is a hatred of all things from the South truly unwarranted though? I mean... certainly no one is perfect, but they seem to be a lot less perfect than most, more akin to a banana republic than the United States.
de Tocqueville noted as much in "Democracy in America" and this was close to 200 years ago.
the master/slave mentality went beyond black slavery... southern society has always been more heirarchical, less mobile, and less of a meritocracy. in the south, unlike the north with it's Puritan ethics & heritage, you didn't get ahead by hard work, but by virtue of birth. your station in life was wholly determined by who your parents were.
while this may have been the long term state of things, I would think, I would HOPE most educated people would recognize it as something that needed to be changed, rather than accepted.
sorry to get a little too philosophical, but the same mentality pervades athletics; wealthy SEC boosters don't acknowledge the rules & have no qualms about violating them. (of course, this happens everywhere, but it seems to be "the rule" in the south). while the south may be one of the poorest regions of the country, they still have enough to dump massive amounts into athletics and coaches' salaries, to the neglect of academics and student services.