I read the article, and while the author is right about quite a few things, he misses quite a bit as well. For instance, he points out how Mississippi has the highest rate of Black home-ownership in the nation...but what he doesn't say - and more likely, doesn't know - is what kind of houses most of them own. I encourage you to download Google Earth and go street-level in places like Indianola, Sunflower, Ruleville, Cleveland, Greenwood, Itta Bena, and Clarksdale...all places in the MS Delta, and all of which (except maybe Cleveland) are at least 60% Black. There's more than a few towns in the Delta that are nearly 100% Black. So on Google Earth, check out the houses in those towns, and you'll quickly discover which parts of town are White or Black.
What's more, he doesn't mention that MS didn't finalize ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery) until 2013 (yes, seven years ago), and that MS is only now removing the Stars and Bars from the state flag. Nor does he mention that there remains to this day the "segregation academy" system - all private schools, so they likely didn't factor into his stats concerning segregated schools. I attended one (Indianola Academy) for a year, and there were no Black students, never mind that Indianola is 80% Black. The next year, I went to Ruleville Junior High, which had 480 students...and maybe 20 of us were White. And I saw FAR less racism in Ruleville than I did at Indianola Academy.
And then there's the voter suppression efforts against Blacks in Georgia in 2018, and how they're trying to do the same thing even now. The voter suppression efforts against Blacks are MUCH stronger in the South than in the North - that's why the Voting Rights Act was so important...and why the racists were pushing voter-suppression bills within 24 hours after SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act.
Yes, the author has numbers and statistics, but such are often misleading when other factors are ignored.
The Deep South is still the most racist region of the nation. This isn't giving a pass to cities and states in the North that have allowed racism to flourish, but nowhere in America is it as deeply-ingrained as it is in the South.
