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This is addressed to everyone who is Southern born and raised-Do you think that there is a "black South" and a "white South"?
I ask that in all seriousness because I am a native Californian who lived down there three years in the Seventies I used to ponder that a lot.It seemed that in many ways race relations were healthier and more open in the South,unlike much of the North where you can live much of your life not seeing a black face if you are white.
HOWEVER,some things I saw still haunt me today-the after hours club in Beaumont,Texas where white men would go to party with young black women.The time outside Athens,Georgia when on a university affiliated field trip I walked into a white cop and a black cop pulling knives out on EACH OTHER.Observing a Klan rally in Metarie and watching dozens of cars going down Airline Highway spitting and cursing at two lone peaceful black protestors.The time at the Red Caboose restaurant when a large black woman held a steak knife to the neck of a young white teenager after he referred to her school as a "nigger school".The time a NOPD officer pulled a gun on me after a traffic stop and told me to"start running"after he checked my black companion's ID.
I still miss the South.There is a profound beauty and mystery about the region that still fascinates me today.Yet the above incidents and many others made me feel there is still a distinct difference in perspective depending on whether you are black or white.
Feedback please.

What you described is all a part of the South--just one South, not two.

There are bad attitudes on both sides of the races. But there can be closeness too. As you said, in the North and other areas of the country you can go a long time without seeing blacks. In the South we grow up side by side.

When I was a child my mother had a black "maid" who helped with the cleaning and cooking (Mom had the four of us children in five years and was just a little stressed by it all). I loved Edna, our maid, and she loved me. I probably spent as much time with Edna as I did with Mom, when I was a baby. So I always had a real love for Edna.

A few years ago I worked for a small newspaper, and my supervisor was a black lady. We had a great time working together, spent half the time laughing. We still call each other every few months to stay in touch.

So what you mentioned does exist in the South--but the other also exists, the love and the caring for one another. And the caring is the part that's never written about in the newspapers or the movies, only the bad.

Also there is an understanding of one another. The Southern blacks are different from the blacks in other parts of the country. (Just as the white people are different.)

Southern white people understand Southern black people, just as Southern black people understand Southern white people. Some problems still exist on both sides, but no one understands the other better.

And yet it all-- the love and the problems-- takes place in one South.

This is addressed to everyone who is Southern born and raised-Do you think that there is a "black South" and a "white South"?

No, I don't.

Is there a Black California and a White California.

Is Watts a community in LA?

Can you explain why the policemen that beat Rodney King
had to have their trial in Simi Valley?

Did racial problems occur in every major city in the US?
Do incidences still happen to this day in places other than
the South?

If you're wondering if your question annoyed me, it did!
It also caused me to try to remember the number of
Black Persons I even saw in Northern California when
I lived there in the Seventies. I seem to remember it was
very few.

We've been stationed in Hinesville and Columbus Georgia, and Enterprise, Alabama, and home sweet home to me is a northern suburb of Atlanta. But I've lived in Kansas, northern California, and Pennsylvania. Maybe it's because my experience living outside the south has been in or near military bases, but "southern" seeming people live all over the country. Culturally and politically conservative people, polite, pleasant, friendly, and helpful to newcomers.

For me, what separates the south from the rest of the country are hot, steamy nights, with air so heavy you can feel the weight of it when you go out on the porch to enjoy the starry sky. For me, the south is kudzu, fried food, and people who've loved you so long, they're more like family than just family friends.

I can't speak of inner cities down here, (which seem perpetually controlled by corrupt and or inept African American Democrats, but the rest of the south seems booming. That ugly "race thing" is long gone, as Black Americans, Hispanics, Asian, Eastern Europeans, Africans, and us native White Folk peacefully co-exist, and thrive together.