[splawn]

The GOP continues to be impregnated with racism thanks to the southern strategy.[0] If you don't think out in the open racist culture is alive, well and considered normal in the rural south, you are fooling yourself.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

[humanrebar]

I think there are overt racists, but they are in a minority and certainly not exclusive to any political party.

Though this is a hard conversation to have meaningfully since different people mean different things by racism. The context here is a Northern European visiting the U.S. I think it would be a bit of a stretch to say they'll have a hard time in the rural south. I'd say (accented) rural Southerners would have a harder time in NYC than Scandanavian visitors would have in Mobile.

[tptacek]

Accented rural southerners would have no trouble whatsoever in NYC. This is one of those analogies that sounds like it should be true, but has no basis in fact.

It's also a super weird comparison. Southern intolerance is subtextually about animus towards African Americans and Latinos. Nobody is arguing that a Scandinavian would have any trouble in Mobile.

Further: Mobile is a weird choice for a comparison as well, since it's comparatively urban and well-educated. Mobile is more diverse than many parts of Chicago. When we talk about Southern racism, we're generally not talking about the urban south.

Finally, and I want to make this point gingerly, but if we want to drag US political parties into this discussion, the Republican party is almost mathematically determined to be more racist than the Democratic party, which is a coalition of labor, minorities, and liberal whites. It's also just empirically true that the Republican party harbors more overt racists, but we don't have to dive into a lot of value judgements about conservatism and nationalism to conclude that; we can just observe that the Democrats have African American and Latino voters as one of the foundations of their constituency.

[zaccus]

I have a southern accent, have visited NYC, currently live in Chicago. People in both cities are just as friendly as people anywhere else. What you're saying simply isn't true.

People in rural areas seem to think of "city people" as brash, always in a hurry, always on their cell phones, etc. whereas they themselves are courteous, friendly, would give you the shirt off their back, etc. I grew up in a small town in the south and heard this sort of thing a lot, but it's bullshit. It's just one parochial stereotype among many.

[tptacek]

The Republican party contains more overt racists than the Democratic party, but the formulation in your comment is tendentious and hugely oversimplifies the situation.

[splawn]

I wasn't aware of the formulation in my comment when I made it. I was trying to rebut a comment that I felt had a little bit of denial running through it. I am clumsy with words though.