When did I ever downplay anyone's racism? Most rural White people are racists. Yes, it's true. I never denied that.
(unless you have a really really stupidly broad definition of racism where pretty much everybody is a little racist, fine, whatever, but it's kind of a meaningless term at that point)
That is part of the whole syndrome. Many rural whites I suspect feel that they are viewed as HP's by the cosmopolitans, and that just exacerbates the problem. It's like a teacher who decides a student is a bad boy, and expects him to be a bad boy, so the student tries to live up to the teacher's expectations by being a brat. In my neck of the woods, often persons of color and the white working class align on local issues, against the white gentry, for what it is worth. Things are far more complex than this broad brush labeling. I don't like broad brush labeling in general in fact.
