Egypt and SudanOur investigation of the lived experience of women
in Egypt and Sudan acknowledges the importance
of viewing race and gender as variables within an
interlocking system of domination and oppression
that includes class, age, sex, ethnicity, and religion
(Collins 2000). Within this framework, difference
is constructed within a matrix of domination where
distinctive systems of oppression, such as racism,
sexism, and patriarchy, are interconnected and
have similar ideological explanations for the sub-
ordination of individuals and groups within a soci-
ety. Difference in these countries is experienced by
women as a complex set of fluid and inter-discur-
sive processes shaped by Islam, patriarchy, colo-
nialism, slavery, and the several nationalisms (for
example, Egyptian nationalism, Arab nationalism)
that have arisen in the Nile Valley region.
In the Nile Valley, race has long been more of a
social than a biological construct, including in its
definition cultural, religious, linguistic, and histor-
ical elements that in many cases overshadow the
genetic. The Nile Valley region contains a multi-
tude of ethnic groups, including Egyptians of Arab/
European/African ancestry, Nubians, Copts, Ber-
bers, northern Sudanese of Arab/African ancestry,
Dinka, Nuer, Nuba, and the nomadic and semi-
nomadic Rashaida, Baggara, and Bishari pastoralists,
as well as Armenians, Greeks, Italians, and French.
Most of these groups have experienced genetic
intermixture with members of other ethnicities.
Many of those who write about the relationships
between the various ethnic groups in Sudan charge
that racism is a defining characteristic of these
relationships (Deng 1995, Jok 2001, Hale 2003).
In Egypt, on the contrary, this subject remains
a source of great debate (Powell 2000, Fluehr-
Lobban and Rhodes forthcoming). Whereas racism
in the past has been defined as the construction of
categories of “others” that have immutable bound-
aries (most often genetic in nature) in order to
exclude, inferiorize, and/or exploit them, this defi-
nition is changing. There is a growing acceptance
that the old biological basis of racism is giving way
to the justification of bigotry through the invoca-
tion of cultural difference (Silverman and Yuval-
Davis 1999, Blaut 1992, Back and Solomos 2000,
Smedley 1998, Stam 1997), and even a “racism
Race, Gender, and Difference
without races” (Balibar 1991). The criteria for prej-
udice in cultural racism are ethnic group traditions,
practices, and cultural heritage rather than biolog-
ical makeup. Yet, the commonality between cul-
tural and biological racisms is the fact that they are,
above all, social relations rooted in material struc-
tures and historical relations of power. It is in light
of this emerging definition of racism that we may
interpret the attitudes of the ethnic groups of Sudan
and Egypt toward each other.
A greater understanding of attitudes about race
in Egypt and Sudan necessitates an examination of
Islam. Islam has a well-earned reputation as a reli-
gion of tolerance, welcoming people of all ethnic
heritages and viewing them all as equal in Islam.
Passages in the Qur±àn reflect an awareness of dif-
ference among people, but express no racial or
color prejudice; in fact, the message is that piety is
more important than birth. However, in social
thought and practice, there has been a hierarchy
based upon skin color and ethnicity (Drake 1987,
Lewis 1971).
Scholars have linked notions of race and color in
the Nile Valley with Arab culture, Islam, and the
institution of slavery (Marmon 1999, Hunwick
and Powell 2002). In the literature of ancient
Arabia, color terms were used to describe human
skin tones and sometimes ethnic groups, but in a
relative rather than an absolute sense. After the
Islamic conquests of Africa and Asia, however,
color terms were applied to humans. Although in
pre-Islamic times, “blackness” was not invariably
negative, it became more so as time went on, until
finally by the time of the Umayyad caliphs, it was
nothing but an insult. The African slave trade influ-
enced Arab attitudes toward dark-skinned people
by reinforcing the association of blackness with
slavery, low-status positions, and demeaning occu-
pations. Although there were white slaves, it seems
that they tended to fill higher administrative posi-
tions and once freed, could rise to any level. This
was not the case for Blacks, perhaps because their
color made them more visible in Arab society
(Drake 1987, Lewis 1971, Segal 2001). This indi-
cates the beginning of the salience of whiteness and
blackness in the formation of class positioning in
Nile Valley cultures. Moreover, it highlights how
the invisibility of whiteness allows the assertion of
racelessness in these societies.