I would say most Americans see the Klan, segregation and Jim Crow-ism as mostly a southern thing, if not totally unique to the South. Never realizing how blacks and others were "kept in their place" in there own hometowns and states, or the fact that the US government openly embraced segregation before WWII and secretly well into the 1960s.
The knowledge that African Americans were excluded from many opportunities and received little acceptance or encouragement from the White population anywhere in the country, shouldn't obscure the fact that the Mason-Dixon line did mark a real divide in much of the last century. The difference certainly doesn't give Northerners any right to crow, but historically, it shouldn't be ignored or denied.
There's a tendency to argue that because one can't totally separate different things that there aren't distinctions. Morally, perhaps, no region of the country can legitimately look down on another. We're all in this together and there's enough guilt to go around, but the result may be to bleach away details and distinctions that did exist.
As we shouldn't have any trouble admitting today that Whites and Blacks probably do get along better in the South today, what's the problem with admitting that in the past there were serious problems? Those who say that Northerners are morally arrogant or self-righteous or unwilling to look seriously at their own faults, may have the same problems themselves in assuming that today's greater racial harmony in the South was always the case.
Those who saw the events of the 1950s and 1960s graphically enacted on their television screens naturally formed conclusions based on what they saw. And many haven't had their minds changed by the revelation of racial conflicts and hostility in other parts of the country. They stick with what they saw a generation or two ago.
But for younger people, the main dividing line is betwen Black and White, not South and North, and there's much less of a desire to draw invidious distinctions between North and South. Either the kids know nothing about history, or racial issues have been so stressed over sectional ones in their education that they have little sectional arrogance or chauvinism.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it certainly looks like North-South animosities seem to have been eclipsed by other divisions in the population in recent decades. Such conflicts come out in an election year, and people do try to justify their political preferences by reference to sectional divisions, but I doubt regional consciousness or animosity are as much a part of people's lives as they once were.
the HQ of the KKK is in OH, which is NOT a dixie state. there are more KKK-cretins in NYC than in all of LA & MS combined.
further, my business partner, who is beautiful,conservative, religious, educated & Jewish is discriminated against all over the north.
there are MANY places in the northeat that i, as a NONwhite can go where she is NOT welcome!
NOBODY in dixie cares what religion you are!
free dixie,sw