I do. Moving to the South has be a real anthropological experience, let me tell ya. :)
Although subjective, it is my experience that this is not accurate in the South. We had an incident where a group of white kids of the "east side ghetto" set out to intimidate kids in the "west side ghetto" (our neighborhood). They carved swastikas on the vending machine and slapped rebel flag stickers in the commons area. My experience is that adults clearly understood what the rebel stickers meant and the kids that hang out at my house[ People on the list have probably read me referring to them as "testosterone central."] learned to be afraid of these symbols if they weren't already. They would ask, fearfully, "Doesn't that mean that they want to lynch us?" It is true that they don't have a complex understanding of the flag's history or of slavery, etc. It is true that they are a little confused in so far as there is a defensive "It's just about freedom and liberty" trope around her. But if you're a black child, you are frightened of it even if no one has flat out said that it's racist. (Similarly, kids don't exactly know what a Nazi insignia means, either, but they know it's ominous.)
I'm sad and sickened to report that while I lived in a poor/working class black neighborhood for five years, my son has recently transferred out after taking up the opportunity to play b-ball for a snazzy school where all the kids are white and well-t-do and even, according to my son, the black kids act white. We're talking a school where most people live in exclusive, gated, guarded planned communities in homes that cost at least 1/4 million dollars. Where girls wear $450 Minolos and high school kids drive brand spanking new mercedes, beemers, audis, bentleys, and so forth.
there are many days i've regretted this move in so far as i hate watching my kid go through the pain. but, fortunately, he's settling in and we're maintaining strong ties with the old 'hood. he's making friends with other basketball players and there are some black and latino kids who've been recruited to play. so, he has people who have something in common with him.
He is having a hard enough time trying to relate to white people at school at all, but it's made all the worse by the fact that the overt racism is rampant, right down to the commonplace use of the word n-word. It's not being used to shock. It's being used as an ordinary, not shameful, so what way to refer to black people. It's not just the word, it's that the word stands for widespread, overt attitudes signaling a sense of moral superiority.
Whereas we may have worried about fights over girls and the occassional gang fight between east side ghetto and west side ghetto, today, I worry far more that my son will beat the crap out of a SOB who says n-word or some other crappy comment. For my son, they're talking about his friends and he's seen them go through too much racist shit at the hands of cops and security guards to want to put up with it from a bunch of ignorant, parochial punks. Heck, he never used to put up with it from the security guards, either.
I'm praying to holy hera's whores that this is a bizarre aberration.
Note: I agree that getting worked up over the comment is idiotic but not for the reasons Frank claims.
Kelley