A black man in New York (who was originally from South Carolina) once told me that he was far more comfortable in the "segregated" South than in the Northeast. I got the sense that for a lot of people in the South, segregation ran both ways -- where people were simply far more comfortable living "among their own."
I lived all over. I found the North to be far more racist than the South- Bostonians in particular.
Not to long ago, my company hired a man from Jamaica. He spent a month trying to get someone to train him. No one would give him the time of day let alone work with him. Finally, after a month, he left on a Friday and never came back. He had an electrical engineering degree, and a long list of qualifications. He would have been a valuable asset.
I'm originally from the Northest and have sttled in south Mississippi. Up north, they tend to bend over backwards to let Blacks know how much they care; "Why, some of my best friends are Black.", and end up embarrassing themselves and the targets of their "largess of tolerance". Down south, we just tend to get along and take each other's measure by what a person does or does not do. No special efforts to "right terrible wrongs, real or imagined". I guess one might call that treating everyone else as equals and with due respect.
Not perfect by any means as there are racists and "dogooders" everywhere, but us southerners (even the transplanted "damn Yankees" like me) seem to have a better handle on this "problem" than the "I feel your pain" snobs up in the Northeast Blue States.