Almost half of Mississippi Republican voters polled said interracial marriage should be illegal

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Honestly? That says more about Mississippi than it says about the Republican party.

Mississippi is a scary place in quite a lot of ways.

And it's also not surprising that 40% of Southerners sympathise more with the Confederacy than the Union; the South was militarily conquered, invaded, and occupied. That sort of thing leaves deep resentment that lasts for generations. I'm really surprised that people have such a hard time wrapping their heads around this; the South is a culturally distinct area, after all, and part of its history is defined by the Civil War and Reconstruction. Ask the Irish if they're over the Battle of the Boyne. Ask the Quebecois if they've gotten over the French defeat on the Plains of Abraham in 1763. Hell, ask the Welsh if they've gotten over Edward I's conquest of Wales in the 13th century (the answer is no, a lot of them haven't, really). The fact that the South was wrong doesn't change the fact that no, some number of Southerners really aren't over the Civil War and telling them to get over it won't do much good at all. That may be regrettable and unfortunate but it's nonetheless a fact.