Race and ethnicity outweighed wealth in Egyptian social ordering of Sudanese

Evidence

Even within the confines of conversation, Egyptians thus maintained the parameters of Sudanese roles in their society, and complained when these borders were crossed. The issue of Sudanese overstepping these social boundaries reappears, in much more detail, in the play Abü Rida wa Kab al- Khayr (Abü Rida and Kab al-Khayr). In this play, people from both the highest strata of society and the peasant class raise their eyebrows at what they perceive to be Sudanese presumptions of social airs. The play shows starkly how race and ethnicity competed with wealth and family name in Egyptians’ construction of society. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 363

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s comparative Egypt-Sudan coloniality goal; racialized hierarchy within an Arab society complicates simple ‘colonial ruler vs. colonized’ framings.
• QUESTION: How did this Egyptian internal racial hierarchy compare to how European colonizers later racialized both Egyptians and Sudanese?