The problem of many speakers of southern dialects of English in much of the United States is that speakers of broadcast varieties of General American English tend to lump all "southern accents" in a category that includes the redneck accents and the plantation-owner-descendant accents without further distinction. And that is why, as the article reports, there is an employment opportunity disadvantage (on average, other things being equal) to sounding like any kind of southerner.

(I have been to all fifty states, having traveled to many states as a Chinese-English interpreter on contract for International Visitors Program of the United States Department of State. I can remember one case of a very upper-crust Mississipian, who was then living in Alabama, having an English accent that to my Midwestern ear was quite nonstandard, even though I was aware that in the south it would be taken to be the accent of an educated person from prosperous family.)