it ignores the racial aspects. Meursault might have arrived at some philosophical epiphany about existence. But his self-involved philosophical brooding should not be an excuse for murder. Meursault is heroic in his absolute refusal to accept the beliefs of society, but he’s guilty of murder. He does what he can to mentally remove himself from this society (and/or the world) but he still exists in it and must acknowledge that his actions will engage others. He never really acknowledges this.

The fact that the Arab is never given a name is really telling. I don’t know if Camus was making a subtle point about colonialism with this move, but it is there whether he intended it or not. This is a clear example where a white European’s racial “Other” plays victim to the member of the colonizing nation. Meursault is arrested and executed but this doesn't erase the fact that a man was killed. The novel is completely focused on Meursault's quest for meaning. The Arab simply becomes a statistic: the "one" that has been killed.

You could argue that Meursault's indifference is not racially motivated; he would have killed anyone of any race that day. After all, his nonchalant attitude was the same with his mother. But you could also argue that colonialism and race did play a role. Reacting to his mother's death and actually killing another person are two very different things. Meursault is the narrator, so it is he who does not give "the Arab" a name.

The court and certainly the priest seem to be more appalled at Meursault's belief system than they are with the murder. They are more concerned that his religious and cultural beliefs are different from theirs. Thus, they are more unsettled that he is unlike them: an "Other." It is his difference, not his crime, that they focus on.

Albert Camus' novel, The Stranger (French: L’Étranger, sometimes also translated as The Outsider), first published in 1942 at the height of World War II, was considered one of the great works of the French Existentialist movement. 

The narrator of the novel, Mersault, is what is known as a French Algerian, or "pied-noir" (literally: "black foot"), a person of French origin who lived in Algeria. This brings into play one of the major themes of the novel, that of French colonialism in North Africa. The French tended to see the Arabs as inferior, and in return were resented for their economic and political domination, a resentment that led to Algeria's successful War of Independence (1954-1962). Raymond's seduction of a young Arab woman and Mersault's killing of one of her brothers exemplify the issues of colonialism in the novel and a sort of callous disregard of the Arabs as people.

A second element of Mersault's identity as a French Algerian is that he has no real cultural roots. The France of his mother is so alien to him that he feels nothing at his mother's death:

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

Being culturally French, however, Mersault has no real roots in Algeria. For Camus and the Existentialists, this would symbolize the true nature of the human condition in a secular world, in which life has no real meaning. This leads to Mersault existing in a strangely calm, almost Stoic, state, enabled by his detachment from the world in which he is only tenuously embedded. 

Just as life has no meaning in this world, neither does death, and Mersault is just as unmoved by his own impending execution as by the death of his mother and his murder of the Arab man.