JP, out of curiosity, in what context do you come in contact with these folks?
Personally, from traveling around the country, IMHO a more noticable influence is not so much the region of the country, all though that is part of it, but more so, the demographics (?). Larger city versus small town/rural area. The smaller the environs the more likely you are to "know" the other party or their family, etc. Contact with others that are different race/religion/whatever is likely to be greater in a smaller environment....assuming that it is not a homogenous environment. Racist attitudes can most certainly exist in a smaller town, but it tends to be more private, more subtle, or it tends to be about them other big city members of the group. you know, "We all get along here in Podunk, but them ones in Metropolis...no there's where the problem is"
I grew up in a multi-racial neighborhood, which was somewhat unusal back in those days. Went to all the schools that were on the wrong side of the tracks and the ones 90+% of the minorities went to...this was before busing. Race was not that significant of a deal, most certainly not to us as it was to the kids that went to the virtually all white schools in the district. THough my boys grew up in a rural area with no kids their own age around at all, the were sent into town to a Catholic school, which was multiracial. They played rocket football for years on teams which had only 2-3 white kids on the team. Race didn't mean much of anything to them. In our extended family we have mixed marriages, adoptions, etc of different races and we all gather together at the Holidays as one family.
Now that being said, after finishing school in Arizona, my son got an internship and a job in California, the Bay area...East Bay.Near the Berekly/Oakland line and because of the outragious prices there, he ended up renting a place the first year in north Oakland. Fortunately, he's a pretty adaptive kid, quick on his feet and a survivor. Said for the first 3 months he lived there, he thought his name was "cracker" because thats what most in his neighborhood called him and it wasn't in a joking friendly manner. SOme would stop and ask, "Hey cracker, what you doin' here?". Standing in line a neghborhood corner stroes and get ignored until everyone else left. Going into the corner bar and have everybody in the place stop what they were doing and stand there looking at him. After a while a lot of his neighbors got to know him and he got treated better, but it was an eye-opening experience for him and you could feel the contempt and racism when he talked about living there. But the interesting thing, his attutide only seemed to be limited to those in that inner city. He comes back home and you don't see it in him here when dealing with the different people back here. Don't know exactly what you would call that...a selective racism based on locality? Survival instinct racism??? He's a sound engineer and he wroked a number of Venues in Oakland where he was one of a few if not the only non-minority at the show and never had a problem. Maybe its a situational racism? A form of profiling?
