Somebody has been reading their Marx.... While I will agree that both racism and classism have roots in the same dynamic, a class'/race's distance from power relative to another class/race, racism is not inherently classism, at least in the U.S. Classism in this country has been muted due to the high degree of social mobility (as compared to European and some Asian cultures), while race is a much larger issue on account of slavery, internment camps, and the experience of Native Americans during colonization and westward expansion. To that point, perjoratives about one's class are treated very differently than comments about one's race. While both may be wielded to hurt, they carry very different contextual meanings.
To your second point, the incidence of racist actions here and in Alabama, you're right; but I believe these are different manifestations of racism. Ours is more of an institutional sort...frankly most of us are too oblivious to know when racism is at play, but much of it still qualifies as racism. The Alabama ilk is more overt. Where evidence of segregation is as clear as it is in Alabama (and much of the South, for that matter), it's hard to believe there aren't more sinister acts of racism at play. It's arguable about whether one is better than another, but I think it's another important distinction.
