I never claimed that a large swath of people are racist and live in backwater, but I seem to have implied it by using a few apparently cliched critiques that carry connotations beyond what I intended. The thesis of my original comment is "foreigners are more likely to feel at home where other foreigners live" in the US, and posited some of the possible reasons. SF and other cities where the immigrant community is very visible aren't prejudice free, but you're less likely to be prejudiced against for being foreign, and even then it does happen. Also, there doesn't need to be a majority or even a plurality of people with racist views in an area for people that are the target of those prejudiced views to feel unwelcome. I was divorcing this from the larger discussion that the US has around diversity.