Robert E Lee The Great Emancipator

[My Name Is Kate]

The whole idea of segregation and Jim Crow and a class society seems so bizarre. What was most people's (North or South, doesn't matter) greatest fear or reason for not wanting to be integrated with certain people? Did they think some people were not fully human? Did they think some people had something that was "catching" (socially or otherwise)? Was it mainly due to a difference in physical characteristics? Was it mainly due to cultural characteristics? If so, why wasn't more attempt made to bridge the gap in cultures?

I can fully understand not wanting to associate with certain "types" of people, such as loudmouths, physically aggressive people, etc., but that is a completely different thing. And I can understand how stereotypes develop, and that there is usually at least a grain of truth underlying them. But for one race of people to wholesale write off another race of people (and probably vice versa)...what is that all about?