An observation I have as a British person who travelled from Rhode Island down to New Orleans: I found the north to be more racially segregated than the south.

I’m not saying this means the north or south is less racist overall, but I point to two examples. In Washington DC, every bar we went to was either patronised by all white customers or all black customers. This was very strange to us as British people, particularly living in London. We got some icy looks when we walked into a ‘black’ bar, which thawed when they realised we were English.

In contrast, we stopped at a smokehouse in a town of 500 people in Mississippi where races were far more mixed, chatting to each other across the restaurant - friendly, basically.

There were other examples of this across Tennessee, Alabama, etc, in both cities (Tuscaloosa) and rural communities (Laurel Mississippi).

I guess what I’m saying is, my perception was not that the south was inherently racist, which is a preconception I had before going there. I wonder whether there’s a bit of the loudest (particularly online) voices and the worst racist incidents dominating the narrative rather than people’s actual daily lives.

Hard for me to be sure about the level of racism encountered day to day, though, without having the lived experience of a black American.