Labeling nineteenth-century Egyptians with such a term clouds the discussion and attributes power that simply did not exist; by keeping his discussion of race limited to the idea of racism, Anderson avoids a much more complicated investigation. However, it is just as anachronistic to deny race consciousness in cultures confronting British or French or German imperialism in the late nineteenth century, when political, cultural, and sci- entific definitions of the word race were being coined. In terms of construc- tion of race, or even consciousness of race, the very system of racial identi- fication that Anderson rightly ascribes to Europe did not simply melt into a broth of political love when confronted by indigenous, colonized national- ists. The appellations and categories of race imposed by the empire were either accepted, denied, translated, or redirected, but they were always provocative. In late-nineteenth-century Egypt, writers and nationalists were acutely aware of the discourse on race being conducted in western Europe, and they used it to frame their various perspectives about the Sudan and its people. This should not be interpreted to mean that they were themselves racists, or even that they held the power to discriminate racially, but ana- lysts of race and nationalism should take care not to assume that national- ists in Egypt were deaf and blind to the very charged issue of race in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 98