I was born and raised in an integrated blue-collar neighborhood, had black friends and playmates from my earliest memories, went to school with them from 1st grade on, played ball with them, went through scouts with them, have black neighbors in my suburban neighborhood from the day the plan was built, work with them every day and even hang out in a local bar that has black regulars --- so take your stereotype of us damnyankees, mix it with some grits and put it on the shelf with your “South will rise again” myths.
BTW. I don’t have a damn altruistic bone in my body. I do have a deep and abiding respect for the Constitution of the United States, and what the south did to blacks through the Jim Crow century was inexcusable. It doesn’t matter one iota if you, I, or those folks in Boston love, hate, or or totally indifferent to blacks. Those are private decisions, which have no impact on other people as long as the law is respected. But no government, Federal, state or local, has the Constitution right to discriminate against citizens because of race and that is precisely what Jim Crow was --- legally mandated segregation and it was rightly ruled to be Unconstitutional. That politicians in the south usurped the honorable title of “Conservative” while pandering to racial fear and hatred is the reason that blacks vote 90% Rat today. Government discrimination against any citizen is not a states rights issue. Even though the segregationists like Fullbright and Gore of the 50s and 60s were all big-government socialist Democrats, the conservative label they usurped by invoking “states rights” costs real conservatives the support we deserve from black Americans. On most issues, blacks will agree with us, most of the time. But the “Conservative” label makes the run away, and I can’t really blame them.