My subjetive take on this.

Where I live there is a lot of racism, but even the racist people would have been horrified about firefighters letting a child burn. So I think that there racism take on a whole new level of terrible and disturbingly fucked up.

Now, I agree with Lord Sanama that it is about fear, but also about control. Racist people where I live tell white women that black men (and muslims) would rape them. The usual right wing hate of inmigrants. In doing so, they create fear and while the people is distracted hating black people and other inmigrants, it usually accept regresive autoritarian laws that would make their lives worst. So people with power and money control peopulation through fear of others. Also, insecure people like to feel that "they are better than black people/inmigrants".

I would like to say that reason might help with this, but lately I'm discouraged seeing how many people fall for blatant lies and believe whatever bulshit they are told. Racism, just like sexism is rooted on emotions and completelly irrational. Worse, because since we are "white-centric" we might not be aware of the impact of some of our actions on black people or how some of our actions might be racist. And if you don't know, you can't even try to correct it. For example: living in Spain, I would have never guessed that offering watermelon to someone is racist. Here is considered a nice desert.