Its scientific racism no doubt. Mary Lefkowitz noted that had Cleopatra's grandmother or mother been Egyptian, it surely would have been pointed out in the records, and concludes that whatever her ancestry, Cleopatra "regarded" herself as Greek. The only thing she's denying here was that Greeks(as well as Persians) were themselves mixed or Black in some cases at that time being. And that is what Cleopatra was mixed with.(Persian and Greek)
The photo below is an Egyptian statue of either Arsinoe II or Cleopatra as an Egyptian goddess in black basalt from the second half of the 1st century BC, located in the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg.
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