It’s the racism in the former Union states that is just appalling. In the south, our grandmothers made sure we have manners.
I had a Black co-worker who once made the same observation. He was was raised in the South, but he never experienced people saying racist things until he moved to California. He said it's because people in the South know how to speak civilly to each other. When I moved out of California after living my whole life there and started to meet a wider sampling of people, I very quickly noticed that what he said was true.