The idea that North Africans are black arose as a desperate attempt by black academics to culturally validate sub-Saharan Africans by arbitrarily equating "Africa" with "black" in order that black people could take credit for the great civilizations of North Africa. Amazingly, with little or no evidence provided to support such a claim, it has been almost universally accepted in academia. This equation concerns four major historical groups—Egyptians, Nubians, Phoenicians and Moors (discussed below)—and a fifth group to which the four are genetically linked: the indigenous North African Hamites, sometimes collectively called Berbers. Here’s what Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about North Africa and these Berbers :
"North Africa is vastly more uniform ethnically than anywhere in Africa south of the Sahara. It is principally inhabited by Arabs and Berbers, who are scarcely distinguishable physically. The Berbers are the indigenous people, but their origin is obscure. An ancient people speaking an Afro-Asiatic language, they were in North Africa when the Phoenicians came as traders."
Thus, like Middle-Eastern Semites, North African Hamites belong to the Mediterranean physical type of the Caucasian race and are not black.