I've been thinking a lot about this. It seems to me that because many people in Europe have grown up in such homogeneous societies, there is a tendency to have blind spots when it comes to race. A recent example I can think of is how the Dutch justice minister said that if the Netherlands were a narco-state, then there would be someone with an exotic background in his place. I don't think he intended to be racist, I just think he didn't realise what he was saying had racist undertones.