just another adult in my world. Competent, kind, and normal.
Around the same time, I became fascinated with ancient history. And it's still deep passion of mine. I remember watching a documentary on ancient Egypt at my grandparents’ house. Even though the tomb art was stylized, I could still tell the figures weren’t meant to represent black people like the ones I saw on TV. Curious, I asked my grandpa what ancient Egyptians looked like. He said, “They looked like Arabs.” It stuck with me. He wasn’t quoting a book. It was just an honest, working class observation. And looking back now, with everything I’ve learned through ancient DNA studies and archaeology, I have to say he wasn’t far off. It was a plainspoken, Occam’s razor style take that, while not technically academic, turns out to be pretty close to what the evidence shows. That ancient Egyptians were a North African, west Eurasian people with deep roots in the Levant and Nile Valley.
By the time I was 12 or 13, I was playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for hundreds of hours. The main character, CJ, is black. I had zero issue playing as him. The setting, the character, the culture all made sense. I loved rolling around Los Santos, A fictionalized Los Angeles, In my low rider starting gang wars with the Ballas. I also played True Crime: New York City, another game with a black protagonist, Marcus Reed. Again, no problem. It all felt grounded and authentic.
I watched Hey Arnold! where Gerald, a black kid, was Arnold’s best friend. Totally normal to me. I didn't mind him because he was cool. Not because of or in spite of his race. There was another cartoon I watched as a kid on Nickelodeon called The Wild Thornberrys. The main character Eliza was gifted with the ability to talk to animals. Even though the show was centered more on animals and ecology, the places her family traveled to made them get in contact with unique cultures and people from around the world. In one episode I believe Eliza and her family are in Sub Saharan Africa. Eliza meets with a girl from the Maasai tribe. The episode delves into the culture of the Maasai like lion hunts. It seemed natural and not forced.
I was even into the LEGO Bionicle series, which was heavily inspired by Polynesian culture. Maybe even there were some west African tribal elements in there too. I loved the tribal masks and island aesthetic. One Christmas, I even received a carved wooden tribal mask from Cameroon which I still have to this day. I was genuinely drawn to other cultures. Not to show them off for virtue points. Not to politicize them. But because they were interesting and different from my everyday life.
I also played a lot of the PC game Age of Mythology in the early 2000s. A real-time strategy game based loosely on ancient civilizations and their mythologies. Even though the game is fantasy based and mixes gods, monsters, and time periods that didn’t historically overlap, I remember thinking it actually portrayed the Egyptians fairly well. They were shown with an olive or tanned appearance. Darker than the Greeks and Norse, but still visually distinct from Sub Saharan Africans.
One of the temporary military units you could recruit as Egyptians were “mercenaries.” Darker-skinned warriors with spears and zebra-hide shields, clearly meant to resemble Nubians or Sub Saharan Africans. And in the main campaign, the Egyptian leader is a black woman named Amanra. None of this bothered me. I already knew about Nubia, the 25th Dynasty, and the historical back-and-forth between Egypt and its southern neighbor. I understood that Egypt had ruled Nubia, and Nubia had once ruled Egypt. But that didn’t mean Egyptians were black.
Reflecting on it now, I sometimes wonder if Afrocentrists who played the same game misunderstood those elements. Maybe they saw a black female leader and a few dark-skinned soldiers and assumed, “See? Even this game shows the Egyptians were black!” without understanding the deeper context. That’s how subtle historical distortion starts. A small misinterpretation layered onto weak historical understanding, reinforced by modern cultural narratives.
I actually bought and replayed Age of Mythology again a few years ago. Looking at it with adult eyes, I think the Egyptian units could’ve had a bit more variation. Maybe slightly darker tones overall to reflect the range within North Africa. But even then, I’d still say it’s a more balanced and respectful portrayal than what we got in Netflix’s Cleopatra “documentary.” And that says something. That a stylized fantasy game from the early 2000s, made by people with no political agenda, treated ancient Egypt with more nuance than modern educational programming.
So no, I don’t have a problem with diversity. I never have.
What I have a problem with, and what deeply disturbs me now, is the intentional distortion of history and culture for political reasons.
It’s gotten much worse in the past 5–10 years, but if I’m being honest, the seeds of this were already planted earlier. I remember seeing a documentary sometime around 2012 about Hannibal and the Punic Wars. In the dramatized reenactments, they cast a black man to play Hannibal. Even back then, I knew that wasn’t historically accurate. The Carthaginians were Phoenician colonists mixed with native North Africans. Not Sub Saharan Africans. Hannibal was of Levantine Semitic origin. I didn’t raise a fuss about it at the time because I saw it as a one-off. Not part of a larger trend. And back then, Afrocentrists were still viewed like flat-earthers or ancient alien theorists. Radical outliers, not taken seriously by mainstream academics or the general public. But now? That fringe has bled into the mainstream, disguised as “diverse representation” or “rethinking history,” even though the evidence still doesn’t support the claims.
Today, this trend has only become more blatant (And yes, I had to google some of specifics because I have these shows in my memory but I can't remember the specifics like release dates actors etc.):
In Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra (2023), a black British actress, Adele James, was cast as Cleopatra VII. Even though Cleopatra was of Macedonian Greek descent, with no evidence of Sub-Saharan African ancestry.
