>...Elizabeth Taylor can play Cleopatra (and she can be surrounded by black
>servants/slaves), but everyone would be up in arms if Angela Bassett played
>the Queen of England.
>
>Why is it okay for whites to play non-white roles...?...
I have no idea whate color-shade best describes Cleopatra VII's skin, but she had no African (including Egyptian) ancestry whatsoever. Her ancestry was half Ptolemaic--that is, Macedonian, and half Mithridatic (Pontine, the southern coast of the Black Sea).
Shane Mage
"Mortals immortals, immortals mortals,
living their deaths, dying their lives"
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 62