Agreed. I wasn't trying to trash the South per se. In a way, they're only being honest while some northerners who don't talk such trash actually are(were) closet racists. Although the number of genuine racists I think is much less than when I was young.
I do have to say that the guy I knew from Louisiana who talked that way was probably not a "real" racist. His best friend growing up was a black neighbor kid. He took flying lessions from a black flight instructor (black pilots are relatively rare). He explained it that where he grew up, everybody just talked that way. Everybody. Blacks, whites, everybody.
He seemed like a decent guy. How would I really know what he thought inside?
Actually, everyone still does talk that way. Granted, I really don't use slurs all that often, but the fact is, you'll see kids, whom, more than half their friends are black, who love rap music, but, when just in an audience of their white friends, they use the word, and they use it because that's just the way people talk. Most people who tell insensitive jokes in the South don't do it out of prejudice or malice, they do it because that's part of the culture. If Carter did actually say this, he probably said it because of where he was, namely, a bar frequented primarily by Southerners, who in 1975, probably still talked in language like that. There is nothing wrong with telling an offensive joke if no malice is meant by it, and you tell it in the company of people who know where you're coming from. These kind of jokes are inappropriate for mixed company, but they're also harmless. David Allan Coe put out a couple of albums a while back and they had several songs laced with racial epithets. I should note that one of Coe's band members is black.
To tell you the truth, I have found in my life that the people who actually are racist are the ones who don't use epithets and who never laugh when an offensive joke is told. That's just in my personal experience in this area.