Its only debate because of the current state of the people of African decent. Back during Ancient Greece times, "blacks" were viewed as highly civilized people. People dismiss it because they have a hard time believing that blacks can be that advanced. But what they fail to realize is that blacks started declining about 500 years ago after the white and Arabic man brought his evil to the rest Africa. Egypt was done after Ancient Greece and Rome came through. That is a short period considering the amount of time the black man's been on the planet. The term Barbarians was used to describe whites from central and western Europe, especially Germanic tribes because they were backwards and still living in caves, killing each other at an alarming rate.
The people of Ancient Egypt no longer exist because of the history of that region. Numerous empire have conquered and destroyed the people over thousands of years. No group has preserved anything culturally or linguistically anything that is Ancient Egyptian. Older Ancient Egyptian artifacts clearly indicate that they were black people. These were some Sudanese/Ethiopian/Somalian looking people. Their braided hairstyle is similar to many nomadic tribes in Africa. Nowhere in the world did people rock that hairstyle historically.
What people don't realize is that much of Africa's population was concentrated in Eastern and Northeast Africa back then.
According to the Population Reference Bureau, the world's population in 8000 B.C. was 5,000,000. Think about that for one minute..5,000,000. The Houston area has about 6 million people. This means that African were not hurting for land and it made sense that that stayed around major bodies of water near where the first man came from EAST AFRICA. Some people obviously continued their migration out of Africa and settled and adjusted to their new places. Notice that Ancient Egypt has nothing in common religiously, style of life, clothing, construction of cities and pyramids...except with other African groups to the south of them in those Ancient times.
For Ancient Egyptians to become white/middle east by going up the Nile would really be reaching considering that Egypt is hot and sunny. What does this mean? It would not make sense for Africans to leave the continent far enough to where they don't receive direct sunlight, experience enough winters over many thousands of years to turn them whiter and then come back to Ancient Egypt as white people in a place where another group had decided to stay for thousands of years.
The only way to believe the lies about Egypt not being black is to change other things that are considered common knowledge. You would need to believe that the first man from East Africa was not "black" but was rather "white or arabic looking".