White European governments (especially those in Western Europe, which from time to time have been forced, by sheer force of numbers, to acknowledge the presence of black denizens within their borders) are still loath to acknowledge the need to address Western Europe's founding role in the transatlantic slave trade, its invention of anti-black racist ideologies, the racist political, social and economic violence and damage wreaked during its colonial rule in Africa, and the ongoing presence of right-wing racist groups and sentiments within its political centres. The study and representation of black Europeans in academic and political institutions are so scarce as to be taboo, yet acts of violence against black Europeans are a growing constant in the quotidian, as are negrophobic and negrophilic representations of blackness in Western European mass media.