Legally speaking, no. But culturally speaking?
Also no, because the culture of the South is not defined by the confederacy. As you should have picked up at some point in the last 80 posts or so.
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I said what I meant. 
And also because it didnât really appear until the 20âs and iirc didnât get really big* until the Civil Rights Era. What we know today as the confederate flag was, if Iâm remembering right, a fairly obscure naval flag during the war itself.
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I donât think Iâm thread jacking because my point was related to MrShivâs original comment, but I did intentionally redirect your comment, so Iâll try to make clear why and then make it back to recognizing your point. Also an apology for the wall of text.
First, I think that the South is prejudiced against in the U.S., and while the consequences of that prejudice are trivial compared to those of racial and gender prejudice in the U.S., there are enough commonalities in how all prejudice is ingrained and perpetuated that I think tying them together can be productive.
When we âotherâ groups, a common form is to take traits that are considered undesirable and assign them to a group of people. If this group is poorly defined, even better. Once a mental association/expectation is there, people will inherently perpetuate it unless they make a conscious effort not to. When they see someone in the group express the expected trait(s), it will be taken as confirmation. When someone in the group contradicts expectation you get either appropriation or ignoring (either the group boundary is redefined to bring the âexceptionâ over to the dominant side or theyâre dismissed as an outlier). When someone in the dominant group expresses the undesired trait(s) they are either ignored or othered â redefining the boundary to now exclude them. This is the most basic way we perpetuate social prejudices.
Upon reading your first point of the thread (âDownstate Illinois is part of the South.â), it seemed like such a clear example of this aspect of othering (a rural, racist, white area being recast as part of the South because of these traits), that I felt compelled to fully address that point before anything else. (As far as what to call them other than the counterfactual âsouthernâ, there is no limit of applicable accurate adjectives. Midwesterners flying the confederate flag makes them no more Southern than brandishing a swastika would make them German.)
I believe your primary point was that there are cultural differences that change how racism manifests in different areas of the U.S., and we should recognize/address those differences when trying to address racism. More specifically how to address more overt, aggressive racism vs. more âpoliteâ, subtler racism. This is a separate issue, and anytime you want to change someoneâs behavior you need to figure out where theyâre coming from and go to them, so certainly that takes different forms depending on who youâre addressing.
My personal opinion on the matter is that the biggest impediment in addressing racism (or at least beginning to address it) is about seeing and caring â getting people to see the damage done by racism and care about those being hurt. So many of those who arenât the ones suffering, find it easier to turn a blind eye than to help or acknowledge the problem (they still wonât admit the knive is there). In this regard, the âpoliteâ racists are usually the worst and I think if theyâre not in a position of power they should be ignored completely on the matter. This is because the politeness is heavily tied to the veil preventing them from seeing the problem.
Also, this group overlaps largely with those that perpetuate social norms whatever they may. So while they currently perpetuate a white, male dominance hierarchy, if the social hierarchy were to change then theyâd perpetuate whatever the new hierarchy was. Which again I consider reason to ignore them on the matter (if theyâre not in a direct position of power). The more overt, aggressive racist I think is often easier to engage on the matter; while they might not care about the damage done, there is less cognitive dissonance in seeing racial discrimination and that theyâre complicit in it.
This leads me to propose a very on-thread strategy. Democrats (or a new socialist/leftist party) should create a new âSouthern strategyâ to try to unite southerners (white and Black) against the wealthy 0.01%.
The South is still the area with the largest percentage of Black people. Non-southern liberals love to think that being anti-south is aligned with being anti-racist, but Iâd argue that the 2 prejudices are much more in concert. People hating on the south for being racist are also pushing changes that worsen racial disparities.
This means that southern, racist whites are still way more likely to personally know and care about black people than rural whites in the rest of the country. That actually makes the South an easier place to change things. Currently, rural, white, southerners largely view the DNC as elite, rich, yankees who donât give a shit about them (and it is not a misinformed opinion). Honestly I think the best way to tackle the issue is to try to unite southern whites and blacks along economic lines and give a hard sell on the intersectionality of racism and classism. Push that theyâre both being played by the same billionaires. It couldnât be just words, but would have to come with serious wealth redistribution policies that improve rural southern communities, but I genuinely think it could work and would be a big step toward changing U.S. culture.
Iâll shut up now
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Racists exists in large urban areas as well. Itâs not a southern problem and itâs not a rural problem.
