Steve & Ron,
No doubt that Southerners are wary of strangers and outsiders as you mention. However, this is not necessarily "racisim". And yes, you can give plenty of anecdotal evidience of racism in the south. I'm simply saying that where I lived in the south and where I've lived outside the south have shown me that there is as much and more racism elsewhere. My evidence is only anecdotal too, but since that is what is accepted here, let me offer it up.
In Boston, CEOs of a large company there used the 'n' word regularly over lunch and on the golf course. Their sense of superiority was so complete that they didn't even realize they were racists. They were all well to do New Englanders and turned me off in a huge way as representatives of their part of the country. In Colorado, I witnessed multiple KKK and Neo-Nazi rallies, one of which ended with mounted riot police in downtown Denver. I never saw that growing up in the 1980's in the South. I've lived for almost 15 years in LA, and no city so diverse is so segregated. Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and whites simply don't live together the way you might expect. They have their own cities within the city and my white and black co-workers look at me strangely for going to gym in a black neighborhood because I work around there. And "rednecks" with giant trucks and rebel flags populate the inland empire region of Southern California with just as high a percentage as in my hometown. When was the last race riot in the South? In the 1970s. In LA? Last decade. I'm sure that you can find racism in the south, and congratulations if you worked there in the past, and if you grew up there when the dinosaurs roamed the earth
but I had 20+ years growing up there in more recent times and whites and blacks went to the gym together and worked together and went to school together with less overt racism than the other places I mentioned. Is the South "glorioius" as I mentioned tounge-in-cheek earlier? No more so than any other region of the world. But is it worse? Not in my experience.
By the way, Steve, West Virgina is not the South to a Southerner. Heck, Tennessee is just barely in. And I agree with your experience with the Irish. However, I don't think that attitude is shared in places like Germany, France, eastern Europe. Racists and rednecks live everywhere. We all just like to pretend they only live in the Southeastern US. And finally, though you are a Yankee, I wouldn't call you a "Damn Yankee." See, we're not so intolerant.