I'm from the south, lived all over in urban and rural areas. Urban areas were the most racist (seemingly out of fear in most instances) by far. It's not overt either; the passive-aggressive stuff is real. Rural area racists seemed to be just uneducated/full of bad info on the most part, but also more vocal. I've also encountered more racists in the northeast than anywhere else (maybe they think I am too because of my accent?; regularly approached to ask about my level of "southern pride")

I will say that the majority of racists I've actually met have been middle- to upper-class. I've always thought this was kinda weird.

I'm not an expert either, just sharing my experiences.

> Urban areas were the most racist

This the most unexceptional, unoriginal wrong talking point that always comes up in these conversations. I've heard it my entire life growing up in the south, and it constantly betrays the OP's actual experiences when dealing with this matter.

It's a southern apology. And a really dumb one at that, fueled by a bitter "us vs. them" mentality ripe everywhere in the south.

There is absolutely no data point supporting this position. Not one. People who live in cities and metro areas are consistently significantly less racist than people who grow up in homogeneous communities, especially compounded if that community is a rural one. What fits both of those criteria? Generally the south.

I'd be hesitant to dismiss this outright. While urban areas don't have as strong a history of explicit racism, a lot of implicit racism takes hold when the percentage of the black population is just too low to encounter blacks in everyday life. You compare "cities and metros" against "homogeneous communities" as though cities and metros are necessarily non-homogeneous. This is not the case. Plenty of cities on the west coast are nearly entirely while. Even moreso if you count white + one other race like Hispanic or Asian. While the latter does offer some kind of non-homogeneity it's still the case that in many cities in liberal states most people go about their working lives without any black coworkers on their team.

There's likely data to back this up: https://www.theroot.com/forbes-10-cities-where-african-ameri...

I assume that's from your vast firsthand experience?

I already said I was no expert, and described my own experiences.

I think you're asking the wrong question with the "more" or "less" type thinking.

My own view is that everyone is prejudiced. But people are different. Some are prejudiced and loud mouthed. Some are prejudiced and liars. Some are prejudiced and just quiet. But everyone is prejudiced, so does it matter if one is more loud than the other?

I mean, if you go into a room full of pregnant high school girls, sure, some are loud mouthed. Some are liars. Some are quiet.

But there are no virgins in the room.

The human mind excels at pattern recognition, even when there's no pattern. So I'm not going to try to argue that anyone is un-prejudiced.

The difference is what you do with it. If you treat someone poorly because of your prejudice about their skin color instead of giving them a fair chance, then you're racist.

But I questioned if the feeling that "everywhere is equally racist" is valid, or if the south is actually still more racist, but all the loud racists make it harder to spot the quiet ones, compared to an area that's filled with quiet racists instead.

It doesn't matter if they say the racist thought out loud and then act on it, or they just act on it. Both things are racist. Magicians use misdirection to hide what they're really doing, and I'm suggesting that quiet racists in the south hide their activities by letting the loud racists take all the attention.

That said, I've lived in the south all my life and heard plenty of racism of many different kinds. I lived in Cali for 1.5 yrs and didn't hear much at all, and because I'm white I didn't experience much, either.

The only incident that I recall was being told that I walked through a neighborhood that was very dangerous to white people. I didn't feel threatened, and I don't even think I saw any people there. But I was told later that I should never walk there again, for my own safety. To this day, I don't actually know if that neighborhood really was dangerous to white people, or if the white person I was talking to was just being prejudiced.

However, I did notice that while people talked nicely and smiled, people weren't actually being any friendlier than back where I was raised. They were just hiding things better.

Some are "negatively" prejudiced (racists), some are positively prejudiced (~progressives). Very few people in my experience are able to think about this topic in a purely rational and non-emotional manner.

Is it possible to be "positively prejudiced" against one group without also being "negatively prejudiced" against one or all others?

I'd say it's possible, I wouldn't say it's very common though - in my opinion the majority of progressives are guilty of hypocrisy in this respect.

If everyone was racist we'd be living in apartheid. Frankly, there is no political coalition willing to push apartheid because a plurality of people aren't as racist as some people in this thread seem to think.

What if there was a system that achieved the same effect as apartheid, without requiring an actual apartheid law? Do you think that would be better or worse?

Well that's certainly the intent of some bad policies passed under cover. But generally speaking if you shine a light to those policies most people will be against them.

I concern myself a lot with these kinds of “shadow caste systems”, so I’m intrigued by your faith that they are universally opposed.

I see a lot of people who sort of cultivate a barrier of ignorance because their bread is buttered by the system. They do their job but, only semi-consciously just won’t peer behind the result of their actions.

So I will meditate a little on your position. Maybe I’ve got the wrong bias here.

> I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.

Isn't that statement prejudiced and discriminatory toward people living in the South? You're doing exactly what it is you're accusing and entire geographic region of doing.

Why do you think there are more racists in the South? Why do racists believe what they do? I suspect the answer is the same to both those questions.

It is prejudiced against the South. That's the last acceptable prejudice amongst the "woke," and I say this as a red state SJW. Lots of blue state liberals have no idea that the Southern diaspora code switches with them, often avoids having to talk about where they're from lest it be held against them, that making comments about "escaping the south" isn't cute or funny at all, it's insulting, hurtful, and a microaggression if there ever was one. You can't get ahead if people decide your funny way of talking means you're inherently backwards, ignorant, stupid, and uneducated. For all the crowing and screaming about diversity, where the hell are Appalachian voices in mainstream American discourse? Where are the voices from the rural Mississippi Delta? Places whose culture is unique from the rest of the country but incredibly rich and beautiful and full? Is it because if these places were humanized, maybe the "get what we vote for" narrative used to justify our disenfranchisement and maintain the exploitative power structures that be down here would fall apart?

Mississippi is 40% African American. Of course there are racists down there as there are any where else, but you have any idea how hard it would be to function in Mississippi with that demographic make up if people were half as racist as the South is alleged to be? You'd think they'd be uncovering clandestine mass graves of black people every other week or worse down here s2g. I cannot and will not get over the blackest part of America being labeled "Trump Country" and used as the scapegoat for all of the nation's bigotry. It's fucking lazy victim-blaming. We are the poorest, least educated, and most vulnerable part of the country. Shitty rich people with shitty agendas own our governments, as they have for decades and decades, and the rest of the country sure does get off on telling us our hardships are our own fault.

Indeed, it blows my mind that it's completely acceptable in some company to speak for "the South" as a huge area filled with tens of millions of people think in a homogeneous way. My experience has been that people are no more racist in the south than they are anywhere else. It sure makes it easy to sweep people with slightly different lifestyle under the rug and dehumanize them though.

Not voting for Democrats is not racist. This partisan take is extremely unhelpful.

I think the west coast passive aggressive types don’t do dog whistling. Southerners do that quite a bit.