Your experiences not withstanding, Richards is not from the south, so don't blame the south for this.
Hmmm. I seem to recall that the article mentioned the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King. I also seem to recall that the post I was originally replying to had mentioned the Civil Rights Movement.
The American Civil Rights Movement was fought- by and large- in the South. The two are inextricably linked. If we are discussing the Civil Rights Movement and the end to institutional racism we can't leave the South out of the equation.
Also, another poster I commented to had mentioned people being discriminated against because they were perceived as outsiders. I pointed out that blacks were never outsiders in the South, they were always a part of our culture- they were within our culture. As a young boy I never perceived blacks as being outsiders.
However... In the South of my youth, there was a small class of people who lived among us who we definitely considered outsiders and we called those people 'Yankees'. They came from a different culture. They spoke funny. Had strange ideas about things and didn't eat grits or catfish. They also made war on us, burned Atlanta and occupied us afterwards. When I was I boy, I could tolerate blacks just fine. But I hated Yankees with a passion and to tell the truth, I still don't trust 'em and from what I understand Georgia has become positively infested with 'em in the last ten years or so. It's a shame...