I firmly believe that lack of exposure to people of different cultures or races leads people to be racist and not necessarily realize it. If you're never around X, how can you know you have an inappropriate reaction to X?

To illustrate this, I didn't know about my escalator phobia until I moved away for college. I entered the mall, saw these moving stair-things, and felt a deep fear in the pit of my stomach. I hadn't seen an escalator since I was a toddler and, if you'd asked me on high school, I'd have denied having a phobia.

(I've successfully worked on my phobia over the last decade, showing that changing inappropriate reactions is possible)

Same reason Alabama banned Sesame Street long after PBS had it in every other state.

My mother would edit our episodes on VCR with all the spanish parts and visiting other countries out. So we could only watch that show on tape, never off the TV itself.

There is a reason why I have never felt the need to introduce her to her grandchildern.

Yes. My experience has been that nobody is as racist as Northern men who move to Florida. My ex said he went to "the white school" in Michigan, up north is segregated for real. We had enforced school integration but as a kid I was not aware of it, just went to school with school kids - it still got sort of segregated but not really, and my kids even less so, it does work.

But then those guys move down here and are not prepared for how diverse our population is. And they react badly.

Pretty much the same in any country with a majority ethnic population. They lived in an area for hundreds, sometimes fighting wars for it, and so it's not easy to have them give away their lands to people who are completely different down to the religion and imagine a completely different future. America is being pushed to have a civil war over it though likely to other countries interest. One that is very ethnically populated mind you.

It's never the young kids that get offended by this stuff. That sort of bigotry is taught.