Black and white southerners who used to share quite similar social values have since the early 70s voted quite differently....thank you John Tower-Trent Lott-Jesse Helms etc
Whites in Alabama and Mississippi vote GOP 88% of the time...highest in the country....yes..quite a bit more than even vaunted Utah.
Blacks in Mississippi and Alabama vote 98% Democrat..again the highest in the country.
But still...whenever we go down to Jackson for family stuff several times a year my young kids and my Murfreesboro wife comments how much friendlier black people are in Mississippi than in Nashville even though Jackson is known for horrifying crime rates for anyone who lives there. You are just less likely to get that Spike Lee looking through you stare like you get up north on occasion and in Nashville now too.
You know why?
We are used to each other. We may be at ends politically and don't interbreed so much in Mississippi like up north and in Nashville now but neither blacks nor whites in Mississippi or Alabama have ever been able to escape one another given the parity in numbers. Plus it's the cultural thing ..manners....blacks down in the deep south know full well that every white was not in the Klan and nor do whites hate them for being black.
They fear the black community a bit for their vote and the crime but not just for what they look like (non white)...that has always been the myth of the left.
I would prefer to live with 40% black folks in Mississippi than 10% in New York City....the attitudes..as a southern white man...no question...and aside from their voting...I probably have more in common with them...at least I did as a boy in the 60s...but things have changed...thug culture....does throw a wrench in that nostalgia.
Right now we are all sweating no matter what color you are...100 degrees in Nashville.
I don't believe that I have ever known anybody who had a more Christian, level-headed or charitable attitude toward race relations than my Southern grandmother. Growing up, I heard the story of how my grandparents in Alabama took in their next door neighbor black family when their house was destroyed by a tornado. I think you might be on to something concerning the bad effects of urbanization on everybody. Not much looking after your neighbor in big cities. I think I would rather endure the material hardships of my tenant farming grandparents' generation than the spiritual poverty of today.
Did any of you see Pat Cadell on Hannity’s show this past week? He was in Charleston, I believe. As you know, he was in the midst of the civil rights movement during the ‘60s.
He stated more than once...and was emphatic...that the south is the most integrated, and most receptive, to persons of color than anywhere else in the country. Of course, that’s not a direct quote, but it’s close to it.
Having grown up during those times in the south...spending a lot of time there now...and now living in Portland, OR...which is the polar opposite of the south...I believe it to be true.