This dissertation explores how racialized concepts of modernity shaped the Egyptian national identity as expressed by the effendiyya of Egypt during the romanticized interwar period of al-zaman al-gamīl. To this aim, I closely read how Egyptian writers discussed and portrayed Blackness in the pages of the prominent Arabic-language newspaper Al-Ahrām from 1930-1940. Through this I reveal how modern race science in Egyptology shaped the ʾeffendī national identity, how modern arts education reinforced anti-Black stereotypes among artists commissioned to represent Egypt to the masses, how modern developmental economics led to the emergence of a newly racially minoritized Nubian effendiyya, how the modern color line in international pre-WWII politics shaped how the effendiyya saw themselves in relation to other Africans, and how race in modern transnational music as well as Hollywood shaped the rise of Egyptian mass entertainment. By comparing how Sudanese, Nubians, and other people racialized as Black were seen by the Egyptian effendiyya in al-zaman al-gamīl, I argue that religion, class, and modern ideas of “civilization” were crucial for understanding how different individuals deemed Black had very different experiences of the social milieus of Egypt in the 1930s. This study on new forms of racialization of Blackness in the twentieth century expands upon current discourses on race in not only Egypt but in northeast Africa and the Arabic-speaking world at large, and challenges static portrayals of racial identity in the region.