To give some context... I grew up in the Netherlands, with Zwarte Piet bringing me my favorite weeks of the year. Sinterklaas' helper was always someone I liked better than the man himself.
Years later I moved to Sweden, and then to the U.K. It was only in the U.K. that I came to know about the concept of Blackface. I had never heard of it before, and was unaware of a negative relation to black people, and didn't understand why it was considered racist until I learned more about how it was related to American history.
For as far as I'm concerned, culture determines the meaning behind imagery and concepts, which is why dressing up as a black man may be acceptable in one country, but not in another. I find it narrow minded to judge and accuse one country of being racist because their cultural values and history mismatch that of yours.
Sure Blackface may have existed in European shows, but that doesn't mean it carried the same negative weight as it did in the U.S.
Europe also isn't innocent of slave trade, but our culture was much less exposed to it than that of America.
To close this off, I'd like to emphasise that characters such as Zwarte Piet are not considered racism in the Netherlands for one simple reason - children learn to love them, and to children, they are a lot more relate-able than the white man with a beard called Sinterklaas. Likewise, a white man dressing up as Kanye West and colouring his face to finalise the look isn't necessarily racist either. If it was done out of fandom and not mockery, I feel it can actually be positive.
