The recent release of trailers for Netflix’s upcoming Cleopatra series has caused a stir in Egypt.

The show features the Black British actress Adele James playing the legendary Ptolemaic queen.

While crude racism has surfaced in some reactions, other criticisms stem from historical grievances and a long-standing Western tradition of separating modern Egyptians from their ancient heritage.

This has been seen as a denial of modern-day Egyptians’ ownership of their history.

Former US President John F. Kennedy’s administration also claimed ancient Egyptian civilization as part of Western heritage when the US spent $10 million to save temples from flooding in 1961.

The appropriation and possession of Egyptian cultural artefacts seized during the era of colonialism is another example of this.

While it is important to recognise that there is emerging interest among scholars in Cleopatra’s possible multiracial heritage, questions remain about the role of race in the production and dissemination of knowledge about her history.

These issues cannot be resolved by well-meaning American filmmakers deciding to cast Cleopatra as Black without involving Egyptians in this decision or process.

Most Egyptians objecting to the show are not being racist but are frustrated by how the makers of the show challenge historic anti-Black racism in the US through the revisionism of another racialized people’s own history.

This trend of extreme and xenophobic nationalism in Egypt emerged after the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood was overthrown in 2013 by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s current president.

This led to a populist call to “affirm the real Egyptian identity” that supposedly has nothing to do with Arabism or Islam and is exclusively based on ancient Egyptian heritage.

It is fitting that the hashtag used by social media users to criticize the Netflix series is #مصر_للمصريين (Egypt for the Egyptians), the slogan associated in Egyptian public memory with the 1879 Urabi revolt.

Netflix could have learned from Disney, which chose an Egyptian, Mohamed Diab, to lead the directing team of the ancient Egypt-inspired Moon Knight.

They recognized and portrayed the roles played by Egyptian archaeologists, specialists, workers, and ordinary men and women in “unearthing” the tomb and “decipher[ing]” its history.

In doing so, they parted ways from American pop culture’s long-standing tradition of marginalizing the most relevant people to every discussion of ancient Egyptian history.

While it is important to end the marginalization of Black and other minority actors on the screen, this must not come at the cost of nonwhite people being victimized by Western colonialism and imperialism.

If the intention of Queen Cleopatra’s makers was to reverse decades of racism on the screen, what they ended up achieving is a perpetuation of this very racism.