In the BBC/Netflix series Troy: Fall of a City (2018), Achilles, the legendary Greek hero of the Trojan War, was portrayed by David Gyasi, a black actor. Despite the character being described in ancient texts as Greek and often associated with typical Mediterranean features.
In Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023), the historical Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III, is depicted as a mixed-race woman. A portrayal based on speculative and highly contested theories about her ancestry.
In Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla and similar medieval-era shows, black characters are portrayed as Viking Jarls or European nobles. Despite no historical basis for such demographics in that setting.
In Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (2025), one of the main protagonists is Yasuke. A black African samurai based loosely on a real historical figure who arrived in Japan in the 16th century. While Yasuke did exist, the game elevates him to a central heroic role. Far beyond what limited historical records actually support. Another modern reinterpretation shaped by identity politics rather than historical nuance.
And when people point out these historical inaccuracies, the response is often the same.
“It’s just entertainment.”
“We’re taking artistic license.”
“It’s a reimagining, not a documentary.”
That defense might hold water if these works were purely fantasy. But many of them are clearly framed as being inspired by real people and historical periods. The average viewer, especially younger audiences, often walks away thinking these portrayals are rooted in truth. And if anyone raises concerns about accuracy, they’re met with moral deflection. “Why does it matter? Are you threatened by diversity?”
It’s not about being threatened. It’s about telling the truth. Or at least making it clear when you’re not. When the only historical liberties being taken are ones that reinforce modern ideologies, that’s not creativity. That’s narrative control.
Artistic license shouldn’t be a shield against accountability. Especially when it’s used to reshape historical understanding in ways that are politically convenient.
But specifics matter. When someone says “multi-ethnic,” I want to know. What are the actual demographics? Are we talking 85% native population and 15% foreigners? 75/25? 60/40? Or an even 50/50? Because those numbers paint radically different pictures of a society. When you strip out that context, you create false impressions that eventually get absorbed as fact. If people hear the word “diverse,” they assume total equality of representation, even when the reality may have been a small minority presence in an overwhelmingly homogeneous civilization.
And this is where I think the general public gets misled. When scholars say “diverse” or “multi-ethnic,” many people especially in the West subconsciously picture something like modern-day America, where people from vastly different racial and ethnic backgrounds coexist in significant numbers. But that’s almost never what ancient civilizations looked like. It’s a false equivalency, and one that should be treated with caution.
And that’s why I say. It just needs to be correct. Handled properly.
Diversity isn’t inherently bad. I’ve never been against showing people of different backgrounds. I grew up respecting other cultures and still do.
But diversity has to be contextual, accurate, and honest. Not injected as a political afterthought. Not used to erase or overwrite historical realities.
Diversity isn’t automatically good just because it’s there. And homogeneity isn’t automatically bad just because it’s not diverse.
Different civilizations existed in different ways. And that’s okay. Not every society was a melting pot. If you're going to tell a story set in the past, respect the setting. Respect the culture. And respect the audience by being honest about what you're doing.
To make matters worse, even academic institutions have become politicized. Universities today are filled with scholars and historians who seem more interested in virtue signaling than telling the truth. You’ll hear phrases like “Africa is in the Mediterranean too.” Which is geographically true, but it’s often used dishonestly to blur the lines between North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa. This kind of wordplay gets tossed around to imply that ancient Egyptians, and by extension all North Africans, were black in the modern Sub Saharan sense.
But that erases the entire reality of North Africa as a distinct region. One that is genetically, culturally, and historically tied to the Near East and Mediterranean world. Not to the heart of Sub Saharan Africa. By at least the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic periods (~10,000–7,000 BCE), North Africa had become genetically and culturally aligned with the West Eurasian sphere, primarily through population movements from the Levant and Anatolia that shaped its long term demographic structure. With its own indigenous populations, Berber traditions, and a deep prehistoric connection to the Levant and Europe. Reducing that to “just Africa” in order to score political points is not serious scholarship. It’s an attempt to feel like a good person, rather than be a good historian.
What really frustrates me is that the scholars who do know better won’t speak up. They dodge these topics. Talk around them. Or bury their heads in academic jargon to avoid controversy. No one wants to be labeled racist, so they let the lies spread. Even if it means sacrificing the historical record. I understand that academics have careers to protect, and that speaking plainly about sensitive historical issues can risk reputations. But this also exposes a deeper issue in Western academia today. One where avoiding offense is often prioritized over preserving the historical record. The only figure I’ve seen speak up with real conviction is Zahi Hawass. And while I agree with much of what he says, he’s not a perfect messenger. He’s been accused of corruption and self-interest. And those accusations make it easy for critics to dismiss him, even when he’s right.
It seems to me that Afrocentrism and historical revisionism have gained momentum from a breakdown in trust. Some people start questioning everything. And instead of seeking better evidence, they replace institutions with ideology. Even if the ideology is built on bad history, cherry-picked facts, or racial romanticism. That vacuum of authority becomes a breeding ground for conspiracy thinking. Not just about Egypt, but about the past in general.
I didn’t need ancient Egyptians to be black in order to respect black people. I already did.
I didn’t need Cleopatra to be black to find African history fascinating.
What I can’t accept is the deliberate distortion of civilizations. The flattening of truth for emotional comfort. And the cowardice of people who know better but refuse to speak up.
That’s all. Thank you for taking time to read this.
