There was continual fighting between European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims. To white Christians, the nonwhite nonbelievers were the enemy. Even though Jesus looked more like the Middle Eastern people than Europeans, for the crusaders, it was important to uphold the image of Jesus as a white man. They could not and would not paint Jesus like their enemy. It put God on the side of the colonizers and dominators.7 And there was an utmost urgency to solidify the perception of Jesus as a white man with light features.
This conflates too much history. The crusades were in part responding to muslim expansion. If the argument is about not portraying as enemy, there is a step between 11-12th cengury early crusades and 15-16th century colonialism. It is not that the line can’t be drawn, but there needs to be more development to draw that line.
