Is there not some gray area where actual cultural difference do make a difference in cases like this, but can be easily interpreted as straight up racism?
For example places I can remember living and having problems with neighbours do include places where a bunch of (white) chavs in one flat would have late night parties... and that was because they were irritating scumbags who didn't care about disturbing everyone - they'd hang out in the stairwell making a racket right outside our front door as well...
But equally we've had problems with neighbours where really strong cooking smells were flooding into our flat through the extraction fan system of all places, and it was only something which became noticeable when a Chinese family moved into the flat below us - because Oriental cooking uses so many potent smelling spices and things like that, it was just all you could smell in our flat all the time, really strong smell and even while trying to go to sleep etc...
So the question is would complaining about that in the context of this thread have made us racists? My personal feeling is it really depends on the context and emphasis placed on different elements of what's being said.
Edit: For what it's worth it isn't something we ever made a big deal about, we grumbled to each other about it in private now and then but figured - what would we report them for or ask them to do? Stop eating? We asked our landlord if there was anything they could do to stop the smell passing between flats so badly but they just sort of shrugged it off. We put up with it for a while and eventually moved out anyway.