I've been there. Take away the dirty, ignorant, racist red necks and it would be a beautiful place.
Look, I'm far from a social justice warrior and I suppose seeing as to how I like to chew tobacco and went to the NASCAR races at Bristol, Atlanta and Darlington this year, my guess is I might even qualify as a redneck.
Before some of my family and friends started moving south and I spent a lot of time down here, I guess I even bought into that propaganda that you so easily recite as well. Did the South have de jure segregation? Yep, sure did. Guilty as charged. Hell, the SEC didn't even integrate for football until something like the '70's. But the Feds got involved and integrated the schools and public institutions and over the course of two generations, things have gotten way better.
Now I'm going to let you in on a secret that you won't fully understand unless you have lived in the North and the South. Sit down. The North has substantial de facto segregation. Massive. On a scale that Strom Thurmond couldn't have dreamt up in his wildest dream. They implemented it using redlining and economics.
It started the minute blacks migrated north - called up there to aid in War industries, break strikes or add labor as the North industrialized after the Civil War. With each wave, blacks were put in certain neighborhoods either through the use of restrictive covenants on land or through banks agreeing on neighborhoods they would finance for black housing. Over time, the whites fled to suburbs. Now in the South, that shit wasn't gonna fly because the Feds are smart and they basically forced most southern states to set up countywide school districts. No way the white folks were gonna move ten minutes out of town and set up their own segregated schools. But the whites in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, etc. weren't going to be stopped, they hit the suburbs in droves and places like Detroit, the Bronx, the South and West Sides of Chicago, etc. became the biggest shitholes imaginable.
And they got a big assist from the Supreme Court. Milliken v. Bradley put the stamp of approval on those totally non-racist northerners setting up all white schools in the suburbs so long as they were in different school districts.
Now don't get me wrong, I think Iowa is a pretty progressive place, but even Iowa engaged in that shit. Look at Waterloo and Des Moines. Here's the thing you don't understand. The white liberal establishment that runs the national media can't possibly point the finger at themselves, they simply have to find a scapegoat for why all the cities in the North turned to absolute shit. So is the scapegoat all the white people in the DC area who moved to Chevy Chase or the white people in New York who moved to Westchester or the white people in Chicago who moved to Hinsdale or the white people in LA who moved to Orange County? They look around the room - "Hell no, that's us!" So they created a bunch of clips, stock art and narratives of "White only" drinking fountain signs, Woolworth lunch counters, blacks getting sprayed with fire hoses, white people yelling at kids attempting to desegregate the Little Rock schools, etc., etc., all of which tell a truthful historical tale of what happened 50 years ago, but all of which ignore an absolutely despicable part of modern American culture. Yep, that's it guys, this asshole spraying protestors with a firehose in Montgomery, Alabama 50+ years ago is why the murder rate in Chicago is so high. Case closed!
And they have an army of morons like you who eat it up and spew it back out because you just have to look down your fucking nose at someone. So the next time you go to Alabama or anywhere else in the South, belly up at the bar or the counter at Waffle House and strike up a conversation and listen. And try not to be a sanctimonious prick. You might actually learn something.