I just find it ignorant of people to say that the South is more racist than anywhere else. I just think that the racism is just more transparent. Or have we forgotten the uproar in Boston when they tried to desegregate the schools up there?
And let's not forget the
Howard Beach incidents in New York City. That was about as bad as anything seen in the Deep South.
All this talk about the "racist south" kind of reminds of that old Randy Newman song "
Rednecks," where the southern narrator compares and contrasts his racist life in the south with the "enlightened" culture in the North and points out how things really aren't all that different:
- Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down
