Your Roots reference is correct but it doesn’t prove your point.
I was born and raised in South Carolina (a town called Moore), and actually went to college in Atlanta, and served in the military in Alabama and later Louisiana, and I recall quite vividly being aggressively called boy from everyone from high school disciplinarians to police officers.
So yes, I have spent considerable time in the southeast. I know quite well where I come from, what's your point?
If you want to sit here and quiz me about my lived experiences as a black man in the southern US, knock yourself out, I suspect most of the answers I give you aren't going to be what you think you want them to be.
I welcome dvtrn to correct me on the matter, as I don't want to speak on their behalf out of line, but taken in context, it seems pretty obvious to me what he was doing was contrasting what someone imagines race relations being like to what he actually lived and experienced is as a black man in the south. No imagination needed on his part.
I think the benefit of the doubt there is earned.
It's quite annoying that it needs to be explained like this, since it should be pretty painfully apparent, but yes.
Sorry but I'm (personally) not particularly inclined to favorably entertain what someone "imagines" about dog-whistle terminology. Their proximity to the ebbs and flows of southern racial 'charm' doesn't hold a candle to what I actually lived through and experienced first hand for 30 years-as a direct recipient of aggressive, racially loaded behavior and speech.