Canada-David

I think I'm qualified to help out a bit here.
I'm Canadian and have been living in "ick" Houston for six years. I live a relatively sheltered life in that my wife and I love being home. We work together so we spend most of our time with our colleagues as friends. That being said, the people I know here are kind, gentle, caring folks. I have no issues at all.
The comments earlier about the bible belt, judgements, and racism are true yet not. I go to a nice church with good people running it. I don't SEE first hand these judgements. I also live in a pretty mixed suburb of Houston, so I don't SEE the racism either.
Do you see what I'm getting at here? Those negatives certainly exist here in Houston. But with the way I live my life, I am almost never subjected to them. I could watch TV or read about them and get myself riled up, sure. Especially the racism thing, it doesn't really exist in Canada (at the very least nowhere near as much as here). But do I see it? Nope. I pretty much have never even heard a first-hand racist comment here. In six years.
Every place has their negatives. It's simply how much you want to focus on them. Can we honestly say Canada doesn't have some pretty bad negatives too? But because we grew up there, we are simply used to them. We don't focus on them.
I try and do the same thing here. I don't focus on the bad.