I recently moved my family to Columbus, Georgia, and the race situation is one of the pleasant surprises of the move. I find that black and white people in this area are more polite and more relaxed around each other. I also find that the black urban ghetto sub-culture plays a much smaller role here.
Finally, I look around the room at my IT meetings, and I see 35% of the attendees are black, and NOT quota hirings. They know their stuff. Even in northern cities with a sizable black population, the percentages would be much lower. These are all solid engineering/management/IT positions. I DID see almost no Indians/Pakistanis, compared to other cities.
Now, my experience is limited in terms of area and time, but I can confidently say that whatever problems we have with treatment of races and relations between races are noticeably less than they are in the northern cities who deem fit to hector southerners on these topics.
That has been my observation of the South versus the North, too.