I took a lot of lit courses in college, and read a LOT of short stories. It wasn’t until at least an entire year into it that I noticed, “Hey! At least HALF of these short stories are about really, really, really, mean and racist white people, being really mean to poor, yet hard working and EXTREMELY dignified black people way down south.”
This was in the days before I was politically aware, but I still remember how stunned I was when I realized what a HUGE percentage of short story collections have this theme.
For an explanation, read "Come back to the Raft, Huck Honey" by Leslie Fiedler, a brilliant piece of literary criticism. It is one of the few essays on literature, written in the last thirty years, that is worth reading.