That was good, balanced, I got the message. He didn't try to beat us over the head with his politics or moral posturing.
Bob though, isn't exactly right. The orientalists from their origins were always interested in the middle east, and aware that brown, blacks, Mongols, Chinese, Thai etc had their own cities, civilisations, economies and military power once they encountered such and examined it, or when an advanced or organised army rocked up and had a go at the cities of Christendom (Ottomans, early Islamic conquerors, Moors, etc etc). The Ottomans after all, almost took Europe a few times, and the various coalitions of Muslim non-whites did defeat the crusaders. Orientalism studies, anthropology and archaeology would come to understand that black Africans too, like their pre-Islamic neighbours, did have cities, forts, civilisations. Even after the reconquista, the port cities of north africa were clearly there and known, because they were hassling trade through piracy, and had connections to the Moorish territories that had recently been taken by Spain.
So to put it more accurately, there was a lot of racism about, but also educated whites interested in getting to the truth, and there was plenty of ways to broaden their understandings and encounter blacks in cities.