I was a spoiled toddler when we had a beach house/winter home in Naples FL. (Mid 1950s)
Very idyllic, beachcombing, fishing, exploring Everglades. My parents (Mom mostly since dad was often away on his ketch treasure hunting) had a black maid. One day my mom gave her a ride home and I went along.
OMFG! They lived in a big dirt lot full of little wooden boxes on short stilts. Not houses, just flimsy boxes. No plumbing, electricity, pavement - no NOTHING. Just little naked kids playing in the dirt, ogling the oddity of an actual automobile in their space.
To say I was shocked would be an epic understatement. I couldn’t even formulate the question “why do they live like that?” But it made a really deep impression.
By 6th grade my dad was two years dead, mom had sold the beach house and moved us to Philadelphia ‘burbs where the public schools were highly rated.
The school was probably 30% black kids, but despite the forced “integration“, was FAPP segregated except in sports. THAT answered a lot of questions for me, and laid the table for my rejection of the white supremacy that allowed for little naked kids playing in the dirt while their Mom toiled away keeping up the relative mansion that was our beach house.
In retrospect, my dropping out of school and leaving home at 17 was a natural outgrowth of that rejection, and put me politically and forever in the progressive column.
We are all products of our experiences.
Florida has changed very little over the last 65 years in respect to racism. It’s just less overt now. DeSantis is a perfect fit.
The entire country is full of racists. Imo, the Northeast is one of the most racist places in the country. It's just not always as obvious as it is in places like Mississippi etc. Northerners often live well in their segregated neighborhoods totally unaware of how minorities are living, since they are often ghettoized into certain cities without many opportunities.
Little children may not be playing in the dirt in NYC, but they are often living in apartments that lack reliable heat, have mold, rats etc. We have the same problem in Atlanta since wealthy California investors bought up a lot of large apartment complexes and then refused to maintain them. New York City has the most segregated schools in the county. At least the schools are racially integrated in most of the South, but there is no escape from racism in the US, whether it's obvious or hidden.
Let me add, that there is a lot of poverty among both Black and White folks in my town, but at least little children aren't playing naked in the dirt and they do have free school lunches, SNAP, CHIP or Medicaid etc. Those things weren't even around in the 1950s when you and I were little children. Mixed race kids are also very common here. I doubt that was common during the days of Jim Crow.
Still, that doesn't explain the rise of Fascism or someone like DeSantis gaining so much power. It doesn't explain why we have so many far right extremists in Congress or why we have so many voters who support these people. White Christian Nationalism seems to be a big part of the problem, but what else is making people act so hateful towards anyone who isn't like them? We can blame some of it on Trump, but what made so many white conservative Christians attracted to him in the first place? It's sad and a bit scary to say the least.