I could see how that hits different.
If a redneck in Mississippi waves a Confederate flag, I can at least say "yeah Bubba is racist but his great-great-great grandaddy fought with Robert E. Lee." You got cacs in Pennsyltucky whose ancestors WEREN'T EVEN IN THE COUNTRY during the Civil War, but wave Confederate flags. Some of those cacs had relatives that fought for the Union side and still wanna act like they're "rebels" or some dumb shyt.
Southern racism is still bad but it feels.......organic. You can at least see where it came from. Northern racism feels too 'try-hard'.....a bunch of late-arriving unwashed Europeans trying to join Team WASP (Italians, Irish, various Jews, Polish, Greeks, Hungarians etc) so they act extra racist just to fit in. Trump is a good example of northern racism. Dude has 4 Euro-born grandparents......his gotdamn mom was an immigrant but he wants to act like he's this guy:
Instead of these guys