So I see you've learned everything you know about the South from TV/movies.

When you get a chance, visit (in person) Jacksonville, Savannah, Asheville, Charleston, Austin, Birmingham, Atlanta...and on and on. It's amazing how they're just like the other non-hateful cities from time to time.

I grew up in the south, and it really hasn't changed.

You are old enough to know better than that. No difference between Ivan Allen and Shirley Franklin?

I am old enough to remember when Jeff Sessions was radioactive enough to not be confirmed by the US Senate. What more needs to be said?

That the Senate isn't the south, and the Senate used to have an ex-Klansman in it (Robert Byrd), so even the Senate is better than it used to be.

Can't speak for the rest of the South, but Houston (which you might or might not count as a Southern city) elected an openly gay woman as mayor in 2009 [1]. The current mayor is African-American [2].

Obviously, looking at mayoral demographics is a pretty crude way of judging a city's tolerance, but it is better than extrapolating from news reports, which can hardly give a detailed picture of a region that encompasses a dozen or so states.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annise_Parker [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Turner

To be fair, Texas isn't really part of the "Deep South", and isn't really known to be as backwards and racist as places like MS, AL, etc.

> Texas isn't really part of the "Deep South"

I dunno, it seceded to protect slavery from twice as many countries as any other state in the South; that's got to count for something.

Tennessee seceded in the Civil War too but it's not part of the Deep South either. I think Arkansas did too, and that's definitely not part of the "South" at all. Same goes for Missouri.