I've come across a few posts from progressive leaning sites lately that claim that northern Europe (British Isles, German states, northern France, etc.) in the Middle Ages was very diverse with sizable populations of people with sub-Saharan African descent, and that our perceptions of medieval Europe as racially homogeneous comes from racist casting practices in film. Understanding that our modern racial constructs wouldn't necessarily apply to medieval Europe, how accurate are these claims? I could imagine there being a few sub-Saharan Africans in major trading cities but not necessarily diversity comparable to today.
This has been asked many times before.
The tl;dr of it is that while there were some people we'd consider not "white" in Northern Europe they were rare and considered curiosities. The idea that medieval Northern Europe was "diverse" in the sense that we understand it today is unfounded. It got progressively more "diverse" the further south and east you went though. Spain had a lot of Moors and people descended from Moors and the Ottomans had strong relations with the Middle East and Northern Africa and a fair number of people from all over that region within the Empire.
Edit: automod asked me to /u/ -ping the author of those replies so /u/ripitupandstartagain, /u/Bakuraptor , /u/cdesmoulins, /u/grantimatter I hope you feel my summary represented what you were saying.