The Middle East never developed acute race consciousness like Europe did

Evidence

Of all forms of partisanship, these are the most irrelevant, the least related to the realities of the Middle East. Both Arabs and Israelis show a very wide diversity of racial types, ranging from Nordic to African; none of the peoples of the Middle East have ever developed the acute consciousness of race and colour that afflicts their neighbours in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The conflict between Jews and Arabs may be seen as political and economic; as national, social, cul­ tural, even religious; it is certainly not racial. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1229

Categorization

• QUESTION: A strong, checkable comparative-historical claim: is it really true that no Middle Eastern peoples developed acute colour/race consciousness, given e.g. Arab slavery and Sudanese/African labor hierarchies, or is this Lewis romanticizing?
• XREF: Directly relevant to the Said-adjacent cluster on how region was made legible to Western audiences — Lewis positions the region against Western racial lensing.