Yes. it was specifically deployed to oppose intergration, which is why racists use that along with the nazi flag.
My point is that unless we address the overarching problem, those small differences arenât going to get worked out. You can fix individual communities all you want, but it wonât solve the larger systemic problem in the US.
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My family is from the south (some are still there). Those who moved north did it to escape racism - not only systemic, but also actions supported/perpetrated by folks in the area. I say âin the area,â because racists made sure to push Black people into neighborhoods or areas within towns where they would be segregated, and those still exist today.
When I visit those towns, Iâm still not seeing the âpersonally know and care aboutâ in your statement. Things are very much separate in a lot of communities. I know of a few cases where they renamed the Black section of town, so that racists didnât have to say they lived in the same place. Thereâs diversity at work or in commercial settings, but thatâs about it. Those racist folks were far more interested in making sure they had more than any Black person than in tackling oppression coming from wealthy white landowners, business owners, or policymakers.
You say that the DNC is viewed as elite and rich, but GOP members in the south are just as bad and stay in office for decades. What DNC shift would change their minds about who is running the show? Also, itâs hard to unite people on the basis of wealth and class when one group is constantly focused on re-electing racists and doing harm to other people. Theyâd have to prove they can be trusted, because theyâve got one hell of a track record to overcome.
So, Iâll believe that level of unity is possible when those folks stop electing racists, stop persecuting the people around them, start fighting socioeconomic injustice, and make amends. Success seems more likely when the racists are outnumbered. If you can find a map that shows where they are (or a chart that breaks down percentage of the population), Iâd like to see it.
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I donât recall if I thunk that up myself or snagged it from someone else, but Iâve been using that construct for, like, ever. Iâve always liked that it reframes the cultural divide along a non-geographic line, which some here might find ironic as I defend my opinion that the South is the America of America.
And that was purely the result of careless writing, combined with the fact that in the area where I lived when I was there, the people I had in mind self-identified as âsouthernâ. (As I mentioned in my earlier post, that particular subgroup has arrogated the term to themselves.)
In my mind, that brings up echoes of LBJâs âGreat Societyâ - including having someone from the South at the helm. He might even have pulled it off if it hadnât been for McNamara.
In any case, I couldnât find much in your post to disagree with. Peace?
Well, you have to start somewhere. Sometimes systemic change happens from the bottom up, one community at a time.
In a class-oriented society, itâs pretty common to see the class structure being perpetuated by those one rung above the bottom of the ladder, who still have no security and fear most being stripped of what little they have. Immigration is opposed most stridently by the previous generation of immigrants. Racial integration is opposed most openly and stridently by the poorest of the White folks. And any attempts to lift anyone up run afoul of the Law of Jante. We humans are crabs in a bucket.
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+1 just for this. I had a Norwegian friend who told me many folks there keep a copy in their wallets.
Oh so true. I have mentioned that I grew up attending (off and on) a Black church. So much more fun than my lily white, scripted and serious Lutheran church my parents attended.
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Donât get me started on Lutherans!
Missouri Synod?
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The problem is when people donât even acknowledge the larger systemic problem, but instead blame a group of people who arenât them and wash their hands of it. All white people have a role in fixing this shit, not just southern rednecks. Until we acknowledge that, this will continue to be a problem, even if individuals communities (which donât exist in some vacuum) address these issues.
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Oh God no. LCA. Missouri Synod was not to be spoken of in that church.
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Those ones that the evangelicals say arenât Christian, but worship idols?
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How about we just stop letting the worst of us define the world for the rest of us? 
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Fair enough. Although I was also tying back to a comment in a different thread today in which I tried (and probably failed) to observe that Trumpâs goons tear-gassed the pastor of St. Johnâs in order to get her out of the way for a photo-op. A lot fewer of Trumpâs supporters would have countenanced that if it hadnât been an Episcopalian. But thatâs getting far off thread.
And I belated realize - looking at the thread title - that your challenges to the posts of me and others have been less about what we specifically are saying and more about the entire premise of the thread.
And I do believe that the âpoliteâ, pearl-clutching, urban racism that I see so often is more noxious that the open kind that Bubba advances. Itâs a lot harder to engage with effectively. So I think weâre more or less on the same page.
Bury the hatchet for a while?
Which body part would you like it buried in? /s 
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