I agree that it's possibly the case that Lewis may've struggled with racism - even if on a sub-conscious level or one where he wasn't aware (like others thinking "I'm not racist!!" when they sincerely think people from a certain culture are simply inferior to them ).
.....It's amazing how much literature from those times are praised in ours - and people try to enforce the literature as being what all ethnic groups should value...and yet they don't speak to the fact that other ethnic groups were never considered as highly by the same authors whose works are being recommended.
I actually enjoyed the fact that they were willing to be that direct in challenging the system with having
Guinevere black. There was actually a wonderful academic article on the issue I thought was HIGHLY enjoyable - entitled
"Black in Camelot (Africans in Arthurian Legend)" [Revised 2013-05 ... (more
here ) seeing that having blacks in England was not something unheard of. It's just something many are not really aware of...even though not
all black people like the Medieval ages anyhow.
Historically, the
Moors invaded southern Europe including Italy, Portugal and Spain in the 8th and 9th centuries. Specifically, the "Moors" were not a distinct or self-defined people or ethnicity - and medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name to the Berbers, but also at various times to Arabs and Muslim Iberians and West Africans from Mali and Niger who had been absorbed into the Almoravid dynasty of Morocco.
A good example of this awareness of black people in Medieval times would be
Shakespeare's Othello (1603) -
a Moorish general in the Venetian army (Northern Italy).
Moreover, there are accounts of Moorish travellers, ambassadors, courtesans (with their own servants), minstrels, chamberlains, and mercenaries from various sources throughout Europe, and especially England and Scotland.