Respectfully, It will be more difficult to have a discussion if you truly believe this. The idea of the great white Northern father who is a savior is bogus. I could agree with you about pockets of semi-equality, and early attempts in certain areas but overall no.

I grew up in the South. I am not defender of it, and racism is way worse in Dixie than is even described in movies, etc. It is a form of indoctrination of children and in my view, like teaching caste is child abuse. Capitalism is about profit alone, and people being used as tools.

Native Americans were slaughtered by the great emancipator and his armies during the civil war, and by his generals after the civil war. Women were not equal, Atheist were not equal (ask Thomas Paine), there was child labor, and factory workers were literally locked in cages by the employers.

The American for profit prison system put blacks back on the plantations for minor crimes, under the American flag, many former slave owners were allowed to retake the Southern states and institute segregation, etc.

How about the portrayals of blacks, Asians, women, and the mentally ill in cartoons and Hollywood? Was this all done by Southerners? What it clearly shows is white people in America have never viewed these groups as equals. Not in the South, and not in the North.

All of this under the American flag in the North and the rest of America. America was not founded on freedom. It was founded on a concept of slavery and caste in one form or the other. I was debating a Christian here on Medium from the North who believed slavery was and would still be fatherly. Insane.