I grew up in, live in, and work full time in the South, proudly, and in just about as small-town South as you can get, for 48 years now. AAMOF, the population of the county I live in is 70% black, and as an aside it is only a few miles up the road from where the opening shots of the Civil War were fired. I live alone, so I do not have a black roomate (as if that would/should qualify anyone for anything...???), yet many of the people in my circle of friends are black, just as I am white. We happened to be born that way, it was not of our choosing.

As to the allegations of the poster above: Yes, there is racism around here, but trust me, it ain't one-sided, and it most certainly is not at all solely on the part of "the Klan", or IOW white people, as you imply. "The Klan"? Really? That "the Klan" is even brought up is so baffling that if it wasn't so sad it would be almost amusing. In my 48 years as a Southerner here in the deep South, I have known exactly _one_ white person whom I can say was at least somewhat acquainted with "the Klan". She was in my 3rd or 4th grade class, this was back in the 1970's, and she was a bit of an outcast to everyone even at that age, as it was rumored her father was a Klansman. To this day I don't know if he was or not, but even that far back, and that close to the 60's, prejudice of that sort was frowned upon by anyone and everyone else I can ever think of whom I know was/is a Southerner.

In all honesty, I actually meet very few bigots of either color here in the South, yet they are exactly that - idiots of both colors. To claim otherwise is disengenuous, misleading, and perpetuates stereotypes which should have long ago been abandoned in the face of reality. Yet it somehow fits the agenda of some people to make Southern white folk seem like bigoted hayseeds who've never changed in the almost 150 years since the Civil War ended, or in the 50 some odd years since the Civil Rights movement.

This totally ignores the fact that nearly *every* large Northern city is de facto segregated, and that the black populations there live in areas with crime rates that soar far above anything we have in the rural South, or that their white neighbors up there have to deal with. If you ask me, *those* places are the bastions of prejudice, they are the more likely breeding grounds for racial discontent, and this is due to a continued economic enslavement of a people who are not being allowed equal opportunity by those around them, the ones who control the money, jobs, and power structure.

tThink about it - why is the South always pilloried over racism, when it is Chicago which has a "South Side", LA a "Watts", NYC a "Brooklyn" or "Harlem" or whatever the 'black area' of the city is up there, etc etc...?

It seems to me that the people who point fingers and decry white Southerners as "prejudiced" and "Klansmen" merely do so in order to keep the focus away from themselves and the conditions in the areas in which they live that continue to perpetuate a strict divide between the races.

My Southerner black friends don't like to be stereotyped, and - surprise surprise - neither do I nor any of my Southerner white friends. If you think that the South is the holdout of racism and bigotry, come for a visit, see how us Southerners work, live, love, and die together as a *community* of people, and after that we'll go travel up north, to one of those urban areas I listed, and you'll see what the *real* face of racism looks like, and where it is being practiced.

Perhaps through our better handling of data management these days the War on Guns will prove to be as successful and as effective as the War on Drugs has proven to be.

Then they too should vote for someone other than the person/group they voted into office back in '08. Because in the past 4 years, we've seen privacy and rights and wealth dwindle to a fraction of what they were prior...

Really? You honestly think that? No wonder that the Feds can get away with the stuff they do, with people believing such...

The facts in the matter ARE known - by the insiders, who it seems to me are doing their level best to keep said facts *unknown* to the public, for political reasons, likely. The "ongoing investigation" which matters is the one that is rooting out just which of them knew what, and when, and why that knowledge was not used to avoid the death of an American Ambassador (for the first time in over 30 years) and 3 other Americans.

As far as exploiting it for political gain, your guy isn't any better than Romney - wanna guess who's over in Libya right now? None other than John Brennan, Obama’s current counterterrorism adviser - the same guy who made up the drone assassination lists. What do you think the odds are that he oh-so conveniently fingers some fringe Islamist group or another, and we see some sort of remote attack "on the perpetrators of the Benghazi Embassy assault" a week or so before voting day...