Reply #59: I certainly would never say that

[Gringo]

My point is more about how overt and obvious the racism is in the south. The covert racism in cities like LA is possibly more insidious - that would be a much better argument to make than to bash me as being a "bigoted yankee".

I don't know how much of that de facto segregation is due to racism on the part of whites, and how much of it is due to the "birds of a feather" phenomenon. If I personally chose to live in an area with fewer blacks and hispanics because there was less noisy music, and it was safer. Would that be racism? Maybe. But quality of life is important, and everybody defines it in a different way. I live in a pretty much ethnically mixed neighborhood. The noise and crime are tolerable. If it was too much worse, I would move.